BEACH BOOKS: 2016-2017
What Do Colleges and Universities Want Students to Read Outside Class?
Executive Summary of a report by
the National Association of Scholars
May 2017
Contents
2
4
The full 190-page report is available at
www.nas.org/beachbooks2016
ISBN: 978-0-9986635-3-1
Cover image: Eskemar/Shutterstock
5
5
9
Quick Takes
Introduction: What Are Common
Reading Programs?
The Colleges That Assign Common Reading
The Books Assigned in 2016–2017
How Common Reading Programs Work
14 Our Recommendations
16 110 Recommended Books
2 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
QUICK TAKES
Mediocre Books. Common readings are usually
The Continuing Characteristics
Largely Nonfiction. Common readings’ focus
Common Reading Programs
on mediocre nonfiction undermines the goal of
Bureaucratic. Common reading programs are
banal and intellectually unchallenging.
fostering the pro-civic habit of literary reading.
intended to satisfy accrediting organizations’
Promote Activism. Many common readings are
requirements that institutions promote “student
chosen to promote activism; they ignore the virtues
learning outcomes.”
of the disengaged life of the mind.
Run by Administrators. Common reading
A Narrow, Predictable Genre. The genre is
programs are usually run by “co-curricular”
parochial, contemporary, juvenile, and progressive.
administrators, not professors.
Non-Academic Mission Statements. Program
mission statements usually direct committees
to fulfill non-academic goals, such as building
community or inclusivity.
Integrated into Activism Programs. Common
readings are often integrated with service-learning
and civic engagement programs.
One-sided Political Messages. Common
reading programs also advance progressive dogma
through discussion guides, question prompts, and
cooperation with “social justice” programs.
Replace Academics with the “Co-Curriculum.”
Common reading programs make new students’ first
experience in college “co-curricular,” and so tell
Common Readings, 2016-2017
Popular and Widespread. This report lists 348
colleges and universities located in 46 states. They
include 58 of the top 100 universities and 25 of the
top 100 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News &
World Report rankings.
Author Appearances. In 2016, authors spoke on
campus at 51% of these 348 colleges.
Recent. 75% of common reading assignments were
published between 2010 and the present. Only 13
(3.7%) were published before 1990. Only 6 (1.7%)
were published before 1900.
Nonfiction. 73% of assignments were memoirs,
biographies, and other nonfiction.
students that the heart of college is not the regular
Homogeneous. The three most widely assigned
academic coursework but the “co-curriculum.”
books—15% of all assignments—were all recent
Common Readings
nonfiction or memoirs about African Americans
suffering from American racism.
P r o g r e s s i v e B o o k s . Common readings
usually have a progressive message—e.g., illegal
Predictable. NAS predicted that Between the
immigrants contribute positively to America.
World and Me would be one of the five mostfrequently selected common readings for 2016-17.
Parochial. Despite their claims to be diverse and
multicultural, most common readings were written
since 2000 by Americans. Only a handful of colleges
assigned classics or works in translation.
It was the second-most popular selection.
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 3
Six of the most popular common readings.
Cover images: Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014); Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Between the World and Me (2015); Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (2010);
Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was
Shot by the Taliban (2013); Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010); Dave Eggers,
The Circle (2013).
4 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
Recommendations
Seek Better Books. Common reading committees
should seek out books that lift up the institution’s
academic standards and contribute to its
intellectual reputation.
INTRODUCTION:
WHAT ARE COMMON
READING PROGRAMS?
Hundreds of American colleges and universities
assign a summer reading to entering freshmen—
Consult Widely. Consult peers who read widely
usually one book, which the students are asked
and who are acquainted with good books.
to read outside their courses. For many students,
Change Mission Statements. Common reading
this is the only book they will read in common with
mission statements should pursue and assess
their classmates.
academic outcomes only.
Our study of common readings covers nearly 350
Put the Faculty in Charge. Common reading
colleges and universities for the academic year
programs should be shifted from the “co-curricular”
2016–2017.
bureaucracy to the faculty. All committee members
The National Association of Scholars believes
should have their teaching loads reduced by at least
that common reading programs are a good idea
1 course a year.
in principle. At a time when core curricula have
Add Writing Requirements. Common readings
largely disappeared, a common reading assignment
should be integrated with academic essays.
can provide at least an abbreviated substitution that
Divorce from Activism. Common readings
standards, inspire them to read further and better
should not promote activism of any kind, and
than they otherwise would, and foster intellectual
should cut all ties to administrative subunits within
friendship on campus. The choice of a classic work
the university that promote activism.
can also serve to introduce students to the tradition
Reduce or Cap Speaker Fees. Use the savings
to subsidize book purchases for students.
