Book List

Whenever  I travel, especially when I'm going to new places or learning about new cultures, I will put together a reading list. My lists are usually a mixture of fiction and nonfiction about a wide-range of topics related to the region OR a very focused collection of texts about a single issue. For this trip I have three books to read.

1. "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher" by Timothy Egan. This book is both regional and topical. A biography of the Seattle-based photographer, Edward Curtis, this book details the struggles of an artist and amateur ethnologist attempting to photograph Native life before it disappeared. Egan's wonderful descriptions of the photographs add depth to an already captivating story about the lengths one man was willing to go for art and culture.

2. "1491" by Charles Mann. As the title suggests, Mann takes on Native American history pre-Columbus. Mann counters traditional academic paradigms that depict indigenous cultures as unchanging without any real impact on their environment or a history of their own.

3. "Fools Crow" by James Welch. Set in Montana in the 1870s, this novel tells of White Man's Dog (later known as Fools Crow), a young Blackfoot Indian on the verge of manhood, and his tribe, the Lone Eaters. The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate.

I am notorious for buying more books on my travels so I'll keep you posted if new texts are added to the list.