Booklist

Every good eco-heroine has a sturdy canvas bookbag that she likes to keep filled. But what to read? This list is short, because I’m picky, but here is a start on some life-changing titles:

Books I’ve Read: 
Raising Less Corn, More Hell by George Pyle. Points out the follies of current U.S. agricultural practices. It will change your mind about the way food is raised.

Last Standing Woman by Winona LaDuke. A transformative tale of Native American struggles throughout white settlement, up until the present day. Follows the lives of the Anishinaabe (also called Ojibwe) people of Minnesota. A life-changing, prejudice-challenging book about keeping the land you belong to.

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke. A sort of elaboration on the film Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, only earlier, having been published in 1999. An in-depth look at institutional racism, cultural destruction, and exploitation of native peoples in North America in terms of environmental degredation and destruction. A really interesting and thought-provoking read.

Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming by Winona LaDuke. LaDuke’s update of sorts of All Our Relations, both of which outline environmental issues in Native communities. This one, however, relates the environment and sense of place to spirituality.

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon, B.C. couple and founders of the Hundred Mile Diet. Really good, reads more like fiction than non-fiction, but still informative.

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendel Berry. I don’t remember much about it, as I read it a while ago, but it was good.

Currently Reading:
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan (my new hero). All about reevaluating how we view both food and “food-like substances.”

The Warmest Room in th House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home by Steven Gdula. Really interesting read on the evolutions of kitchens, food, and food preparation and preservation from 1900 to 2000.

Books I Want to Read:
Germs, Guns, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (started reading it, but I’m mostly too busy to get into rather dry histories with tiny print)

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It by Al Gore

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (Okay, technically I’ve read most of this one, but never finished it)

Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture by Sir Howard Alberg

Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It by Michael Ableman

The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life by Angelo M. Pellegrini

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver