Books That Have Touched Me Most

Last week, a friend asked me for a list of the books that have most impacted my life. As that seemed a compelling request, I am happy to share my response. As you'll see, I am an eclectic reader, and part of the fun is not knowing at the outset when a book will strike.a deep chord, or in what ways. It's such a joy to be surprised (which, I reckon, is why I'm still checking books out of the library, even as death draws near).

In no particular order:

Terror by Dan Simmons

This is a retelling of the tragedy of the Franklin Expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in 1945, as told from the perspective of Captain Crozier, second in command. Everyone perished and it chronicles the slow deaths of the crew as ice holds the ships fast (The Erebus and The Terror) and there is no escape in the frozen arctic. It’s both a story about the hubris of the British Admiralty and a powerful introduction to the very different worlds of the Inuit who were all around the British and whose offers to help the starving sailors was consistently spurned (what, after all, could heathens teach the British—sound familiar?) It powerfully introduces the reader into the alternate reality of animism and the culture of a people who had made peace with the cold.

How It Is by Viola Cordova

This book is a posthumously published work based on the collected writings of Viola Cordova, a Jicarilla Apache who had a foot in two cultures—both as a traditional indigenous woman and as a tenured university professor of philosophy who specialized in cosmology. Without being preachy or judgmental, she explains the broad differences between Indigenous origin stories and those of the dominating European settlers, illuminating how hard it was to understand each others’ perspective (It’s evocative of Ruth Benedict's classic anthropology study, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which attempts to explain the profound cultural differences between Western Europe and that of Japan in the context of World War II). I was especially touched by this book because it help me understand and articulate how I related so viscerally to a sense of place after living at Sandhill for four decades. It turned out I was very drawn to a Native American spiritual view of place and right relationship to the Earth, even though I've—to my knowledge—no indigenous blood or training. It was (and is) a profound insight for me.

The Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley

I have always read a fair amount of science fiction/fantasy, and this retelling of the Arthurian legend from the pagan perspective was eye-opening for me, helping me understand how the winners author the histories (thereby controlling the narrative, and belittling the world of magic and Earth-based ritual). And throughout it all, it’s a cracking good love story. The initial sexual union of the young Arthur and Morgan le Fey is among the most erotic passages I've ever read.

Magister Ludi by Hermann Hesse

This my favorite Hesse book, telling the story of Joseph Knecht, who ascends to the pinnacle of excellence as a practitioner of the Glass Bead Game (the German title of this classic is Das Glasperlenspiel), an imaginary sport that involves the delicate and careful placement of glass beads on a board (a la Go, but different). Knecht rises from mundane roots to achieve his mastery and the story hinges on how little such notoriety is worth in the overall scheme of things once you have it. Right at the top of his game he resigns his position as master in favor of tutoring a difficult teen, with tragic results. For me this story illuminates questions about what truly has value in life, as well as uncertainties inherent in life's choices.

A Story Like the Wind and A Far-off Place by Laurens van der Post

This pair of fictional books by a Dutch author chronicles the adventures of two late teens who miraculously survive the violent overthrow of the boy's Boer family farm by Chinese insurrectionists, until they safely make their way to the southwest coast of Africa (across the Kalahari Desert) and find British relief. It’s a gripping story of courage, self-reliance, justice, and multicultural complexity.

People of the Deer by Farley Mowat

I read most of Mowat's works in my 20s, as I was obsessed with stories of the Canadian north. In this work of fictional anthropology, Mowat carefully describes the decline and ultimate collapse of a small Inuit tribal unit who had survived for centuries in symbiotic relationship with the herds of reindeer in the arctic north. These people lived inland and followed the deer as they migrated across Canada’s tundra. While fish were also part of their diet, they had created a stable subsistence life based mainly around deer protein and their deep knowledge of where the deer would be at a given time. On the one hand, contact with fur traders led to the introduction of guns, which enhanced the efficiency of their hunts, it also upset the balance of their delicate ecology, and Mowat gives readers a glimpse of the demise of these inland tribes.

On the one hand, this book gave me insights into how humans could adapt and even thrive in what most would consider a hostile environment. On the other, it opened my eyes to the possibility of viable culture based on cooperation (rather than competition) and the power of living with the land, rather than trying to subdue it (themes that were reinforced in both Dune, and The Chalice and the Blade).

The Entitled by Frank Deford

This is a work of fiction by one of America’s best sportswriter’s of the late 20th Century. It tells the story of a baseball lifer who gets an unexpected chance late in life to manage at the major league level and is determined to make the most of it. Among other things, this means doing his best to work sensitively with the culture and ego of his star player, a Latino slugger. The ride is bumpy but the manager's honesty and hard work pay off. He earns his players’ trust and the team has an excellent season, with prospects to make the playoffs. Then scandal erupts when the star player is accused of sexually assaulting a white woman who has a credible story and all hell breaks loose. Now what?

It happens that the manager's daughter is a lawyer and she decides to investigate, rather than see her father’s dream go up in smoke without a look. She ultimately saves the day (without dad knowing what she’s up to) and is able to prove that the woman made up the story and the ballplayer has been falsely accused. In addition to the drama of the story itself (Deford is an spellbinding raconteur) the author succeeds in illuminating the multicultural nuances of contemporary sports, and how baseball managing involves intuition, not just a reliance on percentages.

From Good to Great by Jim Collins

This work of nonfiction was written by a business professor at the University of Colorado, who gathered together a team of graduate students to investigate an anomaly: in poring over the stock history of thousands of publicly traded companies (which meant their financial records were in the public record), he found 11 companies that had a number of years of average performance, followed by a sudden surge of performance that was at least 3x better than the Dow Jones average and which they were able to sustain for 15+ years. His research question was: what happened to explain that?