Promote Fiscal Transparency. Common
reading programs should publicize speaker fees,
staff costs, and administrative overhead.
may introduce students to rigorous intellectual
formed by the best works of Western civilization.
We offer critiques of common readings as they
actually are, so as to offer guidance for how they
may reform themselves along this better model.
This year we focus on common reading programs’
administrative structures. The NAS previously
Donors Should Conduct Due Diligence.
took common reading programs to express the
Donors should only fund programs that adopt
desires of colleges and universities as a relatively
our recommended mission statements and
undifferentiated whole. Many of the characteristics
administrative structures, and provide only time-
of common readings programs are actually a
limited, revocable funding.
consequence of 1) mission statements that explicitly
Tighten College Admission Standards.
Select a student body capable of reading a
challenging book.
aim at non-academic goals; and 2) administrative
control by “co-curricular” bureaucracies.
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 5
THE COLLEGES THAT ASSIGN COMMON READING
Every sort of college and university assigns common readings. The 348 institutions we tabulated in 2016-17
include 171 public four-year institutions, 81 private sectarian institutions, 70 private nonsectarian institutions,
and 26 community colleges. They are located in 46 states and the District of Columbia—every part of the
Union save Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
According to the U.S. News & World Report rankings, these 348 institutions include 58 of the top 100
universities in the nation and 25 of the top 100 liberal arts colleges.
THE BOOKS ASSIGNED IN
2016-2017
INSTITUTION TYPE
We track common readings’ genres, as well as
their publication dates, main subjects, themes, and
26
which books were most widely assigned.
70
Predominantly Nonfiction
We classify common reading by genre: biography,
memoir, newspaper, nonfiction, novel, play, poetry,
171
71
and so on. The vast majority of the 359 assignments
were in the three allied genres of Nonfiction (142,
40% of the total), Memoir (101, 28% of the total),
and Biography (18, 5% of the total). Together there
Community College
were 261 selections from these three genres, 73% of
Private, Nonsectarian
the total number of assignments.
Private, Sectarian
Novels were the most popular genre of imaginative
Public, 4-Year
literature: 64 selections, 18% of the total.
Excluding Multiple Assignments and Multiple
Choices, only 80 of 349 assignments (23%) were
Fiction of any genre.
6 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
Genre
Assignments
Biography
18
Epic Poem
1
Essay
2
Film
2
Memoir
101
Memoir Poems
1
Multiple Assignments
7
Multiple Choices
3
Musical
1
Nonfiction
142
Newspaper
1
Novel
64
Play
2
Poetry
5
Role Playing Game
1
Short Stories
5
Skills Assessment
1
Speech
2
Total
359
Books Younger than the Students
Rights/Racism/Slavery (74 readings), Crime
and Punishment (67 readings), Media/Science/
Common reading committees continue to select
Technology (34 readings), Immigration (32
almost nothing but books written in the lifetimes of
readings), and Family Dysfunction/Separation
incoming students—and very largely books written
(31 readings).
since 2010. Out of 349 texts selected for 2016217 common readings, 271 (75%) were published
We also gave the common readings 251 further
between 2010 and 2016, and 327 (94%) have been
theme labels, divided into 18 theme categories.
published between 2000 and the present.
Most of these register the common reading
committees’ persisting interest in “diversity,”
Sixteen selections were published in 2016, the very
defined by non-white ethnicity at home and abroad,
year they were assigned—more than the 13 (3.7%)
but the remainder register other aspects of common
that were published before 1990.
readings worth noting. Many common readings
Most Popular Subjects and Themes
discuss books of which a film or television version
exists, an increasing number are graphic novels
In 2016-17, we gave the common readings 576
or memoirs, many have a protagonist under 18 or
subject labels, divided into 30 subject categories.
are simply young-adult novels, and a significant
The most popular subject categories were Civil
number have an association with National Public
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 7
Radio (NPR). The themes register most strongly the
NONFICTION VS. FICTION
common reading genre’s continuing obsession with
race, as well as its infantilization of its students, its
middlebrow taste, and its progressive politics.
In 2016-17, the most popular themes were African
American (103), Latin American (25), Protagonist
23%
Under 18 (25), African (15), and Islamic World (13).
