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Reading Recommendations
American Culture Baseball Biography Fiction and Poetry Memoir and Reflection Titles associated with The New Yorker
»American Culture
Madeline Blais, In these Girls, Hope is Muscle (Warner Books, 1995). [women's high school basketball]
Roger Daniels, Coming to America, A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 2nd edition (Harper Perennial, 2002).
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, A Family Story from Early America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
Pamela Grundy, Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
William E. Leuchtenburg (Ed.), American Places, Encounters with History (Oxford University Press, 2000).
David Maraniss, They Marched into Sunlight, War and Peace, America and Vietnam, October 1967 (Simon & Schuster, 2003).
Gerald W. McFarland, A Scattered People; An American Family Moves West (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers, 1985).
D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, 4 vols. (Yale University Press, 1986, 1993, 1998, & 2004).
Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton University Press, 1996).
Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, The Words that Remade America (Simon & Schuster, 1992).
Jay Winik, April, 1865: The Month that Saved the Union (HarperCollins, 2001).
Alfred F. Young, Masquerade, The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
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Baseball means a great deal to me, enabling me to learn some of life's basic lessons and perhaps nurturing my inclination for history. As a youngster growing up immediately after the end of the Second World War in northeastern New Jersey, I attached myself--for reasons that today I can only guess at--to the fortunes and misfortunes of the Brooklyn Dodgers. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957, I regarded their departure with sadness and a sense of loss (even betrayal.) I never considered myself a fan of the Los Angeles version of the Dodgers. Not until after I came to Lake Forest College in 1974, did I allow myself to become emotionally connected to another team (inspired by my son Ian). The ups and downs of the Brooklyn Dodgers, needless to say, had admirably prepared me for what became my impassioned devotion to the Chicago Cubs.
»Baseball (+ fiction)
Roger Angell, Once More Around the Park, A Baseball Reader (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers, 2001).
Nicholas Dawidoff (Ed.), Baseball, A Literary Anthology (The Library of America, 2002).
+Thomas Dyja, Play for a Kingdom: A Novel (Harcourt Brace, 1997). [set in the Civil War]
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wait Till Next Year, A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 1997).
Stephen J. Gould, Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville, A Lifelong Passion for Baseball, with forward by David Halberstam (W. W. Norton, 2003).
+Eric Rolfe Greenberg, The Celebrant: A Novel (Penguin Books, 1986).
+Karen Joy Fowler, The Sweetheart Season, A Novel (Ballantine, 1996). [women play the game]
A. Bartlett Giamatti, A Great and Glorious Game, edited by Kenneth S. Robson (Algonquin Books, 1998).
Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson, A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997).
+Peter M. Rutkoff, Shadow Ball, A Novel of Baseball and Chicago (McFarland & Company, Publishers, 2001).
Jules Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, expanded edition (Oxford University Press, 1997).
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»Biography
Leonard Baker, Days of Sorrow, Days of Pain: Leo Baeck and the Berlin Jews (Macmillan, 1978).
Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (HarperCollins, 2000).
Jane Howard, Margaret Mead, A Life (Simon & Schuster, 1984).
Roy Jenkins, Churchill, A Biography (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2001).
David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered, A Life of Vince Lombardi (Simon & Schuster, 1999.)
Benjamin Platt Thomas, Abraham Lincoln, A Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952).
William Taubman, Khrushchev, The Man and His Era (W. W. Norton, 2003).
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»Fiction and Poetry (* assigned reading when I was a student and remaining with me over the years)
*Willa Cather, My Ántonia (Hougton Mifflin, 1918). [Mariner Books, 1995]
*Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859). [Signet Classic, 1997]
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952). [Vintage, 1989]
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War (Vintage Books, 1993).
*Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native (1878). [W.W. Norton, 1969]
Primo Levi, If Not Now, When? (Summit, 1985).
*Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith (Harcourt Brace, 1925). [Signet Classic, 1998]
*Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline (1882). [Pelican, 1999]
Donald McCaig, Jacob's Ladder, A Novel of Virginia during the Civil War (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998).
Peter Quinn, Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York (Viking, 1994).
Ole Edvart Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth, Saga of the Prairie (1927). [HarperCollins, 1998]
Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: A Novel (1943). [Harper Trade, 1999]
John Steinbeck, East of Eden (Penguin Books, 1952).
Virginia Swift, Brown-Eyed Girl, A Novel of Suspense (HarperCollins, 2000).
Junichiro Tanizaki, Makioka Sisters (Random House, 1967). [my colleague Rosemary E. Cowler, regards author as Japan's Henry James]
*Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1912). [Modern Library Classics, 2001]
*Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1888). [Metrobooks, 2001]
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»Memoir and Reflection
Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (Atlanta Monthly Press, 1989). [author is daughter of Margaret Mead]
Libby Beaman, The Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman, 1879-1880, as Presented by her Granddaughter (Houghton Mifflin, 1987).
Jimmy Carter, An Hour Before Day Light, Memories of a Rural Boyhood (Simon & Schuster, 2001).
Jung Chang, Wild Swans, Three Daughters of China (Anchor Books, 1991).
Cathy Davidson, 36 Views of Mount Fuji; On Finding Myself in Japan (New American Library, 1993).
Linda Greenlaw, The Lobster Chronicles, Life on a Very Small Island (Hyperion, 2002).
Charlyne Hunter-Gault, In My Place (Vintage Books, 1992).
Jane Jacobs (Ed.), A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska, The Story of Hannah Breece (Random House, 1995).
John S. Service (Ed.), Golden Inches, The China Memoir of Grace Service (University of California Press, 1989).
Stella Suberman, The Jew Store, A Family Memoir (Algonquin Books, 1998).
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»Titles associated with The New Yorker
Linda H. Davis, Onward and Upward, A Biography of Katherine S. White (Harper & Row, 1987).
Isabel Russell, Katherine and E.B. White, An Affectionate Memoir (W.W. Norton & Company, 1988).
Letters of E. B. White, collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth (Harper & Row, 1976.)
John McPhee, Coming into the Country (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1967).
Rogers E. M. Whitaker and Tony Hiss, All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo, World's Great Railroad Buff, greatly expanded edition (Kodashna International, 1996.)
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Site Created By Rebecca Roberts '06, July 2003 Last Updated July 27, 2006 by Kalani Man '09 Contributors: Rebecca Miller, Amanda MacKinnon '03, Aayush Sakya '06, and Kalani Man '09.