Books and shops for Oklahoma City
Prairies & Great Plains. The reading is chosen for this ecoregion — a mushroom guide to the wrong half of the continent is not a lesser guide, it is the wrong book. The shops are independently owned and near enough to drive to.
Foraging and wild food
Books for Oklahoma City
The independent option is listed first on purpose. It usually costs about the same and the margin stays with a bookshop.
Start here
Plants of the Western Boreal Forest and Aspen Parkland
Derek Johnson et al. · 1995
The same treatment for the boreal — including traditional uses recorded from the people who have them.
Start here
If you buy one book for this, buy this one.
The Forager's Harvest
Samuel Thayer · 2006
The one to own. Thayer eats what he writes about and says so plainly — each plant gets its season, its look-alikes and the mistakes people actually make, instead of a photograph and a hope.
The classics
Older, and still the reason people care about any of this.
Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Euell Gibbons · 1987
The book that started American foraging as a popular idea, in 1962. Read it for the voice and the appetite; check identifications against something modern.
Foundational
The books that answer the questions you have now.
Nature's Garden
Samuel Thayer · 2010
Thayer's second, covering the plants the first left out, with the same refusal to hedge.
All That the Rain Promises and More
David Arora · 1991
A pocket mushroom guide with a banjo player on the cover and better judgement than books ten times its size. Western-leaning, but the thinking travels.
Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake · 2020
Fungi as the thing that connects everything else. It will spoil you for any description of a forest that leaves them out.
Going deeper
For when the foundational ones stop being enough.
Incredible Wild Edibles
Samuel Thayer · 2017
Thirty-six more species, for when you have stopped asking what is edible and started asking what is worth the walk.
Mushrooms Demystified
David Arora · 1986
Nine hundred pages and the keys to go with them. Heavy, funny, and still the reference other mushroom books are measured against.
Mycelium Running
Paul Stamets · 2005
Cultivation, remediation and the case for fungi as infrastructure. Practical and evangelical in equal measure.
Gardening and soil
Books for Oklahoma City
The independent option is listed first on purpose. It usually costs about the same and the margin stays with a bookshop.
Start here
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible
Edward C. Smith · 2009
The plain, complete answer to "how do I grow this?", crop by crop, with the deep-bed method that makes a small plot behave like a large one.
The classics
Older, and still the reason people care about any of this.
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold · 1968
A year on a worn-out Wisconsin farm, and the essay that invented the land ethic. The book behind most of what this site believes.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson · 2002
1962, and the reason there is an environmental movement to be part of. Still a model of how to argue with evidence.
Foundational
The books that answer the questions you have now.
Four-Season Harvest
Eliot Coleman · 1999
Coleman grows vegetables in Maine in January without heat. This is how, and it works anywhere the ground freezes.
Teaming with Microbes
Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis · 2010
The soil food web explained for people with a shovel rather than a microscope. Changes what you do with a bag of fertiliser.
Gaia's Garden
Toby Hemenway · 2009
Home-scale permaculture without the jargon — a garden designed as a system that mostly runs itself.
Bringing Nature Home
Douglas W. Tallamy · 2009
Why native plants carry insect life that imported ones cannot, and what that means for a suburban yard. The argument is entomological, not sentimental.
Going deeper
For when the foundational ones stop being enough.
The New Organic Grower
Eliot Coleman · 1995
Written for the market grower, and the reason many of them exist. Worth reading even at one bed's scale, for the standards.
Teaming with Nutrients
Jeff Lowenfels · 2013
What actually crosses a root membrane, and why most of what is sold as plant food never does.
Botany for Gardeners
Brian Capon · 2010
The mechanism under every gardening instruction you have ever followed. Short, clear, and it makes the rest of the shelf make sense.
The Nature and Properties of Soils
Nyle C. Brady & Ray R. Weil · 2017
The soil science textbook. Expensive, and the only place some of these answers exist in full.
Nature's Best Hope
Douglas W. Tallamy · 2020
The argument that private gardens, added together, are the largest conservation opportunity left. Concrete about what to plant.
Fishing and water
Books for Oklahoma City
The independent option is listed first on purpose. It usually costs about the same and the margin stays with a bookshop.
