The best Navajo (Diné) books start with Peter Iverson's Diné: A History of the Navajos for the history, Chester Nez's Code Talker for the Code Talker story in a Diné veteran's own words, and Luci Tapahonso's poetry for the contemporary Diné voice, with Navajo authors Jennifer Nez Denetdale and Sherwin Bitsui, the Long Walk histories, and Hillerman's mysteries rounding out the shelf. The Navajo Nation reaches across northwestern New Mexico, and the literature of the Diné, by Navajo writers and by outsiders who documented the nation, is among the richest of any Native people. This is a reader's path in, written with respect for a living nation. For the deeper record, see the guides to New Mexico Native American literature and the Long Walk and Bosque Redondo.
Published June 2026 · Curated by Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project · Written with respect for the Navajo Nation
Passing on books about Diné history and culture? They go in my covered 24/7 drop box on Edith Blvd NE with everything else on the shelf, any condition, and a whole collection gets free pickup across the Albuquerque metro. Text 505-250-3804.
Diné: A History of the Navajos — Peter Iverson
The essential modern history of the Navajo Nation, built on archival research, interviews, and Navajo accounts, with photographs by Diné photographer Monty Roessel. From origins through the Long Walk, the reservation era, and the modern nation. The best single book to start with.
Reclaiming Diné History · Jennifer Nez Denetdale
Denetdale, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and the first person of Diné descent to earn a PhD in history, takes on the legacies of the nineteenth-century leader Manuelito and his wife Juanita and asks who gets to tell Navajo history. She teaches at the University of New Mexico. Read it right after Iverson for the view from inside the nation.
Code Talker · Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila
The memoir of Chester Nez, the last surviving member of the original twenty-nine Navajo Code Talkers: a boyhood in the Checkerboard Area of the reservation in New Mexico, then the Marine Corps code built on the Diné language that was never broken. If you read one Code Talker book, make it the one told in a Code Talker's own words.
Code Talker — Joseph Bruchac
A novel of the Navajo Code Talkers, told by a fictional Diné Marine who was punished as a boy for speaking Navajo in boarding school — then used that same language to build the unbreakable code of the Pacific war. The most accessible entry point to one of the great stories of World War II.
The Navaho — Clyde Kluckhohn & Dorothea Leighton
The classic mid-century anthropological study — dated in places, but a foundational reference that shaped outside understanding of Diné life, religion, and social organization. Read it as a historical document alongside the Diné-authored works.
Sáanii Dahataał: The Women Are Singing — Luci Tapahonso
The Navajo Nation's first poet laureate, born at Shiprock, writes warm poetry and prose steeped in Diné language, family, and the Four Corners landscape. The best introduction to a beloved living Diné voice — the contemporary heart of this list.
Flood Song · Sherwin Bitsui
Bitsui, a Diné poet from White Cone, Arizona, writes long, image-packed sequences that move between Navajo and English ways of seeing. Flood Song won the American Book Award and the PEN Open Book Award. Read it after Tapahonso to hear where Diné poetry has gone since, and find more in the best New Mexico poetry.
The Leaphorn & Chee novels — Tony Hillerman
Hillerman's mysteries, set among the Navajo Tribal Police, brought the Diné landscape to millions of readers, and the Navajo Tribe gave him its Special Friend of the Dineh award. They are an outsider's novels, best read alongside the Diné writers on this list. Start with A Thief of Time. (Anne Hillerman continues the series with a Navajo woman, Bernadette Manuelito, at its center.)
Blood and Thunder — Hampton Sides
For the wrenching central event of Navajo history — the 1860s Long Walk and the imprisonment at Bosque Redondo in New Mexico — Sides's narrative history sets it in the wider story of the American conquest. Read alongside the Long Walk guide.
Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period · Ruth Roessel, supervising editor
Navajo accounts of the Long Walk and the Bosque Redondo years, as families carried them down, gathered and published by Navajo Community College Press (the college is now Diné College) under the supervision of Diné educator Ruth Roessel. Read it beside Blood and Thunder to hear the same history from the people who lived it. For the wider story, see the best books about New Mexico history.
Going further
The Diné shelf runs deep: the weaving and silverwork traditions documented in the Navajo weaving guide, the broader Native canon of New Mexico in Best Pueblo & Native New Mexico Books, and the histories of the other nations of the region. As with all Native literature, read with attention to what the communities themselves choose to share.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best history of the Navajo Nation?
Peter Iverson's Diné: A History of the Navajos (2002) is the standard one-volume history, built on archives, interviews and Navajo accounts. For a Diné historian's perspective, read Jennifer Nez Denetdale's Reclaiming Diné History (2007).
What book tells the Code Talker story?
Chester Nez's Code Talker (2011), written with Judith Schiess Avila, is the memoir of the last surviving member of the original twenty-nine Navajo Code Talkers. For younger readers, Joseph Bruchac's 2005 novel Code Talker is the most accessible account.
Who is a major Navajo poet?
Luci Tapahonso, born in Shiprock in 1953 and named the Navajo Nation's first poet laureate in 2013; start with Sáanii Dahataał: The Women Are Singing (1993). Laura Tohe, who followed her as poet laureate, and Sherwin Bitsui, whose Flood Song won the American Book Award, are the next poets to read.
Who are some well-known Navajo authors?
Start with the poets Luci Tapahonso, Laura Tohe, Sherwin Bitsui and Esther Belin; the historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale; Chester Nez, whose memoir tells the Code Talker story in his own words; and Irvin Morris, author of From the Glittering World: A Navajo Story (1997). Each writes from inside the Diné world rather than about it.
What are the best books about the Long Walk?
Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period (1973), prepared at Navajo Community College under Ruth Roessel, preserves Navajo accounts of the 1860s exile. Hampton Sides's Blood and Thunder (2006) places it inside Kit Carson's campaign and the American conquest, and Jennifer Nez Denetdale's The Long Walk: The Forced Navajo Exile gives a Diné historian's account.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (June 2026). Best Navajo (Diné) Books and Authors to Read. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/best-navajo-dine-books
Original curation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.