Recommended Reading

Reading is a wonderful way to learn about any number of things. I honestly believe that books can change the way humans see and live in the world. The books listed below are books I've personally read (most of which I also own) and highly recommend to anyone interested in foraging, ethnobotany, anthropology, botany, mycology, and natural & environmental history. You may notice some recommendations come with a strong bias to the southeast and more specifically Kentucky because this is my home and our history is rich with stories, adventure, beauty, and hardship. All of these books are clickable to affiliate links, which will provide me with a small compensation from your purchase (at no extra cost to you).

Foraging / Ethnobotany

Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, The Forager’s Harvest, Nature’s Garden, and Incredible Wild Edibles by Samuel Thayer

Foraging Kentucky: An Introduction to the Edible Plants, Fungi and Tree Crops of the Southeast by George Barnett

Edible Wild Plants Vol.1 and Vol.2 by John Kallas

Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie by Kelly Kindscher

Ancestral Plants, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, by Arthur Haines

Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel E. Moerman

Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson

Medicine of the Cherokee by J. T. Garrett and Michael Garrett

Iwígara: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science by Enrique Salmon



Regional Plants (Southeast)

Trees and Shrubs of Kentucky and Bluegrass Land and Life by Mary E. Wharton and Roger W. Barbour

Native Trees of the Southeast: An Identification Guide by L. Katherine Kirkman, Claud L. Brown, and Donald J. Leopold

Vascular Plants of Kentucky by Edward T. Browne Jr. and Raymond Athey

Wildflowers and Ferns of Kentucky by Thomas G. Barnes and S. Wilson Francis

Wildflowers and Ferns of Red River Gorge and the Greater Red River Basin by Dan and Judy Dourson

Identifying Trees of the East by Michael D. Williams

Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley and the Southern Appalachians by Dennis Horn, Tavia Cathcart, Thomas E. Hemmerly, and David Duhl

Wildflowers & Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains & Piedmont by Timothy P. Spira

Forest Plants of the Southeast and Their Wildlife Uses by James H. Miller and Karl V. Miller


Agroforestry / Permaculture

Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture by J. Russell Smith

Trees of Power by Akiva Silver

The Mayan Forest Garden by Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh

Farming the Woods by Ken Mudge and Steve Gabriel

The Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk

Living the Good Life, The Maple Sugar Book by Helen and Scott Nearing

Indigenous Landscapes: Native Plant Agriculture, vol. 1, by Solomon Gamboa and Austin Miller

The Regenerative Landscaper by Erik Ohlsen


Regional Mushrooms (Southeast)

Appalachian Mushrooms by Walter E. Sturgeon

Mushrooms of the Southeast by Todd F. Elliott and Steven L. Stephenson

100 Edible Mushrooms and Morels by Michael Kuo

A Field Guide To Mushrooms of the Carolinas by Alan E. Bessette, Arleen R. Bessette, & Michael W. Hopping


Wild Food Cookbooks

Mushroom Wanderland by Jess Starwood

The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Baudar

The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora by Alan Bergo


Nature Guides

Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians by Karl B McKnight, Joseph R. Rohrer, Kirsten McKnight Ward, and Warren J. Perdrizet

Reading the Forested Landscape, Forest Forensics, and The Myth of Progress by Tom Wessels


Nature Inspired 

Self-Reliance and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Journals, Walden, Wild Fruits, Faith in a Seed by Henry David Thoreau

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Down the River and Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

The Art of Loading Brush, The Unsettling of America, The Gift of Good Land, What I Stand On (box set of essays), This Day (sabbath poems), What Are People For?, and The Unforeseen Wilderness by Wendell Berry

The Practice of The Wild, Mountains and Rivers Without End, The Backcountry, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, Distant Neighbors: The Selected Letters of Wendell Berry & Gary Snyder, Myths & Texts, and This Present Moment by Gary Snyder

Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown, A History of Canada in Ten Maps, and Beyond The Trees by Adam Shoalts


Kentucky History

Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan

The Hunters of Kentucky by Ted Franklin Belue

The Kentucky by Thomas D. Clark

Water in Kentucky: Natural History, Communities, and Conservation edited by Brian D. Lee, Daniel I. Carey and Alice L. Jones

Elkhorn: Evolution of a Kentucky Landscape 
by Richard Taylor

Kentucky Illustrated: The First Hundred Years by Martin F. Schmidt


Appalachian & eastern North American History

The Wilderness Road by Robert Lee Kincaid

The Frontiersmen: A Narrative by Allan W. Eckert
 
Ginseng Diggers: A history of Root and Herb gathering in Appalachia 
by Luke Manget

Endangered and Disappearing Birds of Appalachia and the Southeast by Matt Williams



Natural & Environmental History / Science


Coyote America, American Serengeti, and Wild New World by Dan Flores

Eager and Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere by Paulette F. C. Steeves

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann


Additional Titles I Recommend

Endurance by Alfred Lansing