2008-07-16 08:00:00
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Offers a Summer Reading
List to Improve Student Knowledge of American History, Institutions and
Culture
WILMINGTON, Del., July 16 /EMWNews/ -- For students
looking to add a little culture and history to their summer breaks, a new
list of books from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) offers
compelling vacation- and beach-reading options. The list, which includes
thirty books covering a wide range of important figures and themes in
American history, political thought, and literature, is offered in response
to the dismal results college students nationwide have produced on ISI
civic literacy tests.
ISI's national studies on collegiate civic education have empirically
demonstrated the failure of American colleges to teach basic knowledge of
American history and institutions. Both the 2006 and 2007 studies tested
14,000 freshmen and senior students from 50 colleges and universities
across the country, including 25 top-ranked universities and 25 randomly
selected schools. Seniors produced an average score of 53 percent in 2006
and 54 percent in 2007, and not one school -- including Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton -- could boast a "C" average. The studies also found that the
schools themselves bear much of the blame for low scores, since the vast
majority do not require the types of core classes and curricula in which
students would gain important civic knowledge. The full results of ISI's
American civic literacy study and the complete survey questions can be
found at http://www.americancivicliteracy.org.
"The summer months are a perfect time for students to take charge of
their own education on America," affirms Dr. Richard Brake of ISI's
University Stewardship Division. "We hope that by encouraging students to
read these American classics, that they will return to campus hungry for
the kinds of courses that will add, not subtract from, their knowledge of
American political and cultural life. Teaching America's story must once
again become a priority for our nation's colleges and universities, and
reading just a few of these books from our list is not a bad place for
students to start this life-long process of learning and acculturation."
Below are ISI's thirty recommended books, organized by the categories
of American Political Thought, Biography, and Literature:
Civic Literacy Summer Reading List
Category One: Political Thought
Title Author Editor (Publisher) of
Suggested Edition
1) "Speech on Edmund Burke In Select Works of Edmund
Conciliation Burke, vol. 1, ed. F.
with America" Canavan (Liberty Fund, 1999)
2) The Federalist / Alexander Hamilton, Ed. G. Carey and J.
The Anti-Federalist James Madison, McClellan (Liberty Fund,
John Jay, 2001)/Ed. H. Storing (U. of
George Clinton, Chicago,1981)
Robert Yates,
Samuel Bryan, et al.
3 )Political Writings of John Adams Ed. G. Carey (Gateway
John Adams Editions, 2001)
4) Democracy in America Alexis de Ed. H. Mansfield (U. of
Tocqueville Chicago, 2002)
5) The Lincoln-Douglas Abraham Lincoln, Ed. H. Holzer (Fordham Univ.
Debates: The First Stephen A. Douglas Press, 2004)
Complete, Unexpurgated
Text
6) The Civil War: A Shelby Foote (Vintage Books, 1986)
Narrative
(3 vols.)
7) Frederick Douglass: Frederick Douglass Ed. H. L. Gates
Autobiographies (The Library of America
College Editions, 1996)
8) Roots of American Russell Kirk (ISI Books, 2003)
Order
9) Witness Whittaker Chambers (Regnery, 1978)
10) Unsettling of Wendell Berry (Sierra Club Books, 2004)
America
Category Two: Biography/Autobiography
1) Patriarch : George Richard Norton Smith (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)
Washington and the New
American Nation
2) John Adams David G. McCullough (Simon and Schuster, 2001)
3) American Sphinx: Joseph J. Ellis (Vintage Books, 1998)
The Character
of Thomas Jefferson
4) Alexander Hamilton, Richard Brookhiser (Simon & Schuster, 2000)
American
5) Abraham Lincoln: Allen C. Guelzo (Eerdmans, 2003)
Redeemer President
6) Theodore Rex Edmund Morris (Random House, 2002)
7) No Ordinary Time: Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster, 1994)
Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt: The Home
Front in World War II
8) Eisenhower: Stephen Ambrose (Simon & Schuster, 2004)/
Soldier, General of (Simon & Schuster, 1985)
the Army, President-Elect,
1890-1952 (vol. 1) /
Eisenhower: The
President (vol. 2)
9) The Years of Lyndon Robert A. Caro (Vintage Books, 1990, 1991,
Johnson (3 vol.) 2003)
10) The Reagan Diaries Ronald Reagan Ed. D. Brinkley
(HarperCollins, 2007)
Category Three: American Literature
1) The Complete Tales Washington Irving Ed. C. Neider (De Capo
of Washington Irving Press, 1998)
2) The Scarlet Letter Nathanial Hawthorne (Barnes and Noble, 2004)
3) Moby Dick Herman Melville (Barnes and Noble, 2003)
4) The Adventures of Mark Twain (Barnes and Noble, 2003)
Huckleberry Finn
5) The Red Badge of Stephen Crane (Bantam Doubleday Dell,
Courage 1981)
6) The Magnificent Booth Tarkington (Dover Publications, 2006)
Ambersons
7) The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
8) Death Comes for the Willa Cather (Knopf Publishing, 1990)
Archbishop
9) Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner (Random House, 1993)
10) To Kill a Harper Lee (Grand Central Publishing,
Mockingbird 1988)
Though certainly not an exhaustive list, ISI encourages students to use
it as a foundation for building their own catalogue of books for future
reading. According to Dr. Brake, the organization welcomes comments and
suggestions about the lists and hopes the selections help stir a revival in
American civic education, furthering the process of improving the civic
literacy of all Americans.
About the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) (http://www.isi.org) was founded
in 1953 to further in successive generations of American college youth a
better understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that
sustain a free and humane society. With ISI's volunteer representatives at
over 900 colleges, and with more than 50,000 ISI student and faculty
members on virtually every campus in the country, ISI directs tens of
thousands of young people each year to a wide array of educational programs
that deepen their understanding of the American ideal of ordered liberty.
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