Summer Reading
Readings in History
Classical History: Mythology, Edith Hamilton — Fans of Greek mythology will find all the great stories and characters here – Perseus, Hercules, and Odysseus – each discussed in generous detail by the voice of an impressively knowledgeable and engaging (with occasional lapses) narrator. This is also an excellent primer for middle- and high school students who are studying ancient Greek and Roman culture and literature.
Medieval History: New Worlds, Lost Worlds: the Rule of the Tudors, 1485-1603, Susan Brigden — In many respects, the 16th is surely the most appealing of English centuries – an age of extraordinary vitality, when the intolerance that wrecked France was suppressed (almost everywhere but in Ireland) by pragmatic Elizabethan moderation.
World History: The Pursuit of Power, William McNeill — The book looks at the influence of military technique and technology since 1000 CE and the social effects of the military pursuits in places like India, Europe, and a few others.
The Columbian Exchange, Alfred Crosby — The book looks at the Spanish conquest in America and how certain symbols which we still hold today were synthesized from Old and New World cultures. He explores the migration, populations, animals and crops in the Americas also.
Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond — Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas.
King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochchild — Hochschild’s superb, engrossing chronicle focuses on one of the great, horrifying and nearly forgotten crimes of the century: greedy Belgian King Leopold II’s rape of the Congo, the vast colony he seized as his private fiefdom in 1885. Until 1909, he used his mercenary army to force slaves into mines and rubber plantations, burn villages, mete out sadistic punishments, including dismemberment, and committ mass murder.
Daughter of Han, Ning Lao T’ai-t’ai as told to Ida Pruitt — Ning Lao T’ai-t’ai, born in the seventh year of T’ung Chih, 1867, lived a full and difficult life; she bore and buried children, worked as a maidservant, begged for food, and felt pride in her old age by sharing a home with her son and his family. A lively, driven woman who wants only to provide for her family, often without the support of her opium-addicted husband, Ning Lao wonders how life would have been different with a formal education: “I might have been somebody in the world.” When her husband sells their kitchenware, she gets it back; when he sells their daughters, she gets them back, then must give one up because she’s unable to feed her.
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini — Hosseini’s stunning debut novel starts as an eloquent Afghan version of the American immigrant experience in the late 20th century, but betrayal and redemption come to the forefront when the narrator, a writer, returns to his ravaged homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy’s parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid '90s.
Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi — In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels.
The First World War, James Keegan — Despite the avalanche of books written about the First World War in recent years, there have been comparatively few books that deliver a comprehensive account of the war and its campaigns from start to finish. The First World War fills the gap superbly.
United States History and Upper Form electives: Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis — In retrospect, it seems as if the American Revolution was inevitable. But was it? In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis reveals that many of those truths we hold to be self-evident were actually fiercely contested in the early days of the republic. [This book is required of all students planning on taking AP U.S. History.]
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright — Wright, a New Yorker writer, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism.
State of Denial, Bob Wooward — In the third volume exploring the political carnage and bureaucratic infighting prompted by the September 11 attacks, legendary investigative journalist Woodward (Bush at War, Plan of Attack) dissects the Bush administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq.
The Devil in the White City, Erik Larsen — The book focuses on two men just before the turn of the 20th century and discusses life in America and how it was changing at the time. The book blends fiction and non-fiction.
Killer Angels, Jeff Shaara — This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara’s account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock.
1776, David McCulloch — The book places a magnifying glass over the year 1776, which shaped the path for American independence. McCulloch provides an interesting view of both the American and British perspective during this tumultuous time period, which all US history students will study during the fall term.
Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin — This group biography of Lincoln and the leading members of his cabinet traces the lives of these leaders from the beginning of the 19th century through the Civil War. The various accounts of their lives offers a unique perspective on America before, during and after the Civil War, with an insider’s look at the decisions made in the White House and in Washington. An excellent book for both students of American history and American politics.
The March, E.L. Doctorow — As the Civil War was moving toward its inevitable conclusion, this novel explores the march of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, leaving a 60-mile-wide trail of death, destruction, looting, thievery and chaos.
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust — Faust makes a major contribution to both Civil War historiography and women’s studies in this outstanding analysis of the impact of secession, invasion and conquest on Southern white women.
China Shakes the World, James Kynge — Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, binding its billion-plus population more tightly to the global economic system, the Asian giant’s prodigious appetite for food, technology and natural resources has dramatically accelerated profound changes already well underway across the planet. Kynge, former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times, makes the voracious “appetites” of the new China his constant concern, as he uncovers the sources of and limitations on the giant country’s epochal growth.
The Face of Battle, John Keegan — What is it like to be in battle? John Keegan, a senior instructor at Sandhurst, the British Military Academy, speaks for soldiers who were present in the fray.
War and Peace in the Middle East, Avi Shlaim — Shlaim offers cogent insights on key issues and, without being coy, recommends a course of action that calls for more U.S. involvement in the peace process. Breathtaking in its scope and historical precision, this is a highly recommended volume for both public and academic libraries.
The Dynasties of China, Bamber Gascoigne — Focusing upon the incidents and personalities that epitomize most vividly each of the dynasties, this lucidly narrated volume, beautifully illustrated by a lavish selection of color photographs, places in their historical context the images that came to define imperial China from its origins in 1600 B.C. to the revolution of Sun Yat-sen in October 1911. It provides a background to China’s turbulent 20th century, which is surveyed in an informative postscript, highlighting such events as the troubled presidency of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tsetung’s ruthless Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 student protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
China, Inc., Ted Fishman — A lively, fact-packed account of China’s spectacular, 30-year transformation from economic shambles following Mao’s Cultural Revolution to burgeoning market superpower, this book offers a torrent of statistics, case studies and anecdotes to tell a by now familiar but still worrisome story succinctly.
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, Philip Gourevitch ’79 — What courage must it have required to research and write this book? And who will read such a ghastly chronicle? Gourevitch, who reported from Rwanda for The New Yorker, faces these questions up front: “The best reason I have come up with for looking more closely into Rwanda’s stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable about existence and my place in it.”