Racism: The Most Popular Subject
77%
Three Years in a Row
Racism/Civil Rights/Slavery and Crime and
Punishment were the two most popular subject
categories in 2014-15 and 2015-16—and they are
even more popular in 2016-17. African American
Fiction
themes were likewise the most popular theme
Nonfiction
in 2014-15 and 2015-16, and they too are even
more popular in 2016-17. The shift this year has
been exemplified and substantially driven by
the popularity of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy,
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and
Wes Moore’s The Other Wes Moore.
PUBLICATION DATES
Subject
Categories
2014/15
2015/16
2016/17
Civil Rights/
Racism/
Slavery
41 (11%)
64 (18%)
74 (21%)
Crime and
Punishment
39 (10%)
Theme
2014/15
2015/16
2016/17
African
American
61 (16%)
99 (27%)
103 (29%)
53 (15%)
800BC?–1900
6
1901–1990
7
1991–1999
9
2000–2009
56
2010–2016
271
67 (19%)
The growing concentration of the common reading
genre’s preferred subject matters and themes
registers an ever lessening intellectual diversity.
0
100
200
300
8 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
This clustering effect within a few select subject
Most Widely-Assigned Books
The clustering of common reading selections within
the subject categories of Civil Rights/Racism/
Slavery and Crime and Punishment, and within
the African-American theme, was driven largely
by common reading selection committees choices
of a very few books.
matters and themes reduces the intellectual
diversity of the common reading genre as
a whole. It also has the effect of reducing
intellectual diversity within each subject category
and theme. An astonishingly large number of the
colleges and universities that wish to introduce
students to the African-American experience have
selected a homogenous handful of contemporary
TOP BOOKS FOR COMMON READING
Number of
Times Assigned
Genre, Book, Author, Book, Year
Subject Categories, Theme
Nonfiction: Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A
Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)
Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery
Crime and Punishment
African American theme
24
Memoir: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the
World and Me (2015)
Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery
Crime and Punishment
African American theme
19
Memoir: Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore:
One Name, Two Fates (2010)
Crime and Punishment
Poverty
African American theme
10
Memoir: Malala Yousafzai, and Christina
Lamb, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood
Up For Education and Was Shot by the
Taliban (2013)
Education
Feminism/Sex Discrimination/
Women
Islamic World theme
7
Biography: Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal
Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)
Media/Science/Technology Medicine/Mortality
African American theme
6
Novel: Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013)
Apocalyptic/Dystopian/Science
Fiction
5
Nonfiction: Anand Giridharadas, The True
American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014)
Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery
Crime and Punishment
Muslim American theme
5
Biography: Sonia Nazario, Enrique's
Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous
Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother (2006)
Family Dysfunction/Separation
Immigration
Latin American theme
Protagonist Under 18
5
Novel: Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was
Divine (2002)
Emigration/Exile
Imprisonment/Internment
Asian American theme
5
Poetry: Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An
American Lyric (2014)
Civil Rights/Racism/Slavery
African American theme
5
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 9
works—Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, Ta-Nehisi
First-Year Experience, Student Affairs, Office of
Coates’ Between the World and Me, and Wes
Diversity, Office of Sustainability, Residential Life,
Moore’s The Other Wes Moore. None, however,
and so on. They are also the product of mission
assigned the poetry of Robert Hayden, Jacob
statements that direct committees to choose
Lawrence’s Migration Series, Ralph Ellison’s
books to form “community,” or meet other non-
“The World and the Jug,” Albert Murray’s The
academic goals, rather than to focus on introducing
Hero and the Blues, James Weldon Johnson’s
students to college-level academic standards. The
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, or
progressive politicization of common readings
any other representatives of African-American
largely derives from this administrative structure.
writing and art that stray beyond the narrow
preferences of the common reading genre.
Mixed Mission Statements
Where common readings most pride themselves on
Common reading programs usually try to satisfy more
diversity, they are most homogenous.
than one mission at once, to meet both academic and
Predictability
try to teach two things at once, you’re not likely to do
The ideologically-constrained common reading
genre has become so homogenous that common
reading selections have become predictable.
Last year we wagered “that Ta-Nehesi Coates’
Between the World and Me (published July 2015) will
non-academic goals. This is never a good idea: if you
either well. But colleges and universities around the
country have decided that common reading programs
should serve two masters.
Among the many non-academic goals the common
reading programs serve are these:
be one of the five most-frequently selected common
Georgia State University uses its First-Year Book
readings for 2016-17, and will continue in the top
Program to “raise awareness and tolerance of
ten for 2017-18.” Our prediction was correct:
cultural likenesses and differences” and to “create
Between the World and Me was the second-most
a sense of community.”
popular selection in 2016-2017 (19 selections), behind
only Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice
and Redemption (24 selections).