Start here
The Curtis Creek Manifesto
Sheridan Anderson · 1978
Forty-eight hand-drawn pages that teach fly fishing better than most four-hundred-page books, and cost about as much as a sandwich.
The classics
Older, and still the reason people care about any of this.
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Norman Maclean · 1989
Not instruction. The reason people who do not fish understand why others do.
The Compleat Angler
Izaak Walton · 1997
1653, and still the friendliest book about fishing ever written. Half of it is about being outside with someone you like.
Foundational
The books that answer the questions you have now.
The Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide
Tom Rosenbauer · 2017
The complete modern reference, revised — knots, casting, reading water, and what to do when nothing is rising.
Trout Bum
John Gierach · 2006
Essays from a man who arranged a whole life around fishing. The best writing on why the difficult days count.
Going deeper
For when the foundational ones stop being enough.
Dynamic Nymphing
George Daniel · 2012
Where most fish actually are, and the European techniques for reaching them. This is the book that changes catch rates.
Selective Trout
Doug Swisher & Carl Richards · 2018
The 1971 book that made matching the hatch a discipline rather than a guess, back in print.
Rock, soil and deep time
Books for Oklahoma City
The independent option is listed first on purpose. It usually costs about the same and the margin stays with a bookshop.
Start here
Annals of the Former World
John McPhee · 2000
A Pulitzer for a book about roadcuts. McPhee drives across North America with geologists until the continent reads as a sequence of events rather than a shape.
Foundational
The books that answer the questions you have now.
Teaming with Microbes
Jeff Lowenfels & Wayne Lewis · 2010
The soil food web explained for people with a shovel rather than a microscope. Changes what you do with a bag of fertiliser.
Timefulness
Marcia Bjornerud · 2020
How thinking in geological time changes what you notice — and what you are willing to do about it.
Reading the Rocks
Marcia Bjornerud · 2005
The autobiography of the Earth, written so that a rock in your hand becomes a paragraph rather than a lump.
Going deeper
For when the foundational ones stop being enough.
The Nature and Properties of Soils
Nyle C. Brady & Ray R. Weil · 2017
The soil science textbook. Expensive, and the only place some of these answers exist in full.
The wider world
Books for Oklahoma City
The independent option is listed first on purpose. It usually costs about the same and the margin stays with a bookshop.
Start here
Plants of the Western Boreal Forest and Aspen Parkland
Derek Johnson et al. · 1995
The same treatment for the boreal — including traditional uses recorded from the people who have them.
Start here
If you buy one book for this, buy this one.
Braiding Sweetgrass
Robin Wall Kimmerer · 2013
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation on plants as teachers and reciprocity as a practice. The rare book that changes how you walk.
The classics
Older, and still the reason people care about any of this.
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold · 1968
A year on a worn-out Wisconsin farm, and the essay that invented the land ethic. The book behind most of what this site believes.
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Norman Maclean · 1989
Not instruction. The reason people who do not fish understand why others do.
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson · 2002
1962, and the reason there is an environmental movement to be part of. Still a model of how to argue with evidence.
Foundational
The books that answer the questions you have now.
Bringing Nature Home
Douglas W. Tallamy · 2009
Why native plants carry insect life that imported ones cannot, and what that means for a suburban yard. The argument is entomological, not sentimental.
Timefulness
Marcia Bjornerud · 2020
How thinking in geological time changes what you notice — and what you are willing to do about it.
Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake · 2020
Fungi as the thing that connects everything else. It will spoil you for any description of a forest that leaves them out.
The Hidden Life of Trees
Peter Wohlleben · 2016
A German forester on how trees communicate and share. Warmly anthropomorphic — enjoy it, then read the primary research it draws on.
The Sibley Guide to Birds
David Allen Sibley · 2014
The second edition, and the standard by which North American bird guides are judged.
Going deeper
For when the foundational ones stop being enough.
Mycelium Running
Paul Stamets · 2005
Cultivation, remediation and the case for fungi as infrastructure. Practical and evangelical in equal measure.
Nature's Best Hope
Douglas W. Tallamy · 2020
The argument that private gardens, added together, are the largest conservation opportunity left. Concrete about what to plant.