Here are 100 books that If You Poison Us fans have personally recommended if you like If You Poison Us. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Navajo People and Uranium Mining

Bruce E. Johansen Author Of Resource Devastation on Native American Lands: Toxic Earth, Poisoned People

From my list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.

Bruce's book list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining

Bruce E. Johansen Why Bruce loves this book

Brugge., et al. rests its case on the personal lives of Navajos who became poisoned by the uranium that pervaded nearly the entire Navajo Nation from the 1940s until the mines were closed in the 1970s to about 2015.

Much of the editing was done by Navajos, which provides a clear and strong message describing how the many deaths from uranium poison have shredded the cultural fabric of Navajo life.

It is an intensely personal book that is very strong in its account of these effects on families, elders, and future generations.

By Doug Brugge (editor) , Timothy Benally (editor) , Esther Yazzie-Lewis (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Navajo People and Uranium Mining as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sixty years ago, the United States turned to the tiny atom to unleash the most destructive force known to mankind and bring an end to World War II. Ironically, the uranium used to create the most technologically advanced weapon ever invented came from the land of the most traditional indigenous people of North America, and was dug from the earth with picks and shovels...Lost in the history of this era is the story of the people - the Dine - who pulled uranium out of the ground by hand, who spoke and continue to speak an ancient tongue...By the thousands,…


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Book cover of The High House

The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

Book cover of Oil Sparks in the Amazon: Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources

Bruce E. Johansen Author Of Resource Devastation on Native American Lands: Toxic Earth, Poisoned People

From my list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.

Bruce's book list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining

Bruce E. Johansen Why Bruce loves this book

This book has worthwhile attributes, such as clear writing on the nature of uranium poisoning and its history, personal interviews, and vital coverage of local peoples’ reactions to damage done to their lands and their families, as well as their homelands by profit-mined mining companies.

Vasquez’s coverage centers on the Amazon with a focus on several extractive industries. This book stands alone in its coverage of resource extraction issues in the Amazon Valley because this area has so many other important issues to cover.

By Patricia I. Vasquez ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oil Sparks in the Amazon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

For decades, studies of oil-related conflicts have focused on the effects of natural resource mismanagement, resulting in great economic booms and busts or violence as rebels fight ruling governments over their regions' hydrocarbon resources. In Oil Sparks in the Amazon, Patricia I. Vasquez writes that while oil busts and civil wars are common, the tension over oil in the Amazon has played out differently, in a way inextricable from the region itself.

Oil disputes in the Amazon primarily involve local indigenous populations. These groups' social and cultural identities differ from the rest of the population and the diverse disputes over…


Book cover of Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos

Bruce E. Johansen Author Of Resource Devastation on Native American Lands: Toxic Earth, Poisoned People

From my list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.

Bruce's book list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining

Bruce E. Johansen Why Bruce loves this book

Pasternak was one of several journalists who became immersed in the cause of assembling information on exposure of Navajos and other Native American peoples to lethal doses of uranium as a result of mining.

As a veteran who worked with the Los Angeles Times for 24 years, she played an important role in achieving compensation. Yellow Dirt is especially strong on ways in which uranium had pervaded the lives of the Navajo, from the clothes they wore to the food they ate, to the air they breathed.

By Judy Pasternak ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Yellow Dirt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This investigative feat tells the shocking, heartbreaking story of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation and its terrible legacy of sickness and government neglect, documenting one of the darker chapters in 20th century American history.

Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed Yellow Dirt, “will break your heart. An enormous achievement—literally, a piece of groundbreaking investigative journalism—illustrates exactly what reporting should do: Show us what we’ve become as a people, and sharpen our vision of who we, the people, ought to become” ( The Christian Science Monitor ).

From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded…


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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country

Bruce E. Johansen Author Of Resource Devastation on Native American Lands: Toxic Earth, Poisoned People

From my list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

I retired in 2019 after 38 years of teaching journalism, environmental studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. About half of my employment time was set aside for writing and editing as part of several endowed professorships I held sequentially between 1990 and 2018. After 2000, climate change (global warming) became my lead focus because of the urgency of the issue and the fact that it affects everyone on Earth. As of 2023, I have written and published 56 books, with about one-third of them on global warming. I have had an intense interest in weather and climate all my life.

Bruce's book list on Native Americans and lethal uranium mining

Bruce E. Johansen Why Bruce loves this book

While several other books describe uranium’s effects on the Navajos and other Native American peoples from individual effects of exposure and death, Wastelanding is strongest in building a strong case that all of these individual efforts constitute a clear case that environmental racism, as well as colonization, and gender discrimination, combine with the United States’ hunger for uranium in a new atomic age to make victims of people who had lived in the areas for millennia while leaving the uranium in the ground, which is exactly where the people decided it should stay.