We predict again, with redoubled confidence, that
Between the World and Me will be one of the five
most-frequently selected common readings for
2017-2018.
Kalamazoo College’s Summer Common Reading
is supposed to “address coming of age issues” and
“foster intercultural understanding.”
The University of Louisville’s Book-in-Common
“promotes self-discovery and exploration of diverse
ways of thinking and being.”
HOW COMMON READING
PROGRAMS WORK
As we will discuss at greater length below, these
Common readings are not just the product of a
programs. A very large number of common reading
progressive political culture in higher education.
programs—probably a large majority—combine the
They are particularly the products of progressive
intellectual goals of sparking interest in reading
advocates within these institutions, concentrated
and preparing students for college-level reading
in “co-curricular” bureaucracies—Orientation,
with some other non-academic goal, such as
non-academic goals also serve as euphemisms
for the more politicized goals of common reading
10 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
building community, diversity, or identity. Because
common reading mission statements have more
than one goal, the incentive is to compromise on
at least one of them. The mediocrity of common
reading choices bears witness that selection
committees usually make a priority of the nonacademic goal.
Politicized Mission Statements
Many common reading program mission
statements don’t just exploit the presence
of non-academic goals as a way to insert
progressive propaganda. The mission statements
themselves are crafted explicitly to forward
progressive political goals, such as diversity
North Carolina State University (NCSU) helpfully
(affirmative action quotas and propaganda) and
illustrates how little academic goals count in the
multiculturalism (hostility to American culture).
book selection process, because it quantifies the
Where the common reading mission statements
selection criteria for its Common Reading Selection
require progressive books, the choice of mediocre
Committee. Out of a total of 40.5 points, only 3 are
progressive propaganda is a feature, not a bug, as
assigned to literary quality. “Accurate, respectful
the table on the next page indicates.
portrayals of diverse cultures” receives 4 points;
“Connection to Institutional initiatives, strategic
plan, and priorities” receives 5. Why did NCSU
choose Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy?—a polemic/
memoir with no literary virtue save clarity that
aims to forward the goals of the de-incarceration
movement. That’s the sort of book you end up with
when literary quality counts for only 7% of the score.
Politicized Interpretation of
Non-Academic Goals
The progressive politicization of common reading
programs is constant; the rationales vary depending
on circumstances. At Loyola University Chicago,
where progressives apparently have already
taken over the university, the rationale is: “With
its themes of race, inequality, and justice, Just
Mercy aligns with Loyola’s mission and beliefs.” At
Providence College, apparently not yet assimilated
into the progressive complex, the common reading
has “the goal of extending student perspectives
beyond the typical PC [Providence College]
Mixed goals in mission statements open the door
educational and cultural experience”—and so
to politicized book choices. Miami University
Providence College also chose I Am Malala. By
stretched its commitment to “active, responsible
one justification or another, the same mediocre
citizenship” to choose a book that “focuses on
progressive books get chosen.
innovation, mentoring, collaboration, diversity,
and inclusion.” In other words, Miami selected
propaganda in favor of illegal immigration—
Joshua Davis’ Spare Parts: Four Undocumented
Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the
American Dream, advertised as “a key inspiration
to the DREAMers movement.”
Common reading committees routinely use nonacademic goals in mission statements, no matter
how anodyne, as a rationale to select mediocre
progressive political propaganda.
Committee Composition
The make-up of the common reading selection
committees, heavily staffed by administrators
rather than professors, reinforces the skew toward
progressive propaganda.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst’s
12-member Common Read Committee includes
5 representatives from Residential Learning
Communities, one from Residence Education, and
one from Residential Academic Programs.
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 11
Of the 24 members of the University of Richmond’s
in departments such as English, and switched later
selection committee, 16 members are administrators.
into the “co-curricular” career track.) Good books
Some books are selected largely or entirely by
components of the “co-curricular” bureaucracy.
will only emerge occasionally, by accident, from
a selection committee dominated by members
professionally dedicated to non-academic goals.
At the University of Iowa, the common reading
is sponsored by the Center for Human Rights,
Activism Goals
and co-sponsors include the Office of Outreach &
Common readings don’t just support progressivism
Engagement and the Chief Diversity Office.
as a political point of view; they also support actual
At Monroe Community College, “The Common Read
Program is sponsored by The Office of Student Life
and Leadership Development, Academic Services,
and First Year Experience and Title III: Building a
Culture of Engagement & Success.”
programs of progressive action, and, in a constant
drumbeat, the concept of activism. Common
readings are intended to create students committed
to progressive activism from day one.