His team was able to identify a handful of common themes about the corporate culture of those 11 companies that I found both inspirational and illuminating as the executive manager of the non-profit Fellowship for Intentional Community (1987-2015), and I have unhesitatingly recommended this title to anyone interested in establishing sound foundational management principles.

The Spirit of Intimacy by Sobonfu Somé

I stumbled onto this nonfiction gem more than 20 years ago, while staying in a client’s basement and perusing the bookshelf before going to bed. It’s a straightforward description of traditional West African village life and how the individual relates to the whole. It was, as you might suspect, a relative easy matter for me to substitute "intentional community" for “village” and see how well Somé’s wisdom was just as viable. This was both an affirmation that intentional community was onto something powerful, and also somewhat humbling in that what I had heretofore thought was groundbreaking and revolutionary was little more than rediscovering ancient wisdom that was largely lost in the impersonality of modern living.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

This book is a very unique and challenging treatment of the complex interplay of three people interacting mainly in isolation on the South Island of New Zealand: a white woman artist, a Maori man, and his mute son, who has been beaten and abused by the man, though it takes a while for that to become clear. The woman painstakingly builds a relationship with the boy and tires to understand the cycle of violence and how to shift it rather than just condemn and interrupt it. It’s an agonizing, yet eye-opening read, opening doors you may not have known existed.

Dune by Frank Herbert

This, of course, is a well-known, classic science fiction work, with a number of sequels. I can think of no more powerful introduction into a possible future resulting from ineffective responses to climate change. While fiction, it paints a highly imaginative future that includes interplanetary travel and high intrigue (some things never change), with various groups vying for world dominance. There are both good and evil in abundance, as well as the universal challenge to wield power constructively. In particular, this book explores life on a planet where water—one of life’s absolute necessities—is extremely short and therefore all the more precious. What might that be like? Dune gave me a first peek behind that curtain.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

This is a complex, tightly woven piece of historical fiction rooted in the Middle Ages, pivoting off the key role libraries and monasteries played in preserving much of the precious knowledge about the world that had been collected up until the fall of Rome and was precariously being maintained for the future (when the sun would come out again in the Renaissance). It is also a mystery, full of codes, intrigues, and secret passages. While you need to pay close attention to not lose your way—just like the characters—it was well worth the journey

Sitting in the Fire by Arnie Mindell

A friend recommended this book to me early in my career as a group process consultant and it opened up to me an understanding about how to work constructively with non-rational input (which abounds at every meeting if you’re paying attention), as well as the concepts of rank and privilege, which are in play constantly (the key here being attaining consciousness of what’s going on, not trying to eliminate rank and privilege as factors). I took three steps forward in my work as a cooperative group consultant after reading this book.

The Chalice and The Blade by Riane Eisler

As someone already committed to cooperative living and intentional community, it was a breath of fresh air to read Eisler's work of comparative anthropology, making the case that while competitive cultures have dominated the modern scene there have been a number of examples of successful cultures rooted in cooperation over the ages, affirming my deep suspicion that humans are not inherently competitive—they are conditioned that way. And what can be learned can be unlearned.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I came across this beauty only recently. Kimmerer writes from two perspectives (a la Cordova in How It Is): both as a Native American who is deeply familiar with native plants from her upbringing, and as a credentialed university botanist. Throughout the book she patiently explains how Native Americans view certain plants and contrasts that with how those same plants are valued (or not) by contemporary society—mainly for their commercial potential, making it clear—without rubbing the reader’s nose in it—how short-sighted it is to reduce a plant's worth to its commercial value, and how much there still remains to learn from the amazing symbiotic and complex relationships in the plant kingdom.

Elderhood by Louise Aronson

I picked up this book three years ago at a church garage sale, and it's the best single book I know that demystifies what it’s like to be a senior—in contrast to simply an older adult— and what it could be like, if we turned our attention to the possibilities. Aronson is a gerontologist—a doctor who specializes in aging and how people change as they age. In addition to plenty of statistics about the reality of aging, Elderhood explains how being a senior is a different phase of life than being an older adult and is best thought of in that light. Considerable emphasis is placed on having conversations about one’s fears and hopes with others who are in same phase of life, and then broadening those conversations to include younger folks who mean well but don’t yet have a feel for what you’re going through. Very inspirational.

Covered with Night by Nicole Eustace

I bought this book on whim at our local Indie bookstore, while shopping for a Xmas present for Susan two years ago, and was riveted by the impact of its main premise: that the Haudenosaunee Confederacy purposefully shifted their frame of reference when they reflected on the futility of war and violence to settle disputes. After who know how long they engaged in war with neighboring tribes, instead they shifted to an orientation of right relationship in the world. Thus, when someone committed an act of violence—even murder—they saw the perpetrators as out of alignment with the world and were mainly focused on retuning them to right relationship, rather on retribution or punishment. 

By carefully reading Quaker diaries of the time, the author unpacks a specific instance of an actual murder of a native fur trapper by a pair of traders that occurred around 1730, west of Philadelphia, explaining how difficult it was for whites and the Iroquois Confederacy to understand each other because they had such different goals in mind and it never occurred to the whites that the “more primitive” Native Americans could hold a perspective worth taking into account.

Hearing of a culture purposefully switching away from war to solve disputes was incredibly heartening to me. If it happened once, it could happen again, couldn’t it?