STEAL AWAY WITH BOOKS THIS SUMMER

2021 SPRING-SUMMER

BY JOHN JOHNS

ILLUSTRATION BY CASSANDRA MUNOZ

You’ve done well. Now, you are ready to take the next step. But to what college or university? Every website seems alike, with smart looking students, stately campuses with perfectly manicured lawns, leafy trees in autumn colors and red brick walls covered with ivy.

They practically shout, “You belong here!” But, how do you know it is the right place for you? Especially, if your knowledge of the prospective college is limited to the website.

One of the best ways to learn what campus might be a good fit is to figure out the culture or subculture of a campus by seeing what the faculty expects incoming students to read. Your intrepid Collegian Times staff has assembled short lists of five books each from eight different schools that range from three of America’s great public universities, to a small historically black women’s college, two Ivy League schools and finally two of the service academies.

For consistency, we focused on the academic fields of literature (fiction), the Arts, science, history and psychology. Where no selection was made and a title is not listed in the category, it is because no selection was made by the faculty or students. Hence, it wasn’t important to the recommenders. Finally, we compiled a separate list of books that are on every school’s list.∫ Plus, an interesting surprise. ∫ University of California, Berkeley (Selected by faculty) Fiction: “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens Science: “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson The Arts: “Borderwall as Architecture” by Ronald Rael History: “Two Weeks in November” by Douglas Rogers Psychology: “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Selected by the library staff) Fiction: “The Cellist of Sarajevo” by Steven Galloway Science: “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery The Arts: “Satchmo” by Gary Giddins History: “One Vast Winter Count” by Colin G. Calloway Psychology: “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)” by Carol Tavris; Elliot Aronson

Spelman College (Selected by the student body) Fiction: “They Tell Me of a Home” by Daniel Black Science: (no offering in this subject area) The Arts: “My Song: A Memoir of Art, Race and Defiance” by Harry Belafonte History: “The Firebrand and the First Lady” by Patricia Bell-Scott Psychology: “Heavy” by Kiese Laymon

University of Texas, Austin (Selected by the faculty) Fiction: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain Science: “Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines” by Richard Muller The Arts: (no offering in this subject area) History: “The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus” by Richard Preston Psychology: “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr

2021 SPRING-SUMMER

United States Military Academy, West Point (Selected by the Commandant) Fiction: “Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae” by Steven Pressfield Science: “Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War” by Paul Scharre The Arts: (no offering in this subject area) History: The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides Psychology: “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell

United States Naval Academy, Annapolis (Chosen by the Commandant) Fiction: “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” by P.W. Singer & August Cole Science: “Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War” by Paul Scharre The Arts: (no offering in this subject area) History: “Neptune’s Inferno: the U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal” by James D. Hornfischer Psychology: “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty” by Dan Ariely

Harvard Divinity School (Chosen by alumni and students) Fiction: “Moses, Man of the Mountain” by Zora Neale Hurston Science: (no offering in this subject area) The Arts: (no offering in this subject area) History: “The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement” by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris Psychology: “The Christian Imagination” by Willie Jennings Princeton University (Chosen by the faculty) Fiction: “The Garies and Their Friends” by Frank Webb Science: “The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866” by Charles Rosenberg The Arts: “The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering” by David Billington History: “Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism” by Nan Estad Psychology: (no offering in this subject area)

Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Society (Recommended or written by members) Fiction: “Not Without Laughter” by Langston Hughes Science: “The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome” by Alondra Nelson The Arts: “Here I Stand” by Paul Robeson History: “Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands” by Hazel Canby Psychology: “The Deepest Well” by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris

Books Everybody is Reading “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson “Maus” by Art Spiegleman “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates “Killers of the Flower Moon” by David Grann “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander

Studies show that 75% of the public never read a single book. Read two books on this list and you’ll be ahead of 90% of the population. Enjoy your summer, reading of course. And, keep up the good work!