San Jose State University associates its common
These administrators, it is worth emphasizing,
rarely have the professional training or vocation
to discover what the best books are, to select good
books appropriate for incoming freshmen, or to
teach freshmen how to discuss books critically.
reading, The True American, with a lecture
by Morehshin Allahyari, “a new media artist,
activist, educator, and occasional curator,”
who “will speak about the intersections of art,
activism, jihad, and technocapitalism.”
(Only a few began their careers as regular faculty
Institution
Mission Statement
Book Selection
North Idaho College
This common read is developed
and organized by the Common
Read Ad Hoc Committee (Cardinal
Reads) and supports the common
theme adopted every two years by
the Diversity Steering Committee.
The Diversity Steering committee
selects a campus-wide diversity
theme to encourage diversity
awareness for the NIC community.
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A
Story of Justice and Redemption
State University of New York,
Oneonta
SUNY Oneonta’s Common Read
advances diversity by encouraging
students to examine and better
understand topics such as equity,
inclusion, and personal history
through many lenses.
Janet [Charles] Mock, Redefining
Realness: My Path to Womanhood,
Identity, Love & So Much More The College of New Jersey
This year’s intellectual theme,
“Toward Just and Sustainable
Communities,” asks the TCNJ
community to explore connections
among social justice, sustainability,
and community.
Will Allen, The Good Food
Revolution: Growing Healthy Food,
People, and Communities
12 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
Western Washington University associates its
Castleton University’s common reading directs
common reading, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between
students to “relevant programs”:
the World and Me, with the lecture “Rise Up: An
Activist Conversation,” which will “explore the
contours of intergenerational movement-building
and its relationship to art and protest.”
Common reading programs’ association with action
and activism, rather than disengaged inquiry into
truth, takes various forms.
Several colleges associate the common reading
with “co-curricular activities” (Rowan University)
or “co-curricular experiences” (University of South
• Global Studies (major, minor, certificate)
• Community engagement (service learning,
civic engagement courses, volunteer
opportunities)
• “Inclusive excellence” (support for learning
around diversity and for international
students)
Budgetary Implications
Florida). Washburn University’s iRead Mission
Mission statements that require contemporary,
Statement declares that the common reading
“relevant” books, on the theory that these are
program is meant to help “Merge curricular and
more likely to spark student interest, increase
co-curricular components of college.”
costs. The corresponding desire to bring living
authors to campus further increases expenses, since
Other colleges associate the common reading with
authors usually require speaking fees. Common
service-learning and civic engagement—which,
book programs, as they are currently constituted,
as the NAS detailed in Making Citizens: How
generally have to assume the direct costs of both a
American Universities Teach Civics (2017), are
copyright premium and an author visit.
allied nationwide movements that aim to redirect
student impulses to volunteer and to act as good
Emory University’s Integrity Project budgets
citizens into progressive propaganda, free labor for
$20,000 annually to purchase books for students.
progressive nonprofit organizations, and vocational
For 2016-17, this would have gone to purchase
training as community organizers.
1,371 copies of I Am Malala—which is available for
$12.66/copy in paperback and $9.99/copy in Kindle.
University of Alaska, Anchorage’s common reading
This is a retail price, though Emory’s Integrity
program identifies “Critical Service Learning as a
Project “worked directly with our campus bookstore
Tool for Identity Exploration” (a publication of the
and the publisher to get a deal on the books.”
progressive Association of American Colleges &
Universities (AAC&U)) as a “Topic of Relevance”
The university invited as its speaker in Fall 2016
for the common reading’s theme. The linked
Shiza Shahid, cofounder of the Malala Fund, whose
publication by the AAC&U defines “critical service-
advertised speaking fee is $20,001-$30,000. We
learning” as intended to “interrogate systems and
believe that a cautious cost estimate for Emory’s
structures of inequality … [students] reframe what
common reading program would be $40,000.
the distribution of power means both for them
and for those they meet through service.” In other
words, the common reading is meant to support a
program of “service” for radical activism.
Speaker fees vary too widely to make an estimate
of average costs. Book costs, however, may be
estimated. We have looked at the prices of the
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 13
AUTHOR APPEARANCES
books advertised in First-Year Book Catalogues by
several major publishers, and multiplied book costs
by 1,000 for a hypothetical freshman class of 1,000.