By Traci Brynne Voyles ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wastelanding as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Wastelanding tells the history of the uranium industry on Navajo land in the U.S. Southwest, asking why certain landscapes and the peoples who inhabit them come to be targeted for disproportionate exposure to environmental harm. Uranium mines and mills on the Navajo Nation land have long supplied U.S. nuclear weapons and energy programs. By 1942, mines on the reservation were the main source of uranium for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Today, the Navajo Nation is home to more than a thousand abandoned uranium sites. Radiation-related diseases are endemic, claiming the health and lives of former miners and nonminers alike.

Traci…


Book cover of Serpent River Resurgence: Confronting Uranium Mining at Elliot Lake

John Sandlos Author Of Mining Country: A People's History of Canada's Mines and Miners

From my list on environmental and health impacts of mining.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for mining history was sparked when I lived in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories. One of my students wanted to write a short essay on the Pine Point Mine, which he claimed had cheated the community by making so much money, providing few jobs, and leaving a big mess after closing. I offered to drive the student out to tour the abandoned mine and was blown away by the dozens of open pits and abandoned haul roads that had been carved out of the northern forest. From that day on, I was hooked on mining history, hungry to learn as much as possible about these abandoned places. 

John's book list on environmental and health impacts of mining

John Sandlos Why John loves this book

I have rarely encountered a book that captures the local impacts of mining as well as Lianne Leddy’s Serpent River Resurgence. I was impressed with how the author, a Serpent River First Nation member, used oral history and family stories to document how the uranium rush at Elliot Lake, Ontario, irrevocably altered the ability of Serpent River members to hunt, fish, and gather off the land.

To me, the book's real strength was the author’s refusal to depict her fellow community members as victims, highlighting their successful campaign for environmental cleanup of the toxic legacies that remained long after the uranium mines had closed. 

By Lianne C. Leddy ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Serpent River Resurgence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Serpent River Resurgence tells the story of how the Serpent River Anishinaabek confronted the persistent forces of settler colonialism and the effects of uranium mining at Elliot Lake, Ontario. Drawing on extensive archival sources, oral histories, and newspaper articles, Lianne C. Leddy examines the environmental and political power relationships that affected her homeland in the Cold War period.

Focusing on Indigenous-settler relations, the environmental and health consequences of the uranium industry, and the importance of traditional uses of land and what happens when they are compromised, Serpent River Resurgence explores how settler colonialism and Anishinaabe resistance remained potent forces in…


Book cover of The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

Kate Andersen Brower Author Of Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon

From my list on rule-breaking, risk-taking, bad a$# women.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I covered the White House as a young reporter I was always more interested in understanding what was happening in the upstairs residence than in what briefings we were getting from the president’s advisers in the Roosevelt Room. I was raised with the understanding that in the end everyone is equal and that no one, no matter how powerful they are, gets out of the human experience. I think that’s what makes me interested in iconic women, from Elizabeth Taylor to Betty Ford. There’s nothing I like better than reading their letters and trying to understand what made them tick, and how they navigated their complicated and very public lives.

Kate's book list on rule-breaking, risk-taking, bad a$# women

Kate Andersen Brower Why Kate loves this book

My friend Denise Kiernan shines a light on the thousands of women who worked on the Manhattan Project.

If you’ve seen Oppenheimer and you’re interested in the story behind the development of the atomic bomb, then this book will help you understand the hidden figures behind its creation. What I love the most about Denise’s writing is the way that she brings the mysterious origins of Oak Ridge, a Tennessee town created to house the people working on the bomb, to life. 

At a time when the stakes couldn’t have been higher, women were at the center of the story.

By Denise Kiernan ,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Girls of Atomic City as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback—an incredible true story of the top-secret World War II town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the young women brought there unknowingly to help build the atomic bomb.

“The best kind of nonfiction: marvelously reported, fluidly written, and a remarkable story...As meticulous and brilliant as it is compulsively readable.” —Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City

At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not…


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Book cover of Trusting Her Duke

Trusting Her Duke by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.

Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…

Book cover of Operation Uranium Ship

Roger Weston Author Of Hostile Takedown

From my list on or about the sea.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have worked and lived at sea for months at a time, and I have many memories of the sea, good and bad. I have lived through extreme Alaskan storms, fished in remote coves, and worked beyond exhaustion over and over. Working at sea taught me some important lessons about life and the possibility of sudden death. I experienced the romance of the sea from a young age, and it has inspired my writing.  

Roger's book list on or about the sea

Roger Weston Why Roger loves this book

A true story based on Israel’s most amazing espionage strike. This is as good as a first-rate espionage thriller with the added benefit of being non-fiction. The title was the first thing that grabbed my attention because it was not only an espionage thriller, but also a sea story. For me, it was a combination of the two greatest genres into a rare and excellent story.

