Heel Turn – Non-Fiction Books

You know what. After reflecting on 10 years here writing about all of the fantasy and science fiction we have, I think it’s time to pivot. We know as much as we can about farm boys, space cowboys, elegant yet evil temptresses, biologically tailored pathogens and all the various ways one can speedrun the kessel run. We’re done with all that nonsense. It’s time to really dig in where our hearts lay and that’s in the wide world of non-fiction. 

Braiding Sweetgrass – By Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Have you ever stepped outside and touched grass? No? Neither have I, but I’ve certainly read about it. It seems like an interesting concept. Grass. Even sweetgrass. I wonder if I can put it in as a sweetener to all of my tasty beverages. No? Well, even if that’s not what Braiding Sweetgrass is about, you should still read it. Kimmerer blends two aspects of her life, her citizenship within Potawatomi Nation and being professor of botany. She explores the stories and practices passed down through the Potawatomi Nation and examines them through a scientific lens to “test” the practices. Her writing is wonderful and flows from chapter to chapter. She has a knack for making the scientific aspects approachable so you don’t get lost in the data. It’s a book that has stood out in my mind as one of my favorite non-fictions and it rarely gets challenged. 

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

I’m sure many of our readers have fantasized about dosing on some wicked drugs in another world. I mean I’m just learning about merryweed in Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings, and I can’t wait to climb those mountains. Some of you may have even dabbled in the various offerings within our own world (no judgement, from here anyway). But if you’re more curious about fungi than its ability to kill your ego in front of you, Entangled Life is the kind of book that will take you down a different rabbit hole. Sheldrake details the history of the study of fungi, and why they are just so damn weird to us. How hard are they to truly categorize and why are we only really figuring out the wonderful ways they connect everything? Sheldrake’s writing expresses a huge amount of curiosity and dives into the many different ways fungi are incorporated into the natural and social worlds. And while he does tend to get into the nitty gritty, the science here is very approachable, egging on your curiosity as a reader. 

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong 

Have you ever tried killing your ego without the use of illicit substances? Then pick this book up and experience the horrifying world that is your body. What do you think that you were some immutable personality that only changes once you decide you want to develop your character? Enter the billions upon billions of cells that make up your entire body, and make friends with the e. Coli in your digestive tract. Yong’s dive into just what the hell the human body would be without all these little single celled critters is an eye opening experience into what it means to be human. He does a great job of outlining the science, building a narrative and tempering expectations when it comes to miracle cures. Also, you will learn a lot more than you ever thought you would about fecal transplants. 

Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner

Sometimes on hikes I look at a stream and think, “dam, that’s interesting. I wonder what it would be like to not see that stream running so smoothly. Lo and behold Marc Resiner wrote a whole dam book about that very question in 1986. Featured heavily in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife, Cadillac Desert is a chronicle of trying to water the American West. From the first covered wagons, to the cadillac’s that prowl the melting asphalt of Phoenix, AZ, Reisner takes the reader on a historical journey through America’s dam building craze as engineers tried to tame the mighty rivers for the benefit of rich land owners, and the growing utilities as we electrified everything. It’s a fascinating dive into what geography of water in the US used to be, what it became, and where it might lead (it’s not good folks). 

Tacky’s Revolt by Vincent Brown

Like many folks my education on the trans-atlantic slave trade was pretty sparse. We stole some folks from Africa, put them on a boat, and tortured and worked them to death until the civil war (and honestly, a lot of that still happened afterward). But rarely was there ever any discussion about slave revolts, and the various rebellions that occurred in America and the Caribbean. Hell, I didn’t learn about Nat Turner until a movie came out about him, and I went to a well recognized public school. In comes Brown with a story for the ages about the various groups of maroons that ran away from their masters and conducted guerrilla warfare in the Caribbean islands. His writing is addicting as he not only tells the story of the revolts themselves, but details his research as well. It was fascinating to see how he tried to trace legendary figures based on various documents and stories passed down through the ages to see where things lined up. Definitely pick this one up if you want to see how people broke away from slavery and fought against it decades before the civil war was seen peeking over the horizon. 

Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik

Would you describe yourself as the target audience of the incredibly riveting TV show How It’s Made? If so, I am excited to introduce to you a new and up-and-coming tool to learn about how things are made called a book. Stuff Matters is a collection of microhistories about 10 different everyday objects and materials that surround us constantly. It is written by a material scientist, and it is both approachable and surprisingly entertaining. The book manages to be low key, low-stakes, and engrossing all at the same time. The rundown on how chocolate and concrete are made, in particular, was something I really enjoyed. I know that a lot of the things on this list are histories about very serious subjects and this can be a real breath of fresh air if the heaviness of historical crimes is getting to you.

The Hungry Empire: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World by Lizzie Collingham

A really fun fact about me, Andrew, is that I have the distinct disadvantage of being originally from a culture with a long history of pillaging the world for its culture and spices: England. During my time in the motherland, I have always been curious how a people could loot all of the world for spices and develop some of the most famously bland food in the known world. As such, I recently set out on a quest to read a number of histories about the spice trade and the evolution of culinary practices in England. The best of the books I read on this quest was The Hungry Empire by Lizzie Collingham. Some of the subjects can start to feel disorganized at points, but I think it does a really good job laying out how the continual introduction of new foodstuffs to England changed the ecosystem. It also did the best job of explaining why England still has such bland food. Hint: The answer has to do with the fact that rich people are terrible.

The Will to Change by bell hooks

There has been an increasing clamor recently by a number of terrible far-right grifters trying to whine about the plight of men and talk about how we need to do things to fix the mental stress on the male psyche. But forward-thinking feminists like bell hooks have been talking about how the patriarchy is a cancer that has been destroying men for decades, and none of these idiots have been listening. The Will to Change is about the inherent need of men to express emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It is a close examination of how toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply. This is one of the best books that pulls apart how the patriarchy damages all of us, and it goes into some pretty clear calls to action to try and fix things. While I generally think a lot of the advice and observations feel timeless, there are a few stray pieces (particularly those about the role of religion) that do feel a little bit dated. Yet, this book still remains one of the best things I have read as a man to understand how patriarchy and society shape my gender.

Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West by Aidan Moher

Although this is a book review website with numerous well-read reviewers, all of our staff are also very big gamers as well. We have a weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign that I (Andrew) run, and we also all enjoy video games as well. When I was a child, I found myself deeply drawn to fantasy, but I wasn’t a huge reader. Instead, where I initially got my fix was in the early RPGs that were coming out of both America and Japan. As I aged, I slowly started using books as my primary window to accessing the world of fantasy, but I have never lost my love of video game RPGs, particularly those from the era when I grew up. Fight, Magic, Items was a gift from one of the other reviewers, and as outlined by its enormous subtitle, it is a history of Japanese RPGs–in particular, how they were brought from Japan to America. The book does an unsurprisingly great job walking through the fascinating history of some of these early JRPGs, but what was equally interesting was the logistical and bureaucratic nightmare these gaming companies faced when moving a new genre of game from one country to another. The book is filled with interesting business roadblocks and solutions that feel very different from how games are made today. The result is a history of a lot of strange and influential events that are still leaving their marks on the gaming industry today in curious roundabout ways.

The World According to Color: A Cultural History by James Fox

While we all know that Brandon Sanderson invented the concepts of colors in his incredible book Warbreaker, did you know you can actually experience colors in the real world as well? The World According to Color is a fascinating little microhistory that contains seven chapters, each devoted to diving into the historical and cultural significance of different colors. White, Black, and five out of the six primary and secondary colors (orange gets shafted). Although I think the book is extremely meandering and not comprehensive, it is also filled with a number of extremely cool facts, observations, and histories of the different colors. Each chapter has multiple really interesting anecdotes that are fun to share at cocktail parties, and the book as a whole does help the reader take a step back and have a higher appreciation for color in the abstract and how colors subtly influence our lives.