Authors appear at slightly more than half of the
348 colleges and universities—176 institutions.
By way of comparison, we have calculated the costs
for our core list of 80 Recommended Books. The
average price of the books on our list is $8.59;
the total average cost to buy 1,000 copies for an
incoming freshman class would be $8,595. This
price is a significant discount on the cheapest of
the common reading publishers (Random House
172
176
Academic, average price $13.35)—and we did not
make our selections on the basis of cost.
Common reading programs that avoid bringing
speakers to campus would also avoid having to pay
the very high fees that speakers command—which,
in the case of Emory, appear to be more than the
Yes
costs of the books themselves.
No
Our cautious estimate is that common
reading programs, as currently set up, on
average cost $25,000/year, not including
staff time. We believe a revision of common
reading programs along the lines of our
recommendations would reduce average
cost to $15,000/year, not including staff
time—a cost savings of 40%.
FIRST YEAR BOOK COSTS
Publisher Catalogue
Number
of
Books
Average Cost
Cost x 1,000
HarperCollins, Books for the First-Year Student
148
$17.06
$17,060
Knopf Doubleday Group, First-Year & Common
Reading 2017
75
$16.56
$16,560
Macmillan, Books for the First-Year Experience
60
$20.46
$20,460
Penguin, Books for First-Year Experience & Common
Reading Programs
206
$19.15
$19,150
Random House Academic, 2016 First-Year &
Common Reading
195
$13.35
$13,350
14 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
This year we include recommendations for precise
administrative changes to the structure of common
reading programs. These are intended for a variety
of interested audiences, but particularly for faculty,
university administrators, and university donors.
General Selection Principles
1. Seek books that convey intellectual diversity.
2. Focus exclusively on assessing success
at preparing students for college-level
academic work.
3. Select at least one full-length book, with at least
50,000 words of college-level prose or 5,000
words of prosodically sophisticated poetry.
4. Require or give strong preference to: a) books
written before 1923, and hence in the public
domain; b) books written by dead authors;
and/or c) books published at least 20 years
in the past.
2. Seek books that stretch students’ minds.
3. Seek books that see man in his moral
complexity.
4. Seek fiction that is beautiful, complex, and
morally serious.
5. Seek nonfiction that is elegant, lucid, and
persuades rather than preaches.
6. Seek challenging books rather than
inoffensive ones.
7. Seek out important books from earlier eras.
8. Consult peers who read widely and are
intimately acquainted with good books.
9. Consult outside sources, such as our list of
Recommended Books.
10. Avoid books chosen to be inspirational.
11. Avoid books that appear in First-Year
Experience catalogs.
12. Seek out books that will lift up the
institution’s academic standards.
Mission Statements
Common reading programs’ mission statements
should include some or all of the following:
1. Focus exclusively on preparing students for
college-level academic work.
5. Select an intellectually complex book,
appropriate for college-level discussion.
6. Select a book that exemplifies beautiful
writing, and is not merely an efficient
conveyor of information.
7. Give strong preference to fiction, so as to
develop literary readers whose imaginative
empathy contributes to the habits of good
citizenship.
8. Give preference to works in translation.
9. Give preference to works by alumni, works
about the institution, and works about the
institution’s locality or state.
10. Give preference to books that emphasize what
Americans share in common rather than to
books that emphasize what divides them.
Faculty Management
We recommend shifting the management of
common reading programs from the “co-curricular”
bureaucracy to the faculty.
1. Only professors and librarians should serve
on common reading committees.
2. A majority of common reading committee
members should be professors in regular
disciplinary departments that specialize in
teaching students how to read books.
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 15
3. Common reading committees should be
chaired by tenured professors.
4. Common reading selection committees
should have no more than 5 members.
5. Composition (writing) professors and
instructors should be consulted during
book selection.
6. Committee members should choose student
discussion leaders from Literature majors or
graduate students.
7. Common reading committees should
select figures whose interests are primarily
intellectual to speak at events linked to the
common reading.
8. Common reading committees should
compose their own discussion guides, essay
prompts, and other materials.
9. Common reading committees should select
books that professors will voluntarily
integrate into their syllabi.
10. All committee members should have their
teaching load (or equivalent library duties)
reduced by 1-2 courses.
Program Structure
We recommend further reforms not directly related
to establishing faculty management.
1. C o m m o n r e a d i n g s s h o u l d a l t e r n a t e
disciplinary focus.
2. C o m m o n r e a d i n g p r o g r a m s s h o u l d
adopt more advanced books as voluntary
common readings.
