100 Books Like Liberating Sápmi

If you’re curious about the woman who collected the Sami folktales, you’ll want to read Emilie Demant Hatt’s story of living in a tent with a Sami family in a community in Northern Sweden. You’ll be fascinated by her grueling journey with a group of Sami herders and their hundreds of reindeer over the icy mountains in the spring of 1908 to find summer pastures on the Norwegian coast. I’ve long loved the adventure, humor, and visual feast in this book, first published in 1913, and was eager to translate it and share it with readers curious about the high north of Scandinavia. Demant Hatt was a brilliant observer and an early immersive journalist who didn’t shy away from hard work, rough conditions, and learning the Sami language. 

Johan Turi was a herder and hunter when he first met Emilie Demant Hatt on a train in Northern Sweden in 1904. He confided that he wanted to tell the story of the indigenous Sami, and she encouraged him to write what became the landmark text, Muitalus Sámiid birra, the first secular book in the Sami language. She translated it into Danish and it was published in a bilingual edition with his drawings in 1910. Combining history, folktales, explanations, and poetry, it’s a humorous, sometimes poignant, and remarkable compendium of Sami life a hundred years ago. I’ve enjoyed this book since I first read it in an earlier translation. This version, translated with care by noted scholar Thomas A. DuBois, has an excellent introduction to Turi’s life and work. 

This stunningly designed new book, available from the Sami publishers in Norway, has a fascinating historical text (in English and North Sami), put together by Sami artist Outi Pieski and Finnish curator Eeva-Kristiina Harlin. Together, they collaborated on a project centered around the ládjogahpir, the horn hat once widely worn by Sami women across the high North. They inventoried the remaining examples in museums and they began to hold workshops to teach contemporary Sami women how to make the hats. Along the way, they tell stories of how the hats disappeared or were collected, and discuss the idea of “rematriation” as part of new initiatives in the Nordic countries to return Sami craft and culture.

Another new book by two scholars who work with Sami linguistics and folklore, this volume is a must-read account of how, beginning in the 1970s, the Sami began to employ Sami-language media, from recordings, books, and periodicals to films, tweets, and YouTube recordings, to maintain and create social and political awareness and art. I loved reading about the work of filmmakers and musicians in a way that respects their innovative work in the context of Sápmi’s long-standing indigenous culture. I only wish that more Sámi films and art exhibits were available for viewing in North America. Luckily we have YouTube and music streaming services to accompany our reading!

I have long been fascinated by the epic failure of France’s effort to be a power player in the New World, and I have never been terribly satisfied by books that leave out the Mexican side of that story. 

I love that Jonas did great research in Europe and Mexico. He also knows how to tell a great story as a story. This book is full of tragedy, but many of the shady characters involved in this doomed effort give it a significant comic touch.

Of all the changes in environmental politics since the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, perhaps the most perplexing – and disappointing – is the Republican turn away from environmental protection. From the Reagan Administration through the Trump regime, the Republican Party has staked the claim not just to passivity toward environmental regulation but has engaged in an all-out assault on government protection of the human and nonhuman environment. Turner and Isenberg make sense of this policy turn, emphasizing the roles of libertarian ideologues, multinational corporations with a stake in the status quo, and rural Americans who tired of federal intrusions in their lives and livelihoods. As aspects of the urban crisis have eased, and specific places like the Cuyahoga River have improved, environmental activists would do well to figure out how to make environmental protection bipartisan once again.

Imagine you’re Vice President Lyndon Johnson on Nov. 22, 1963. The Secret Service just hustled you into a secure room at the Dallas hospital where doctors are desperately trying to keep President John F. Kennedy alive after an assassination attempt. What’s going through your mind? If Kennedy dies, what are your next steps? Robert Caro found out. Pulitzer-winner Caro is the greatest historian of our lifetime—and a brilliant, accessible writer who makes it impossible to put down a 700-page nonfiction book. The Passage of Power is the fourth of a planned five-volume biography of Johnson, the man who helped turn Martin Luther King’s dream into reality, and then self-imploded with the Vietnam War. Caro’s final volume will be an instant best-seller.

To interpret the Obama administration’s reactions to the outside world, and the Middle East in particular, one must understand the media environment that helped elect him, and ultimately undermine his legacy.

I found this book, by a leading American political commentator, to be a powerful indictment of the mainstream US media (Right and Left), and advance warning of the polarization that accompanied the Benghazi attack and subsequent scandal. 

I lived and worked in Damascus for several months before the outbreak of what has become a dreadful and ongoing war. It was one of the greatest experiences in my life, and I still have great affection for the city, the country, and its people.

Writers there have long balanced off politics and life, and one of the best was Khalid Khalifa whose books for me capture so much of what has been the Syrian experience for the last half century or so. His characters might have been taken directly off the street and stood in a long line of the great Arabic story tradition, which has so much to tell us about life, meaning, challenge, and triumph. 

Grim is a brilliant veteran reporter who always looks beyond, behind, and beneath the official story. This book is original, insightful, and animated by genuine curiosity about how power works. It tells an important story about what led to the political period, circa 2015 to 2022, that I covered in my own book. It’s also a fun and informative read for anyone interested in American history or politics, and inspirational and invigorating for those who, like me, are more drawn to mass movements than to corporate hackery and love the idea of people triumphing over profit.