College Bound Reading
American Literature
Baldwin, James
Go Tell It On the Mountain
Semi-autobiographical novel about a 14-year-old black youth's religious conversion.
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Reading is a crime and firemen burn books in this futuristic society.
Cather, Willa
My Antonia
Immigrant pioneers strive to adapt to the Nebraska prairies.
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg
The Ox-Bow Incident
When a group of citizens discovers one of their members has been murdered by cattle rustlers, they form an illegal posse, pursue the murderers, and lynch them.
Cormier, Robert
The Chocolate War
Jerry Renault challenges the power structure of his school when he refuses to sell chocolates for the annual fundraiser.
Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage
During the Civil War, Henry Fleming joins the army full of romantic visions of battle which are shattered by combat.
Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man
A black man's search for himself as an individual and as a member of his race and his society.
Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying
The Bundren family takes the ripening corpse of Addie, wife and mother, on a gruesomely comic journey.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby
A young man corrupts himself and the American Dream to regain a lost love.
Heller, Joseph
Catch-22
A broad comedy about a WWII bombardier based in Italy and his efforts to avoid bombing missions.
Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
During World War I, an American lieutenant runs away with the woman who nurses him back to health.
Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Janie repudiates many roles in her quest for self-fulfillment.
Kesey, Ken
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A novel about a power struggle between the head nurse and one of the male patients in a mental institution.
Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird
At great peril to himself and his children, lawyer Atticus Finch defends an African-American man accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town.
Lewis, Sinclair
Main Street
A young doctor's wife tries to change the ugliness, dullness and ignorance which prevail in Gopher Prairie, Minn.
London, Jack
Call of the Wild
Buck is a loyal pet dog until cruel men make him a pawn in their search for Klondike gold.
McCullers, Carson
The Member of the Wedding
A young southern girl is determined to be the third party on a honeymoon, despite all the advice against it from friends and family.
Melville, Herman
Moby-Dick
A complex novel about a mad sea captain's pursuit of the White Whale.
Morrison, Toni
Sula
The lifelong friendship of two women becomes strained when one causes the other's husband to abandon her.
O'Connor, Flannery
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Social awareness, the grotesque, and the need for faith characterize these stories of the contemporary South.
World Literature
Achebe, Chinua
Things Fall Apart
Okonkwo, a proud village leader, is driven to murder and suicide by European changes to his traditional Ibo society.
Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice
Love and marriage among the English country gentry of Austen's day.
Borges, Jorge Luis
Labyrinths
An anthology of literary fireworks based on Borges' favorite symbol.
Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre
An intelligent and passionate governess falls in love with a strange, moody man tormented by dark secrets.
Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights
One of the masterpieces of English romanticism, this is a novel of Heathcliff and Catherine, love and revenge.
Camus, Albert
The Stranger
A man who is virtually unknown to both himself and others commits a pointless murder for which he has no explanation.
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
A fantasy in which Alice follows the White Rabbit to a dream world.
Cervantes, Miguel de
Don Quixote
An eccentric old gentleman sets out as a knight "tilting at windmills" to right the wrongs of the world.
Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness
The novel's narrator journeys into the Congo where he discovers the extent to which greed can corrupt a good man.
Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe
The adventures of a man who spends 24 years on an isolated island.
Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations
The moving story of the rise, fall, and rise again of a humbly-born young orphan.
Dostoevski, Feodor
Crime and Punishment
A psychological novel about a poor student who murders an old woman pawnbroker and her sister.
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
As the youngest of three daughters in a turn-of-the-century Mexican family, Tita may not marry but must remain at home to care for her mother.
Flaubert, Gustave
Madame Bovary
In her extramarital affairs, a bored young wife seeks unsuccessfully to find the emotional experiences she craves.
Forster, E.M.
A Passage to India
A young English woman in British-ruled India accuses an Indian doctor of sexual assault.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
One Hundred Years of Solitude
A technique called magical realism is used in this portrait of seven generations in the lives of the Buendia family.
Grass, Gunter
The Tin Drum
Oskar describes the amoral conditions through which he has lived in Germany, both during and after the Hitler regime.
Hardy, Thomas
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The happiness of Tess and her husband is destroyed when she confesses that she bore a child as the result of a forced sexual relationship with her employer's son.
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
A bitter satire of the future, in which the world is controlled by advances in science and social changes.
Joyce, James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A novel about a young man growing up in Ireland and rebelling against family, country, and religion.
Kafka, Franz
The Trial
A man is tried for a crime he knows nothing about, yet for which he feels guilt.
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Biography/History
Angelou, Maya
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
An African-American writer traces her coming of age.
Brown, Dee
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
A narrative of the white man's conquest of the American land as the Indian victims experienced it.
Cooke, Alistair
Alistair Cooke's America
A history of the continent, with anecdotes and insight into what makes America work.
Crow Dog, Mary and Richard Erdoes
Lakota Woman
Mary Crow Dog stands with 2,000 other Native Americans at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre, demonstrating for Native American rights.
Delany, Sara and A. Elizabeth with Amy Hill Hearth
Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years
Two daughters of former slaves tell their stories of fighting racial and gender pre-
judice during the 20th century.
Frank, Anne
The Diary of a Young Girl
The story of a Jewish family forced by encroaching Nazis to live in hiding.
Haley, Alex
Roots
Traces Haley's search for the history of his family, from Africa through the era of slavery to the 20th century.
Kennedy, John F.
Profiles in Courage
A series of profiles of Americans who took courageous stands in public life.
Machiavelli, Niccolo
The Prince
A treatise giving the absolute ruler practical advice on ways to maintain a strong central government.
Marx, Karl
The Communist Manifesto
Expresses Marx's belief in the inevitability of conflict between social classes and calls on the workers of the world to unite and revolt.
Thoreau, Henry David
Walden
In the mid-19th century, Thoreau spends 26 months alone in the woods to "front the essential facts of life."
Tocqueville, Alexis de
Democracy in America
This classic in political literature examines American society from the viewpoint of a leading French magistrate who visited the U.S. in 1831.
Yolen, Jane
Favorite Folktales From Around the World
Yolen frames these powerful tales with explanations of historical and literary significance.
Science
Bronowski, Jacob
The Ascent of Man
A scientist's history of the human mind and the human condition.
Carson, Rachel
Silent Spring
Carson's original clarion call to environmental action sets the stage for saving our planet.
Darwin, Charles
The Origin of Species
The classic exposition of the theory of
evolution by natural selection.
Hawking, Stephen
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Cosmology becomes understandable as the author discusses the origin, evolution, and fate of our universe.
Social Science
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth
Explores themes and symbols from world religions and their relevance to humankind's spiritual journey today.
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Paperback)
Ms. Ehrenreich learns how women survive on the wages of the unskilled-- $6 to $7 an hour.
Kozol, Jonathan
Rachel and her children : homeless families in America.
Kozol documents the less visible homeless; women and children living in shelters and hotels under degrading conditions.
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