What are college students reading this summer? In preparation for New Student Orientation, CC’s Class of 2014 is reading “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World ” by Tracy Kidder.
Popular themes at other colleges include the Middle East, climate change, social justice, race in America, world politics, and the classics. Here’s a peek at what other colleges have assigned their incoming freshmen. Who knows, you might want to add one or two to your own summer reading list.
- The College of Wooster: “Children of Dust” by Ali Eteraz. This memoir is about his coming of age in Islam as a resident of rural Pakistan, the American Bible Belt, and the modern Middle East.
- Saint Michael’s College: “Field Notes from a Catastrophe” by Elizabeth Kolbert. The subtitle of this 2006 book tells more about its focus: “Man, Nature, and Climate Change.”
- University of Dayton: “When the Emperor was Divine” by Julie Otsuka. The book details the lives of Japanese-American family members who were interned during World War II.
- Lehigh University: “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. The book details how the author came to build schools for children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
- University of Maryland, Baltimore County: “The Translator” by Daoud Hari. The memoir reads like a novel and speaks about the horrors of the conflict in Darfur.
- Bentley University: “A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind. The book describes the journey of Cedric Jennings, a young African American male, from the classrooms of an inner city Washington, D.C., high school into the world of higher education at Brown University.
- St. John’s College: “Iliad,” attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.