3. Common reading student discussions should
have lively disagreement.
4. Common readings should be integrated
with academic writing assignments—ideally
graded, as part of a regular class.
5. Common readings should not promote
pledges, service-learning, civic engagement,
or activism of any kind.
6. Common reading programs should cut ties
to Offices of Diversity, Sustainability, or
Civic Engagement.
7. Speaker fees should be reduced as much as
possible and all savings used to subsidize
common reading book purchases for students.
8. Common reading programs should publicize
all costs on their websites—including speaker
fees, staff costs, and administrative overhead.
Donors
Donors to common reading programs should fund
prudently.
1. Donors should make funding dependent
upon colleges and universities adopting the
NAS Reforms.
2. Donors should inspect teaching guides, lecture
selections, and all other ancillary materials.
3. Donors should provide only temporary
funding for common reading programs.
4. Donors should fund common readings
linked to enduring themes such as Classical
Learning or American Liberty, as opposed to
of-the-moment ones.
Institutions of Higher Education
Colleges and universities as a whole must also
change their policies.
1. Tighten college admission standards to select
a student body with the capacity to read a
challenging book.
16 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
110 RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Charles Darwin – The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) Charles Dickens – American Notes for General
80 Recommended Books Appropriate for
Any College Common Reading Program
Circulation (1842)
Annie Dillard – Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Edwin Abbott Abbott – Flatland (1884) Fyodor Dostoevsky – The House of the Dead (1862)
Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958) Gerald Durrell – My Family and Other Animals
James Agee – A Death in the Family (1957)
(1956)
Kingsley Amis – Lucky Jim (1954)
Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man (1952)
Jean Anouilh – Antigone (1944)
Shusaku Endo – Silence (1966)
Aristophanes – The Clouds (423 B.C.)
Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly (1509)
Louis Auchincloss – The Rector of Justin (1964)
Everyman (C. 1500)
Augustine – Confessions (398 A.D.) David Hackett Fischer – Washington’s
Jane Austen – Persuasion (1817)
Crossing (2004)
Mariano Azuela – The Underdogs: A Novel of the
M. F. K. Fisher – How to Cook a Wolf (1942)
Mexican Revolution (1915)
Gustave Flaubert – A Simple Heart (1877)
The Book of Ecclesiastes (C. 970-930 B.C.)
Benjamin Franklin – Autobiography (1791)
The Book of Job (C. 1000 B.C.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Blithedale
F. Bordewijk – Character: A Novel of Father and
Romance (1852)
Son (1938)
William Least Heat-Moon – Blue Highways (1982)
John Bunyan – The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching
Pedro Calderon De La Barca – Life is a Dream (1635)
God (1937)
Albert Camus – The Plague (1947) Jane Jacobs – The Death and Life of Great
American Cities (1961) Willa Cather – Death Comes for the
Archbishop (1927)
Henry James – What Maisie Knew (1897)
John Chadwick – The Decipherment of Linear
Ryszard Kapuscinski – The Emperor: Downfall of
B (1958)
an Autocrat (1978)
Joseph Conrad – Under Western Eyes (1911)
William Kennedy – Ironweed (1983)
James Fenimore Cooper – The Last of the
Richard Kim – The Martyred (1964)
Mohicans (1826) Rudyard Kipling – Kim (1901) WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 17
Arthur Koestler – Darkness at Noon (1940) Sinclair Lewis – Babbitt (1922)
A. J. Liebling – The Earl of Louisiana (1961)
Abraham Lincoln – Selected Speeches and
Writings (1832-1865, Published in this volume in
2009) (Selections)
Federico Garcia Lorca – The House of Bernarda
Alba (1936)
John Stuart Mill – On Liberty (1869)
Molière – Tartuffe (1664)
Michel De Montaigne – An Apology for Raymond
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Thomas Sowell – A Conflict of Visions: Ideological
Origins of Political Struggles (1987)
Wallace Stegner – Angle of Repose (1971)
Robert Louis Stevenson – A Footnote to History:
Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892)
J. M. Synge – The Playboy of the Western World
(1907)
Leo Tolstoy – Hadji Murad (1912)
Anthony Trollope – The Warden (1855)
Sebond (1580-1595)
Ivan Turgenev – Fathers and Sons (1862)
Thomas More – Utopia (1516)
Mark Twain – Life on the Mississippi (1883) Reinhold Niebuhr – The Children of Light and the
Voltaire – Candide (1759) Children of Darkness (1944)
George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Francis Parkman – The Oregon Trail (1847) Plato – Apology of Socrates and Crito (C. 399387 B.C.) Plutarch – Parallel Lives (Second Century A.D.)
