Robert Macfarlane's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Robert Macfarlane recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Robert Macfarlane's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us....
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, Cal Flyn, and 2 others.

Robert MacfarlaneThis book is a geo-philosophical meditation on the Cairngorm landscape in particular, but more generally on how mind and place interpenetrate, as Shepherd puts it. It’s a sensual and, well, erotic text. Shepherd talks about tasting the landscape, and describes walking barefoot, sleeping out. It’s the record of a long-term and full-body immersion in a place. (Source)

Cal FlynThis slim work of nature writing, an account of gentle and repeated interaction with those same mountains in all seasons, requires total immersion. (Source)

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2

Arctic Dreams

Barry Lopez's National Book Award-winning classic study of the Far North is widely considered his masterpiece.

Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. Its prose as hauntingly pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is nothing less than an...
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Robert MacfarlaneThis book changed my life and really made me become a writer, if any one book did. I remember finding a very battered secondhand copy of it in a bookshop in Vancouver while I was out climbing in the Rockies, in my early twenties. (Source)

Sara WheelerBarry Lopez is an American man and in Arctic Dreams he describes the clarity of the landscape that has such a profound effect on the human spirit. Everyone says it has a profound effect.He’s a proper nature writer and it’s a brilliant book. He wrote it 25 years ago, I think, and it’s very lyrical and uplifting………..It takes you outside your normal existence and sets you loose from your spiritual... (Source)

Kate Marvelthis book doesn’t directly address climate change. That’s one of the things I love about it. We so often hear about the Arctic in the context of threats: it’s disappearing, it’s changing, we’ll never see it again. I think it’s useful, though, to stop thinking of the Arctic only as a symbol of climate change and to remember it’s a real place. If we appreciate the Arctic for itself, maybe that... (Source)

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3

The Peregrine

From autumn to spring, J.A. Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk.

It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical...
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Robert MacfarlaneBaker turned his bulging set of ornithological field journals into a 120-page prose poem. It’s astonishingly energy-filled. (Source)

Jeremy MynottIt’s the story of this pursuit of the bird and how he came to feel a kind of affinity with it, and how he uses the bird as a symbol for the things he feels, or wants to feel, about the natural world. (Source)

William FiennesIt’s hard to imagine a greater contrast with U and I, although it was written by another Baker. My book The Snow Geese had a lot to do with birds and the non-human world around us, but I didn’t read this book until I’d finished. I wish I’d read it earlier than I did. The way he describes the world outside him, particularly birds, is so electric. It avoids all the traps of rhapsody and the sort of... (Source)

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4

Desert Solitaire

First published in 1968, Desert Solitaire is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.

Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, Hari Kunzru, and 2 others.

Robert MacfarlaneAbbey is full of passion, fury and contempt – a fiery fighter to shake up the sometimes over-tranquil atmosphere of nature writing. (Source)

Hari KunzruHe has a deep love for this place and he’s amusing to read because he’s such a strong personality. His writing is extraordinary. (Source)

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5
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

Publisher's Note: The 25th Anniversary Edition has been reset, causing the text to reflow. Page references...
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Jocko WillinkThe other book that I've read multiple times is Blood Meridian [by Cormac McCarthy]. (Source)

Esi EdugyanA difficult read that I savour for its wondrous prose and stark vision of humanity. (Source)

Robert MacfarlaneIt’s wild in the astonishing indifference of the desert landscape to human practice – McCarthy evokes this more purely than any other writer. (Source)

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6

An Archaeology of Natural Places

This volume explores why natural places such as caves, mountains, springs and rivers assumed a sacred character in European prehistory, and how the evidence for this can be analysed in the field. It shows how established research on votive deposits, rock art and production sites can contribute to a more imaginative approach to the prehistoric landscape, and can even shed light on the origins of monumental architecture. The discussion is illustrated through a wide range of European examples, and three extended case studies.
An Archaeology of Natural Places extends the range of landscape...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@OutdoorsPhoto @LizGrec Great to see you today, JM. Richard Bradley's The Archaeology of Natural Places is the book to seek out. Slender, brilliant & beloved of Alan Garner. (Source)

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7

The Hungry Tide

Off the easternmost corner of India, in the Bay of Bengal, lies the immense labyrinth of tiny islands known as the Sundarbans, where settlers live in fear of drowning tides and man-eating tigers. Piya Roy, a young American marine biologist of Indian descent, arrives in this lush, treacherous landscape in search of a rare species of river dolphin and enlists the aid of a local fisherman and a translator. Together the three of them launch into the elaborate backwaters, drawn unawares into the powerful political undercurrents of this isolated corner of the world that exact a personal toll as... more
Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, Cassie Knight, and 2 others.