By Dennis Eisenberg , Eli Landau , Menahem Portugali

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Operation Uranium Ship as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Very Good to Like New condition. Perfect spine. Bright clean cover has light edge wear. Text is perfect. Same day shipping first class from AZ.


Book cover of SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future

Henry Sipes Author Of NUERA1

From my list on questioning the future survival of humanity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent decades showing people the beauty of space in my telescope, and volunteering for a college/park observatory, and NASA’s JPL Solar System Ambassador program here in Kentucky. My question – was it a waste of time? I should have been selling humanity on love and setting aside hatred. What is the point of dreaming of going to the stars if we are only going to take the same hatred with us. I write to cry my thoughts into words and attempt in some small part to bring hope that we can leave hatred behind, embrace diversity, and use the wonders of science to colonize our solar system and beyond.

Henry's book list on questioning the future survival of humanity

Henry Sipes Why Henry loves this book

My father and I were both speechless after reading this book. We were unable to put into words our rage at this nuclear energy cover-up. Instead of developing clean nuclear energy that could fuel the world, the world pursued nuclear energy that could destroy humanity. There is enough thorium to fuel the world and beyond for centuries. However, it cannot be used to make bombs. With the world in an energy crisis, we hoped writing letters to the Senator of Kentucky would give life to the idea of using thorium once again. Sadly, some only care about destroying cities. Everyone should read this book and learn about the alternative to uranium.

By Richard Martin ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked SuperFuel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

At the dawn of the atomic age, uranium and thorium were equally important as the elements of choice in researching nuclear energy - either one could have powered the world's reactors. But it was uranium that won out, and thorium, which is far cleaner, safer, and more abundant than uranium, was relegated to the dustbin of science. With it went the possibility of creating a low-risk nuclear energy source to power our planet. Now, as the world searches for cheap, non-carbon-emitting energy sources, thorium is reemerging as an overlooked solution. As one of the first energy experts to promote the…


Book cover of Competition in the Nuclear Power Supply Industry

Geoffrey Rothwell Author Of Economics of Nuclear Power

From my list on understand nuclear power economics.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I was 10, my family moved to Richland, Washington, next to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. My father worked as a Bechtel engineer on the Fast Flux (Sodium) Test Facility. I started studying the nuclear power industry as an undergraduate. As a graduate student, I published my first paper on the operation of an international uranium cartel. Most of my research at Stanford University and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD has focused on the economics of the nuclear power industry, including waste management. Since my retirement in 2018, I have worked with the (US) National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine on the cleanup of the mixed radioactive-hazardous waste at Hanford.  

Geoffrey's book list on understand nuclear power economics

Geoffrey Rothwell Why Geoffrey loves this book

This book outlines the history of the nuclear power industry in the US from the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, less than one year after the denotations of the highly enriched uranium bomb over Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and the plutonium bomb over Nagasaki (9 August 1945) to 1968.

It describes the development of the Nuclear Steam Supply System and its supply chain, as well as the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to the chemical separation of plutonium. Its objective is to determine whether there are any violations of American antitrust laws. It is full of naïve optimism, tables, and hand-drawn charts that give the reader a feeling of what American scientists and engineers believed the future would hold before the events of 1968.

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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Ride the Free Wind

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy Author Of Tall, Dark, and Cherokee

From my list on Native American romantic suspense.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a lifelong history lover. I was the kid who hung around the feet of the elders, listening to their stories and learning about the past. That led to a deep interest in tracing family history, which has been a passion since about the age of ten. I still can get lost for hours finding ancestors or reading about their lives. That interest led me to a double major in college and I earned a Bachelor of Arts in both history and English with a two-year degree in journalism. I live a short distance from Oklahoma and one of my favorite pastimes is to go to powwows whenever possible.

Lee Ann's book list on Native American romantic suspense

Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy Why Lee Ann loves this book

I have a passion for history and did one of my history thesis in college on white women and their Native American captives. In this story, there's a strong attraction, a commitment to abandon the life she knows by the heroine to embrace her lover's culture. Zeke's transformation back into Lone Eagle is one that really touched me emotionally.

By Rosanne Bittner ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ride the Free Wind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The second book in Rosanne Bittner’s bold Savage Destiny series continues the love story of Zeke and Abbie Monroe. For the first five years of her marriage Abbie lives among the Cheyenne, learning their customs and beliefs and giving birth to a son who is as wild and free as his Native American family, and a daughter who will one day be forced to choose between her Indian and white blood. Through real historical events involving the government and Native Americans, Zeke and Abbie cling to one another through danger and torn loyalties. This story vividly depicts the “right” and…


Book cover of The Navajo People and Uranium Mining
Book cover of Oil Sparks in the Amazon: Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources
Book cover of Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajos

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