(Selections)
Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism (1711) Robert Penn Warren – All the King’s Men (1946)
James D. Watson – The Double Helix (1968) Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass (1855-1892)
Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest
(1895)
Thornton Wilder – Heaven’s My Destination
(1934)
Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff (1979)
Dorothy Sayers – Gaudy Night (1935)
Seneca – Letters from a Stoic (C. 65) [Penguin
Classics Edition, Selected Letters]
William Shakespeare – Henry V (C. 1598)
William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar (C. 1599)
30 Recommended Books for
More Ambitious College Common
Reading Programs
Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy (1869)
Jacques Barzun – Berlioz and His Century: An
William Shakespeare – Richard III (C. 1592) Introduction to the Age of Romanticism (1950)
George Bernard Shaw – Major Barbara (1905)
Ruth Benedict – Patterns of Culture (1934)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (C. 1350-1400)
Harold Bloom – The Western Canon (1994)
18 | BEACH BOOKS: 2016–2017
Benvenuto Cellini – The Autobiography of
Gary Rose, Ed. – Shaping a Nation: 25 Supreme
Benvenuto Cellini (1558-1563)
Court Cases (2010)
Miguel De Cervantes – Don Quixote (1605)
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. – The Age of Jackson
Whittaker Chambers – Witness (1952)
James Gould Cozzens – Guard of Honor (1948)
Alexis De Tocqueville – Democracy in
America (1838)
Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment (1866)
George Eliot – Middlemarch (1871-1872)
Mouloud Feraoun – Journal, 1955-1962:
Reflections on the French-Algerian War (1962)
Daniel Defoe – Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
(1724)
Patrick Leigh Fermor – A Time of Gifts (1977)
Ronald Fraser – Blood of Spain: An Oral History
of the Spanish Civil War (1979)
Jaroslav Hasek – The Good Soldier Svejk and his
Fortunes in the World War (1923)
William Dean Howells – The Rise of Silas Lapham
(1885)
Johan Huizinga – The Waning of the Middle Ages
(1919)
Herman Melville – Battle Pieces and Aspects of the
War (1866), excerpts
Herman Melville – The Confidence-Man (1857)
Vladimir Nabokov – Speak, Memory (1951, 1966)
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University
(1852)
Eugene O’Neill – Long Day’s Journey into Night
(1941-1942)
(1945)
Robert Skidelsky – John Maynard Keynes 18831946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2005)
Eugene B. Sledge – With the Old Breed: At Peleliu
and Okinawa (1981)
Stendahl, The Red and the Black (1830)
Virgil – The Aeneid (19 B.C., Fagles’ Translation,
2006)
Edmund Wilson – To the Finland Station (1940)
WHAT DO COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES WANT STUDENTS TO READ OUTSIDE CLASS? | 19
Six recommended books.
Cover images: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839); Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952); M. F.
K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942); William Shakespeare, Henry V (C. 1598); Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad
(1912); Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
MORE RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY FROM THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS
The full text of Beach Books: 2016-17, the sixth report in NAS’s
annual series (2010-) tracking the hundreds of college and university
“common reading” programs across the United States, is available at
www.nas.org/beachbooks2016, along with previous editions of the
Beach Books report. It is also available in print.
The NAS regularly publishes commentary and research on higher
education. Our previous reports include
• Outsourced to China (2017), a study of China’s exercise of soft
power through Confucius Institutes on American college campuses.
• Making Citizens (2017), an examination of the progressive
diversion of civics education.
• The Disappearing Continent (2016), a critique of the AP
European History examination.
• Inside Divestment (2015), a study of the fossil-fuel divestment movement on campus.
• Sustainability (2015), an examination of the sustainability movement on campus.
• What Does Bowdoin Teach? (2013), the first top-to-bottom examination of a contemporary liberal
arts college.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS
The National Association of Scholars is a network of scholars and citizens united by a commitment to
academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education.
We uphold the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth,
and promotes virtuous citizenship.
We expect that ideas will be judged on their merits; that scholars will engage in disinterested research; and
that colleges and universities will provide for fair and judicial examination and debate of contending views.
We publish reports and commentary on many topics related to higher education; they can be found at our
website, www.nas.org.
National Association of Scholars
8 W. 38th St. Suite 503, New York, NY 10018
Phone: 917-551-6770 Email: [email protected]
Website: www.nas.org