Robert Macfarlane@srijanapiya17 @GhoshAmitav It’s a brilliant book. One I have both read and taught here in Cambridge. (Source)

Cassie KnightI selected this book because it is set in the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, which is the mangrove coastal area that is prone to cyclones. It contains a vivid description of a cyclone. Just last week I was visiting the cyclone-hit area of the Sundarbans and to have an image of what it is like makes it so much more real. Even though I have spoken to people who have lived through a cyclone, I sometimes... (Source)

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8
Here, published for the first time in the United States, is the last book by Roger Deakin, famed British nature writer and icon of the environmentalist movement. In Deakin's glorious meditation on wood, the "fifth element" -- as it exists in nature, in our culture, and in our souls -- the reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees.

Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@OliverPyle @emergence_zine Wildwood is such a special book. The brilliant illustrations in this new @emergence_zine version of the apple-chapter are by Naï Zakharia. She's caught the atmosphere so well, I think. (Source)

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9

The Road North

the road north is a word-map of Scotland, composed by Alec Finlay & Ken Cockburn as they travel through their homeland, guided by the Japanese poet Basho, whose Osu-no-Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. Ken and Alec left Edo (Edinburgh) on May 16, 2010 - the very same date that Basho and his companion Sora departed in 1689 - and on their return, on May 16, 2011, they published 53 collaborative audio & visual poems describing the landscapes they had seen and the people they had met. less
Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@kencockburn @IanBuckley4 @HansBalmes The Road North is a remarkable book -- one I return to, and teach with, often. Thank you for it, Ken. (Source)

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10

The Road North

After the battle, Crow and his recruits are sent to stand guard as the legion builds a new road leading north from London across the now completely depopulated lands of the Iceni.

General Paulinus, whose troops fought and destroyed the Britons, is obsessed with finding Boudicca, alive or dead, and swears to take her head as a trophy.

On the way to the land of the Iceni, Crow befriends a survivor of the Roman retribution. The woman, starved nearly to death, hides from the Romans. Crow feeds and cares for this survivor, whom he calls Ceres. She follows him into the Iceni...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@kencockburn @IanBuckley4 @HansBalmes The Road North is a remarkable book -- one I return to, and teach with, often. Thank you for it, Ken. (Source)

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Don't have time to read Robert Macfarlane's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

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11
Science writer David Quammen explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.

In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important....
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, Barbara Kiser, and 2 others.

Robert Macfarlane@josephQED @abinadi Quammen’s is a great book. (Source)

Barbara KiserQuammen is one of the great science journalists, and this is a monument of a book—a masterful retelling of how the ‘tree of life’ was recast in the twentieth century by a band of original thinkers. (Source)

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12
Combining an immersive exploration of nature with captivatingly beautiful prose, Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to discover her family's forgotten history and to connect with the island they once called home

Taiwan is an island of extremes: towering mountains, lush forests, and barren escarpment. Between shifting tectonic plates and a history rife with tension, the geographical and political landscape is forever evolving. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, Jessica J. Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family's history as...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@jessicajlee @ViragoBooks There it is -- a finished copy of your brilliant book. Congratulations, Jessica! It's...luminous; both object and text. (Source)

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13
A panoramic investigation of the subterranean landscape, from sacred caves and derelict subway stations to nuclear bunkers and ancient underground cities—an exploration of the history, science, architecture, and mythology of the worlds beneath our feet

When Will Hunt was sixteen years old, he discovered an abandoned tunnel that ran beneath his house in Providence, Rhode Island. His first tunnel trips inspired a lifelong fascination with exploring underground worlds, from the derelict subway stations and sewers of New York City to sacred caves, catacombs, tombs, bunkers, and...
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@DavesBikeShed @willhunt__ Yes! Will’s book is fantastic. We tunnelled convergingly, unbeknownst to one another... (Source)

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14
Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human—and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human.... more
Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@polarbearish Kohn's book is challenging, fascinating. Worth seeking out and spending time with. (Source)

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15
Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. In this landmark book, Eisenstein explains how a disconnection from the natural world and one another is built into the foundations of civilization: into science, religion, money, technology, medicine, and education as we know them. As a result, each of these institutions faces a grave and growing crisis, fueling our near-pathological pursuit of technological fixes even as we push our planet to the brink of collapse.
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Recommended by Robert Macfarlane, and 1 others.

Robert Macfarlane@garyhusband Yes - I own my grandfather's edition. I used it as a source document while writing Mountains of the Mind. A fascinating book, unexpectedly disclosing. (Source)

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Don't have time to read Robert Macfarlane's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.