Books like Zorro — picked by fans

Every time I read this one I can hear the voice of Emmanuelle Beulque, my French publisher, while she’s reading it to me. I was in Paris, in Sarbacane’s bureau and this was a new book they were about to translate from the USA. She was so excited about it that she read it to me. Making someone read a book is one of the best things, even when you’re a grown-up.

Zorro is a lovely dog who lives a lovely life. He has his own armchair, his own toys, his own food bowl, and, most important of all, his own time for everything: morning wake up, a morning stroll, nap after lunch. But one day, it comes home a new dog…

This book initially appealed to me because of the title and the dog on the front cover.

As a child, I was a big fan of all things related to the television and movie versions of the character Zorro. He wasn't in this book, but there was someone who left their 'Z' around town, painted on runaway dogs. I enjoyed the developing romance between the local game warden and the determined animal rescue worker, who would eventually figure out the mystery.

The story was well-written and had some great twists and red herrings to enjoy. This book is part of a series and I look forward to checking the other books featuring cozy mysteries involving dogs.

In this exhaustive, deeply researched study, Benjamin Madley examines in grim detail the relentless series of massacres and exterminations of peaceful Native American Indians in California that occurred from 1846 to 1873. During this era, writes Madley, “perhaps 80 percent of all California Indians died.” Survivors, especially children, were often enslaved. 

The brutality is systematic, if not endemic, to the construction of the American empire. Nearly half of the book is comprised of appendices that quantify most known Indian massacres in California during the mid-nineteenth century. (“~April 5, 1846. Number killed: 120-1,000. Location: Close to Reading’s Ranch.”) What emerges is a disturbing portrait of ceaseless violence inflicted by pioneers and settlers, by business owners and hired thugs, and by the state and federal governments against large, sophisticated human populations that had lived in place for thousands of years.

The nearly comprehensive genocide remains rarely invoked in modern times, no matter… show more.

I recall avidly skimming the text in the library soon after it came out. So many new ideas! I was especially excited with its presentation of the Indigenous management of plant habitats by the judicious use of fire.

From the Preface: “I hope that greater understanding of the stewardship legacy left us by California Indians will foster a paradigm shift in our thinking about the state’s past—particularly with regard to wildland fire.” Slowly, researchers across the Great Plains have begun to understand the complex relationship between climate, litter buildup, and human activity, and this book helped that understanding take root.

In this unbelievably gorgeous take on Peter Pan, Lily and Wendy are step-sisters who must now spend a summer apart. But a mysterious boy has been watching from the window and intends to take them away forever to a mysterious land. This book tackles head-on the problematic aspects of the original story and contains a story both thrilling and fun. Family, sisterhood, and magic reign supreme in this hard-to-put-down retelling. 

What Calloway does for Washington, Wallace does for Jefferson. Even more than Washington, Jefferson talked one game and played another. He could be splendidly eloquent on how much he wanted the Indian nations to become Americans, yet that could only happen, in Jefferson’s mind, if they surrendered their identity as Indians. If anything, the situation was even worse than Wallace suggests, as I point out in detail in my book on William Wells. While there is much to admire about Jefferson, his Indian policy shows how idealism can serve as a front for blatant exploitation and near genocide.  

Creation’s Journey ties actual native stories and beliefs with genuine artifacts from the vast collections of the National Museum of the American Indian. It provides a refreshing approach to our understanding of indigenous people’s utilitarian objects and how important they are in their daily lives. The photos in this book show the care for detail and craftsmanship that was pervasive in everyday Native American objects and clothing. It inspired me to commission native Americans to hand make the various costumes shown in my book.

Though we are thankful for the current movements to decolonize archives and museums, from at least 1750, Native writers have been doing this important survival work of asserting Native ways of knowing. This revelation is the subject of Wisecup’s ground-breaking study. It shows how early Native writers assembled lists, collages, and literary texts that, through juxtaposition and recontextualization, resisted the way colonial archives defined their bodies, belongings, and words as ethnographic evidence of vanishing peoples. Wisecup offers revealing ways to read the Indigenous compilations of key figures like Mohegan Samson Occom’s medicinal recipes, Ojibwe Charlotte Johnston’s poetry scrapbooks, and Abenaki leader Joseph Laurent’s vocabulary lists. We also deeply appreciate how Wisecup ends each chapter by connecting the early writer it focuses on to contemporary Indigenous culture.

Vine Deloria, Jr., was one of the most influential Native American authors, and this is one of his most significant books. I was greatly moved by Mr. Deloria’s candid discussion of how white people screwed the Indians.

Mr. Deloria not only gives numerous illustrations of wrongdoing, but the book contains a section on how white people can try to make amends. Although this book is now 50 years old, it is a major contribution to American Indian literature. It helped shape my thinking about how our country has treated (and mistreated) Native Americans.

Barry Lopez is also an author that defies choosing among his many great books about nature, including the renown Of Wolves and Men. Less known is his collection of sixty-eight tales of Old Man Coyote, the Trickster, carefully gathered from forty-two Native American tribes. One might understandably take issue with reading a white man’s version of Native American stories, but give Barry a chance to explain himself in the introduction to the book. Of course, nothing can replace the great oral tradition of Native American storytelling, but short of the real thing, this collection will help you understand the wit and wisdom of the Trickster character.