Books like The Man Who Lived Underground — picked by fans

Two decades ago, I was preparing for my first book promotion trip to Australia and New Zealand. I asked my (Aussie) publisher to recommend two books to learn more about Australia and its history.

The first was In A Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson, which I had heard of. The second was Cooper’s Creek, which I hadn’t. It’s a stunning, scary, edge-of-your-seat short history about an expedition in 1860 that set out from Melbourne into the vast, empty, broiling interior of the country, with the mission to find a route to the lush northern coast. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned.

The book is taken from first-hand accounts by the explorers, and is novel-like in its dramatic twists and turns. 

This one scared me. Who wants to think about dying during a hiking trip?! Yet, while I’d never wanted to conquer Mount Everest, I did long to undertake other (less extreme) adventures.

Reading Jon Krakauer’s account of his Everest experience inspired me to continue to dream big about other outdoor excursions more suited to my personality. I credit this book as one reason I wasn’t afraid to start hiking and backpacking long-distance trails—mostly solo—when I was in my 50s.

I loved Kerr’s decision to view Berlin through the eyes of his PI Bernie Gunther because I’m seeing fascism through the eyes of a protagonist who cares little about an ideology he recognizes as flawed.

It creates an interesting tension for the character—a strategic loyalty, a quiet resistance to something he knows he can’t topple, so he remains himself—true to his own personality. I love the arc Kerr creates that had me locked into his noir world.

Though long out of print, this book is still available in a 1980s paperback edition online.

Raised in the remote Pine Barrens of New Jersey, Brown became one of the world’s foremost wilderness experts, and rescued dozens of hikers lost or stranded in this vast East Coast wilderness. So far, so good. But Brown’s story is also about Native Americans and their lost way of life: he was trained as a youngster by Stalking Wolf, an Apache Indian who taught him how to live off the land and follow animal (and human) tracks invisible to others.

The book is about survival techniques, yes. But it’s also a meditation on a lost way of life, our relationship with the natural world, and the lessons that nature can teach us. 

Butler argues that the large increase of police assaults and killings of black men is not a breakdown in law enforcement or the activities of a few rogue cops. The system is doing what it has been designed to do. Police hurt black men, according to the author because “that is what they are paid to do.” Butler maintains that the Chokehold “is a way of understanding how American inequality is imposed.” It is a tool of oppression. One outcome of the Chokehold is mass incarceration. The construction of the thug is a means of justifying the Chokehold. Butler traces the “Ape” or “dehumanization” thesis.

The book contains loads of data showing how in city after city black people are disproportionately targeted by police officers. Programs such as Obama’s My Brothers’ Keeper ignores women and plays into perpetuating stereotypes of black men as the primary victims of racism.

I’ve read this book twice and probably will read it a few more times before I die. It’s that good.

The story of a young Black man (named Not Sidney Poitier) traversing the U.S.A. is a picaresque, hilarious, heart-breaking tale about trying to find yourself.

Eighteen-year-old Not Sidney is surrounded by people who only see his race or his wealth, or conversely by geniuses who have succeeded despite themselves and, although they see Not Sidney without the cultural labels, are of little help in his quest to find his mission in life. 

The first time I read this book, I was spitting coffee laughing. The second time, my heart broke. I am curious what my next read will evoke.

I loved this beautifully written book for its depiction of how the death penalty worked in the Jim Crow South. I loved the compassion shown by the characters, both black and white, and the attempt by Gaines to reveal the complexity of crime and punishment in an era that may not be so different from our own. 

As a law clerk in the 1980s in the Deep South, I witnessed the legacy of the system that Gaines describes.

I remember feeling exhausted the first time I finished reading Baldwin’s last novel. In common with many novels published during the late 1970s, this is a saga, a sprawling account of interlocking families and characters across thirty years. It takes the reader to the US, South, London, Korea, Paris, and Africa. It is also a pioneering book that describes an intense sexual relationship between African American men.

As I’ve read Baldwin over the last twenty-plus years, I’ve relished seeing patterns and themes that cut across his work. One of his earliest essays, “Journey to Atlanta,” published in 1948, is an account of his brother David’s trip to the US South as part of a gospel quartet, a story that is played out in his final novel. As with much of Baldwin’s work, this novel explores love, family, and politics. 

It’s funny because he wanted to call it My Nigs, but didn't like the idea of white people saying, I loved your collection My Nigs!

That first poem “My President” just floored me with how he heralded all his friends by nominating them for office, like “the boys outside Walgreens selling candy/ for a possibly fictional basketball team” or the guy who hooks him up with a free slice of pizza as long as Danez gives him time to say salat.

There’s a poem about getting beat up, at once an act of violence and an act of care for while they're beating you up, they’re weirdly making sure they don’t kill you. 

Noting my fortune to have been a reader of this book before its official surfacing to the national public, I was first drawn to those poems that again gave me back my memory. Poems reminisced on Migos, Blu & Exile, and others.

Soon after, it's display of self-portraiture unfolded into a mastery of wit, celebrating how music is always a task of discovery first.

“I saw stranger; looked again, I saw friend,” Watkins writes with an intelligence marked by the fruit of reorientation and heart that comes with inhabiting and celebrating your own tribe.