100 books like All the Wild That Remains

Every discussion about the evolution of writing in ‘the West’ has to start with Willa Cather, who was the first writer from the west to be awarded a major literary award when she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, which isn’t even one of her five best novels. Cather wrote openly about alcoholism, domestic violence, and other painful topics, transforming western writing from cardboard cutout characters to real people. My Ántonia has become an American classic, not just in western literature but in all literature. My Ántonia is told from the point of view of a young farm boy who falls in love with the enchanting Ántonia, and it’s beautifully written, taking us into the emotional heart of youth and idealism in the West.

When I read the opening sentences of A Life on the Road by Charles Kuralt, the character of Win Avery in my own book was born in my imagination. Kuralt wrote: “There is no contentment on the road, and little enough fulfillment. I know that now. I am acquainted with people who live settled lives and find deep gratification in family and home. I know what I have missed...the generations together at the table, the pleasures of kinship, the rituals of the hearth. And still I wander, seeking compensation in unforeseen encounters and unexpected sights…No train leaves the station that I do not want to catch.” His words are as sad as they are thrilling and they move me every time I read them.

Duncan follows the route Lewis and Clark took as they headed up the Missouri River. He embarks on the trip several generations later and drives a camper, so he experiences a very different landscape from the early explorers. It doesn’t matter; while the book itself is thirty-five years old, his blend of history, traveler’s and camping advice, and personal encounters make this memoir insightful, funny, and poignant even now. For anyone who would prefer to take a road trip from the comfort of their favorite reading chair, this is a satisfying read.

A bookseller once said to me, “There are your heroes, and there are your heroes’ heroes.” Walt Whitman is both.

He is the OG. I love the man so much that the first tattoo I ever got was a line from one of his poems. Whitman can write a poem whose premise is basically “What’s the deal with grass?” and make you weep. He can write a 50-page poem that I actually want to read and that, my friends, is a magic trick.

If you love travel and nature and being alive you can read my new book or you can just read the Whitman poem “Song of the Open Road.” I need to move on to the next rec before I convince myself to get another Walt Whitman tattoo.

I loved this book because it takes you inside the exclusive world of the ultra-wealthy within the United States and shows how the richest are exploiting the natural environment in Teton County, Wyoming, to solve personal existential crises.

The author managed to get incredible access to prominent tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, and other ultra-high-net-worth individuals who have moved to a place where they can profit from their environmental philanthropy while also contributing to ever-widening economic inequality by privatizing public goods. I thought this book provided a fair yet fascinating insight into the contradictions of philanthropy, which allow the rich to donate in ways that absolve themselves from the guilt of the inequality that they contribute to. 

For decades, Jack Loeffler and Ed Abbey were best friends. Nearly fifteen years after Abbey’s death, Loeffler wrote about their friendship and their time exploring the Desert Southwest in this beautiful biographical memoir.

Loeffler takes us on some of the countless backpacking trips the two men went on while also revealing the many complexities of Abbey. This beautiful book lets us lean in and listen to Loeffler and Abbey talking about anarchism and environmentalism around so many campfires. I had the pleasure of interviewing Loeffler, and this book sounds so authentic to him.

It is smart, passionate, and kind, just like Loeffler is. 

Guthie’s autobiography describes the wild, western United States from his perspective as a 64-year-old westerner. Born in 1901, Guthrie provides a compelling account of the rugged beauty of the West. Guthrie’s writing is lucid and compelling. I had read most of his books by the time I turned 30.

A thrilling if bumpy ride through 1846, as DeVoto tracks multiple stories of Americans who headed west at the start of the great migration. Like Webb’s Great Plains, this book — published in 1942 — is a little dated in places, but DeVoto’s vivid descriptions and strong opinions make it highly enjoyable. The general subject is the “period when the manifold possibilities of chance were shaped to converge into the inevitable,” writes DeVoto. More plainly, the book is about "some people who went west in 1846." Many of them died on the way. Some found fortune. Altogether, they left behind extraordinary history.

I had never heard of Rinker Buck—nor of C-Span Book TV, for that matter—when one day, flipping through channels, I landed on him giving a talk about his then-new book, The Oregon Trail. I was smitten. As soon as his talk ended, I rushed to my local library to check out a copy.

Part travelogue, part memoir, part history lesson, The Oregon Trail had me mesmerized from the first page. “Exceptional” is not too strong a word to describe Buck’s skill as a writer and his extraordinary 2000-mile journey in a real covered wagon pulled by mules, tracing the pioneers’ arduous trek.

His insights, humor, and a personality that “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” provide a true understanding of the difficulty such a journey posed 150 years ago.

Posthumously published in 1970 by the University of Illinois Press, this is a must-have for anyone interested in the early years of the western migration. Unruh — who died young shortly after completing the manuscript —performs the essential task of assembling credible data about emigrants and Native Americans, and — most importantly — about their encounters with each other. Popular myths and Hollywood movies notwithstanding, Unruh makes clear that Native Americans seldom caused emigrants much harm. Indeed, emigrants of the 1840s were more likely to shoot themselves and each other by accident than require a gun for self-defense.