Henry Louis Gates, Paul Farmer, And Other Harvard Profs Suggest Summer Reading Picks For Undergrads

The Harvard Crimson:

While most high school students are assigned a list of books to read over the summer, undergraduates aren't required to do much at all during the summer months. Just in case you've been using the excuse of "But I don't know what to read!" to avoid any and all intellectual engagement, we here at Flyby asked some of Harvard's brightest minds for summer reading recommendations. Here's what they suggested.

Read the whole story: The Harvard Crimson

Comments

[inkongirl]

09:19 PM on 06/21/2010

It's good to read something during the summer, although the Bible might be a bit of a challenge.

[Oxonian2001]

07:17 PM on 06/21/2010

Well, here's my own list:

COMMON SENSE: Read it and determine for yourself if Paine would actually approve of Glenn Beck.

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE: to avoid a "liberal" bias (ha!), I'm recommending this famous work by Edmund Burke. He was kind of the Joe Lieberman of his day, but makes JL look like his handicapped younger brother. Although it's a rather pompous work especially when he scorns the "swinish multitude," many of his words are nonetheless a slap in the face of conservatives today.

RIGHTS OF MAN: Paine's rebuttal to Burke. Shows us once again just how much more humanitarian and broad minded progressives are.

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD: that my undergraduates love this novel is an understatement. And they love discussing it along with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Girl power 1.0 and 2.0. When you read them, you realize how timeless they are--and how applicable the lessons are so many decades and centuries later.

While you're reading EYES, pick up DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD: arguably one of the most casual seeming yet insightful and witty autobiographies I've ever read. (And I'm not particularly fond of memoirs either.)

If you like horror, pick up M.R. James' early 20th c. ghost stories. Why rent a crappy, 2nd rate horror movie when you can read stories like "Number 13" or "Whistle to me..."?

[bblueskye]

01:39 PM on 06/21/2010

Tracy Kidder's "Strength In What Remains" is a pretty impressive book. It's hard to believe someone who has lived through that much has been able to do what he has done since arriving in America with only 200 dollars from a war torn African country.

[Mike169]

12:35 PM on 06/21/2010

It wasn't too long ago some rightwing group was saying that the summer reading lists were biased to the left. Why don't these professors just comply with their wishes? Does anyone really want to hear what a bunch of Harvard professors have to say?

[bblueskye]

01:40 PM on 06/21/2010

Yeah, "Three Cups of Tea" is really biased to the left... The guy proposes building schools to teach children capitalist and western values in Afghanistan and Israel. That is so left-wing biased!

[Mike169]

04:37 PM on 06/21/2010

It makes no difference to that crew they create their own imaginary idea of what is left wing anyway. Anything that reeks of equality fall into that category immediately.

[bblueskye]

01:41 PM on 06/21/2010

I meant to say Palestine, not Israel, but we know Palestine just means "ghetto of Israel" these days.