100 books like The Place of Stone

As part of my “fifty sites project” for another book, I visited the best-known Native American earthwork sites in the American Midwest including: precisely crafted conical burial mounds; enormous, flat-topped “platform mounds;” embanked enclosures; and remarkable effigies in the shapes of birds, bears, and snakes. I was awed by their beauty and sophistication, but, sadly, settlers did not always view them as the work of Native People. Prolific author Jason Colavito conducts a deep dive into the racist roots of the myth of a “lost race” of ancient inhabitants of America who were claimed by some to have built those earthworks. Colavito brilliantly deconstructs the myth of a lost race of mound builders and gives due credit to the true authors of those earthworks, America’s Native People.

Peeling back the stratigraphic layers of archaeology’s history, self-described “weirdshitologist,” archaeologist Jeb Card, reveals the discipline’s very “spooky” foundations in this riveting book. These foundations included a belief in a mythic time that preceded our modern world which has left behind its spoor in the form of eerie and phantasmagorical archaeological sites imbued with evil spirits, elves, pixies, djinn, elementals, and other paranormal entities. Card discusses haunted landscapes, bloodthirsty Druids, cursed mummies, and Lovecraftian “Old Ones” in his romp through all that is weird, strange, and, indeed, spooky in archaeology. Finally, Card shows that archaeology as presented on cable TV, YouTube videos, blogs, and social media is still haunted by the specter of Victorian Age beliefs about humanity’s presumably spooky past.

I was only 9 or 10 years old when I first saw the Cardiff Giant at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I was enthralled by the recumbent ten-foot tall stone man and his story continues to fascinate me. Though it pales in comparison to the famous Piltdown Man fraud in terms of its longevity and archaeological significance, as Scott Tribble shows in his informative and entertaining book, the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869 was much funnier. Deemed by some to be the remains of a biblical giant, thousands of dollars were made from its exhibition until a cigar manufacturer in Binghamton, New York admitted to crafting it. P.T. Barnum tried to buy it. Mark Twain penned a short story about it. And Scott Tribble wrote this marvelous book about it.

Whenever I encounter people who interrogate me concerning my archaeological skepticism that the “Lost Continent of Atlantis,” as described by Greek philosopher Plato in about 360 BC, was a real place or even one loosely based on an actual historical event, I invariably direct them to Paul Jordan’s thorough and definitive book. “But didn’t Plato say that Atlantis was real?” they ask. Nope. “But don’t ancient civilizations share so much in common they must have derived their cultures from a single source, Atlantis?” Nope. “But didn’t Plato base his discussion of Atlantis on the catastrophic destruction of the Minoan civilization?” Nope. Why all my “nopes?” Read Jordan’s authoritative book to find out. He is a terrific researcher and a damn good writer.

You cannot judge a book by its cover, especially this one.

I know it looks like a coffee table book—and it is a gorgeous book full of incredible photos of the cave painting sites and much more, all by the author—but it is so much more than that.

First off, it is an adventure story, and it quickly becomes a story of exploration and discovery. I found myself as gripped by it as by the plot of any mystery tale, and I am so grateful that the author taught me about, and inspired me to learn even more about, Baja’s amazing and mysterious cave paintings.

This book was truly an inspiration to me.

There are many books on prehistoric cave paintings, but this one is an acknowledged masterpiece. For decades, the power, beauty, and intense enigma of the European cave paintings in particular have fascinated me, not least because they allow us a window into the most critical of periods of our evolution when we were anatomically and psychologically modern, yet when our cultural and social forms were newborn. I strongly believe that to complete a description of the human condition we have to get to grips with cave paintings and other forms of prehistoric art. This book presents a powerful and brilliantly argued theory of shamanism, the use of metaphor, and of burgeoning human creativity. A truly inspiring work.

Not all indigenous languages have a corresponding alphabet or writing system. For example, many North American indigenous languages are now represented in a Romanized alphabet, but traditionally these languages were spoken and the stories they contained were transmitted by oral tradition.

In the case of my Taino ancestors, stories were also told with pictographs or petroglyphs. I conclude my list of indigenous futurist books with stories that are told graphically, in the form of Moonshot, a collection of comics edited, written, and illustrated by indigenous storytellers and artists.

Edited by Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe & Métis) and Michael Sheyahshe (Oklahoma Caddo Nation), the imagery is striking, conjuring colorful mythoscapes and slipstream futures with indigenous people at the forefront, redefining science and technology along the way. One story features a protagonist in a wheelchair, raising questions about ableism in SF and the possibility for “Crip” Futures and Indigenous Futurism to be… show more.

This is based on an actual captive woman in the early Colonial years. Since the topic was the subject of my thesis (Captive Or Captivated) I was enthralled in the way that the author brought the true story to life as fiction. Great historical accuracy and detail as well as a story sure to be remembered for a very long time.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history, Philbrick’s book tells the extraordinary story of the first fifty-five years of the Plimoth Colony, beginning with the arduous and perilous journey of the little wooden ship Mayflower and ending in the bloody King Philip’s War, which nearly wiped out the New England colonists and the native populations as well. Philbrick's writing style is compelling and never boring. This book is full of factual information and makes an old story new.

Historian Daniel Silverman tells the story of the Pilgrims amid recounting the experience of the Massasoit's Wampanoags who signed a defense treaty with Plymouth Governor John Carver that endured throughout the great chief's lifetime, about 40 more years. For me, one of the more telling vignettes in his account is that of the young Indian child forced to sing “This Land is Your Land” at a school Thanksgiving celebration on land that once had belonged to his people. His subtitle, "The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled Story of Thanksgiving" is appropriate to the history he relates, if not an understatement. Silverman's book provides a compassionate view of the complex path the Native Americans had to navigate with the Europeans who were pushing them out of the land they had inhabited for more than 12,000 years.