Books like Rooted — picked by fans

I find this book inspiring, especially since it was originally written in 2004 and recognized the path that society was on even then.

Solnit presents a strong case for the necessity of being realistic yet hopeful. She also acknowledges the power of social movements and activism to effect social change in a way that capitalizes on the opportunities that exist. 

I first read this book when I was developing a course for undergraduates at Cornell titled Nature Rx, based on the book I had co-authored. I immediately felt like Florence Williams had written this book just for me. Her tales of traveling to various points in Asia, Europe, and the American southwest to experience firsthand the impact of nature's immersions on humans in various states of health or illness was exactly what I needed to frame the syllabus for this course.

And Williams is more than a casual observer—whether it’s hiking through a Korean forest to gain the benefits of shinrin-roku (forest bathing) or shooting rapids down the Salmon River with a group of injured female war veterans, she makes us feel every aching joint and bead of sweat, engaging the reader in her real-life experiences. While we clearly live in a time in which cynicism is rampant, this book… show more.

We already know that most species possess the same five senses we do, but use them in different ways.

But did you know that animals have other, completely different senses, ones that detect odors, heat, sound, electricity, pressure, tastes, and the Earth’s magnetic field in ways we physically can’t?

I found it hard to finish this book because every time I read something astonishing—that hammerhead sharks sense the electrical fields of prey, that monarchs taste with their feet, that octopus arms think and act independently, that dolphin sonar can see inside bodies—I had to stop and wonder WTF that must be like. 

Is it possible to feel hopeful in the face of global climate change? I’ve found this especially difficult. Bad news about the environment seems unending; emotions like eco-anxiety and climate grief seem too hard to shake. But Eric Holthaus’ The Future Earth showed me that hope is still possible.

By describing the type of lives we might live and the sort of world we might build to mitigate climate change, Holthaus offered me a vision to work toward. By offering a model for having difficult conversations about global problems, his book also inspired me to try new ways of teaching and talking with others about issues like violence or climate change. 

It may be difficult to believe, but Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir of detention and torture is one of the most life-affirming books I’ve encountered. I’ve read and reread Guantánamo Diary several times—and even taught the book to undergraduates in my seminar on torture.

Writing in a language he learned while detained by Americans at Guantánamo Bay, Slahi gives an honest account of human violence, including its causes and consequences. But he also sees through that violence to the possibility that our shared humanness persists despite our fears, hatred, and brutality.

Stanley Cohen’s States of Denial did not seem like a hopeful book to me, at least at first. After all, Cohen is documenting the many forms and causes of human rights crimes and denial. His stories of violence are difficult to read. But the more I’ve thought about Cohen’s classic of critical criminology, the more I’ve realized how necessary and hopeful it is.

Among his analysis of denial, Cohen interweaves stories of bystanders who acted—offering help to survivors of violence or intervening to expose violence. I’ve learned from Cohen that ordinary people can display extraordinary courage. But I’ve also learned that seemingly ordinary acts—letter writing or speaking truthfully about violence—can have extraordinary effects. 

I love this book because it gives me a plant version of human cultures.

The important point is that each species develops its own special capacities to survive in its own environment. Call it intelligence, culture, or something else; this “shared wisdom” gets passed down from one generation to the next and changes mainly when a new feature becomes more adaptive. I admire the fairness with which the author describes scientific debates such as those over whether concepts like human intelligence can be correctly applied to plants.

If there is agreement at all, it is that evolutionary differences in “intelligence” adapt to the contexts in which different species must survive. No single continuum suffices for all species. Nor is there any single way to compare them along the way.

The COVID pandemic brought on a struggle of isolation and reduced options, made worse in 2020 and ’21 for those of us in northern climes where winters stretch on for nearly half the year. If you’re like me and you wait impatiently for the first true signs of spring, then you may find the simple structure Angela Douglas employs in Nature on the Doorstep to be just the antidote you need.

Starting on March 22, 2020 (a day after the spring equinox, but nature follows its own calendar), Douglas filled her pandemic days by writing family members one letter each week for a full year’s cycle. She chose as the focus of her missives her own modest backyard and the life–and death–portrayed on that stage. It’s the modesty of this work that was its greatest appeal to me. 

In clear, non-esoteric language, Douglas finds beauty and wonder in Vultures and… show more.

I have always loved books where the author tries to squeeze the entire world into a few short pages. Carolyn Merchant starts her extraordinary book with the observation that women and nature are often associated with one another—the nurturing mother—then launches into an argument about how the exploitation of the Earth and the domination of women have the same root causes: capitalism, but also patriarchy.

Along the way, I learned about witches, old ideas of magic, and how mining in Europe was once considered sacrilege, a violation of the Earth. After reading this book, I’ll never see science or history in quite the same way.

Hailed as a “new genre of nature writing,” Mueller’s book is species-specific, dwelling upon the lives and deaths of salmon, yet the subject matter could apply to any creature that has become a commodity within late-stage capitalism. Mueller contrasts the Norwegian farmed-salmon industry and the increasing mechanization and reduction of living beings to things with wild salmon populations and Native people’s perspectives from the Pacific Northwest. Critically, he dares to take on the perspective of salmon, sprinkling memorable and moving vignettes throughout the book, helping readers imagine the world from a salmon’s-eye-view. This work of interspecies empathy is a rare and welcome contribution to thinking about personhood through a lens that is other-than-human.