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Books Recommended by Williams Faculty

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Books Recommended by Williams Faculty Books Students Should Read In the summer of 2009, Williams faculty members were asked to list three books they felt that students should read. This request was deliberately a bit ambiguous. Some interpreted the request as listing "the three best books", some as "books that inspired them when young" and still others as "books recently read that are really good". There is little doubt that many of the following faculty would list different books if asked on a different day. But there is also little doubt that this is a list of a lot of great books for everyone. American Studies Dorothy Wang 1. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son 2. Giacomo Leopardi, Thoughts 3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden Anthropology and Sociology Michael Brown 1. Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn 2. Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter 3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques Antonia Foias 1. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel 2. Linda Schele and David Freidel, Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya Robert Jackall, 1. Homer, The Illiad and The Odyssey (translated by Robert Fizgerald) 2. Thucydides (Robert B. Strassler, editor) , The Peloponnesian War. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. 2. John Edward Williams, Augustus: A Novel Peter Just 1. The Bible 2. Bhagavad-Gita 3. Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto Olga Shevchenko 1. Joseph Brodsky, Less than One 2. Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down 3. William Strunk and E. B. White, Elements of Style Art and Art History Ed Epping 1. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, 2. Bachelard , The Poetics of Space, 3. Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra Zirka Filipczak 1. Joseph Conrad, Secret Agent 2. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed to Death 3. Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture Michael Glier 1. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 2. Marquise deSade, Justine 3. Ian McEwan, Atonement Eva Grudin 1. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory 2. Tim O'Brian, The Things They Carried 3. Edward Said, Orientalism Liza Johnson 1. Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More than You 2. Zachary Lazar, Sway Steve Levin 1. Andrea Barrett, Voyage of the Narwhal 2. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion 3. William Maxwell, They Came Like Swallows Scarlett Jang 1. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanjing 2. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness 3. Leo Steinberg, Other Criteria: Confrontation with 20th-Century Art Eugene Johnson 1.Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 2. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities 3. Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Michael Lewis 1. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy 2. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities 3. H. F. Saint, Memoirs of an Invisible Man Peter Low 1. Dexter Filkins, The Forever War 2. Wayne Johnson, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams 3. Robert and William McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History Asian Studies Cecilia Chang 1. Mobo Gao, Mandarin Chinese: An Introduction 2. Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada, How Languages Are Learned 3. Dilin Liu, Metaphor, Culture, and Worldview: The Case of American English and the Chinese Language Christopher Nugent 1. Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (A.C. Graham, translator) 2. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species 3. Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Li Yu 1. Melvyn C. Goldstein, William Siebenschuh,and Tashi Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering. 2. Rebiya Kadeer, Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China 3. Daniel Shacter Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past Astronomy Karen Kwitter 1. Isaac Asimov, THE Foundation Trilogy 2. Seamus Haney (translator), Beowulf 3. Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War Biology Marsha Alschuler 1.Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 2.Donald Harington, The Cockroaches of Staymore 3.Simon Mawer, Mendel’s Dwarf Lois Banta 1. Chris Bojalian, Trans-sister 2. Geraldine Brooks, Years of Wonder 3. Tracey Kidder, Mountains beyond Mountains William DeWitt 1. Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana 2. Robert Kurson, Shadow Divers 3. Candice Miller, River of Doubt Lara Hutson 1. Herman Hesse, Siddhartha 2. Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe 3. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb Daniel Lynch 1. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 2. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father 3. Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes Manuel Morales 1. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene 2. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 3. David Quammen, Song of the Dodo Wendy Raymond 1. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 2. Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones 3. Malcolm Galdwell, Blink Nancy Roseman 1. Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwhal 2. Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet 3. Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner Robert Savage 1. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist 2. Tim Traver, Sippewissett Or, Life on a Salt Marsh 3. The SUN (www.thesunmagazine.org) Steve Swoap 1. Peter Brancazio, Sport Science 2. Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country 3. Richard Dawkins, A Selfish Gene Steven Zottoli 1. Willa Cather, The Professor's House 2. Bernd Heinrich, Why We Run: A Natural HistoryI 3. Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea Chemistry Raymond Chang 1. M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing 2. Ursula Le Guin, Powers 3. Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass Christopher Goh 1. Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner 2. Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture 3. Erik Weihenmayer, Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther than the Eye Can See: My Story Sarah Goh 1. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed 2. Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace 3. Philip Pullman, The Dark Materials Trilogy Lee Park 1. Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid 2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez , One Hundred Years of Solitude 3. Charles Palliser , The Quincunx Jay Thoman 1. Richard Feynman & Ralph Leighton, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) 2. Theodore Gray, Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't 3. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb Classics Meredith Hoppin 1. Michael Harrington, The Other America 2. Steven Millhauser, Martin Dressler 3. Susan Brind Marrow, Wolves and Honey: A Hidden History of the Natural World Amanda Wilcox 1. Aeschylus, Oresteia 2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude 3. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth Comparative Literature Christopher Bolton 1. William Gibson, Pattern Recognition 2. Junichiro Taniaki, Seven Japanese Tales Mara Naaman 1. Don DeLillo, Underworld 2. Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors: Essays and a Story 3. Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet Armando Vargas 1. Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star 2. Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo 3. Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North Computer Science Jeannie Albrecht 1. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 2. Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air 3. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Duane Bailey 1. Jeff Silverman (editor), The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told 2. Rory Stewart, The Places in Between 3. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell Andrea Danyluk 1. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 2.Nelson Goodman , Fact, Fiction, and Forecast 3. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Brent Heeringa 1. Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy 2. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius 3. Philip Roth, Pornoty's Complaint Morgan McGuire 1. Roger Fisher and William L. Ury, Getting to Yes 2. Robert Heinlein, Starship Trooper 3. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X Economics Jon Bakija 1. Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational Market 2. Mark Sisson, The Primal Blueprint 3. Michaela Wrong, It's Our Turn to Eat Gerard Caprio 1. Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk 2. Frank Partnoy, Infectious Greed 3. Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind Douglas Gollin 1. Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons 2. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 3. John R. Tunis, All American Kenneth Kuttner 1. Robert Caro, The Power Brokers 2. Joseph O'Neill, Netherland, 3. W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz Dukes Love 1. Samuel Beckett, Molloy; Malone Dies; the UnNamable 2. George Eliot, Middlemarch 3. Franz Kafka, The Trial Peter Montiel 1. Bertold Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle 2. Miguel De Cervantes, Don Quixote 3.. Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Steven Nafziger 1. Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Cavalier & Clay 2. Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate 3. Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches Morton Shapiro (Former President and former Professor of Economics) 1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice 3. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Stephen Sheppard 1. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities 2. Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations 3. Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now Anand Swamy 1. Shauna Singh Baldwin, What the Body Remembers 2. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X 3. P.G.Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith Nicholas Wilson 1. Angus Deaton, The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy 2. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man 3. Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information David Zimmerman 1. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation 2. Robert Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 3. Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run English Andrea Barrett 1. Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus 2. Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance 3. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory Ilona Bell 1.
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