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Between the covers of a well-furnished mind
By Globe Staff, March 23, 1997
State Board of Education chairman John R. Silber created a stir recently when he declared that every Massachusetts student should read from a list of great works from ``Mother Goose" to "Moby Dick" in order to graduate. But the great-books idea is not new. To get additional views on what books should be part of a core canon, The Boston Globe asked a variety of people to offer their own lists of the 10 essential works any informed citizen should have to read. Their responses follow.
John Silber
Chairman of the state Board of Education and former president of Boston University
"The Odyssey" by Homer
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.
"Aesop's Fables"
Mother Goose rhyme
Shakespeare's sonnets
Milton's sonnets
Confucius
The sayings of the Buddha
The parables of Jesus
The story of Cain and Abel
"Federalist Papers"
Declaration of Independence
The US Constitution
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Labyrinth of Solitude" by Octavio Paz
William J. Bennett
Former US Secretary of Education and chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Works of William Shakespeare, particularly "Macbeth" and "Hamlet"
American historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
The Bible
"The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" Homer
"Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens
"Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck
"The Republic" by Plato
"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles
(From surveys taken by Bennett during his tenure at the National Endowment for the Humanities)
James H. Billington
Librarian of Congress
The Bible
"The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"Coriolanus" by Shakespeare
"Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville
"The Divine Comedy" by Dante
"Federalist Papers"
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville
"Nature and Destiny of Man" by Reinhold Niebuhr
"Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles
"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
Daniel J. Boorstin
Librarian of Congress Emeritus
"The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon
"The Waning of the Middle Ages" by Johan Huizinga
"The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" by Jacob Burckhardt
"Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville
"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville
"Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman
"The Oregon Trail" by Francis Parkman
"The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James
Linda Delgado
Professor Director of the Latin Student Cultural Center, Northeastern University
"Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin & Spread of Nationalism" by Benedict Anderson
"Race Matters" by Cornel West
"White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812" by Winthrop D. Jordan
"Teaching to Trangress: Education As The Practice of Freedom" by bell hooks
"Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963" by Taylor Branch
"Sketches of Eighteenth Century America: More Letters from an American Farmer" by Michel G. Crevacoeur
"The Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina" by Alicia Partnoy
"The Federalist Papers," especially Federalist 10, The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection' by James Madison
The Works of Thomas Jefferson
"Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville
Rev. Anne Fowler
Rector, St. John's Episcopal Church Jamaica Plain
The Bible
Dante's "Inferno"
"The Canterbury Tales'' by Geoffrey Chaucer
"Hamlet" or "Macbeth" by Shakespeare
"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens
"Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
"Tom Sawyer" or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
David Gullette
Professor of English Simmons College
"The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson"
"Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman
All the works of Shakespeare
"To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf
"Ulysses" by James Joyce
"Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
All the works of Toni Morrison
"Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?" by Molly Ivins
Franklyn Jenifer
President, University of Texas at Dallas
Former chancellor of the Board of Regents of Higher Education
"From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans" by John H. Franklin
"A Negro in the Making of America" by Benjamin Quarles
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.
"The Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class in the United States" by E. Franklin Frazier
"Two Nations: Black & White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal" by Andrew Hacker
"Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle among Japan, Europe, & America" by Lester Thurow
"The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force andThe Dawn of the Post Market Era" by Jeremy Rifkin
"The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism" by Robert B. Reich
"Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois
"The Future of Capitalism: How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World" by Lester Thurow
Mary Lefkowitz
Andrew W. Mellon professor in humanities Wellesley College
The Bible
"Apology" by Plato
"The Iliad" by Homer
"Aeneid" by Virgil
Dante's "Inferno"
"Omeros" by Derek Walcott
"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen
"History of the Peloponnesian Wars" by Thucydides
Howard K. Smith
Former ABC news commentator
"The Bible: Designed to be Read as Living Literature" edited by Ernest Sutherland Bates
"The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin
"Essays" by Francis Bacon
"The Federalist Papers"
"The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith
"Battle Cry of Freedom" by James M. McPherson
"Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years" by Carl Sandburg
"The World Crisis" by Winston Churchill
"Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" by Alan L. Bullock
"Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time" by Carroll Quigley
George Will
Columnist
The Bible
"Politics" by Aristotle
"Apology" and "Crito" by Plato
"Macbeth" by Shakespeare
"Federalist Papers"
"Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville
"Lincoln Douglas debates"
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Night" by Elie Wiesel
"The Idea of a University" by John Henry Newman (From a 1984 column)
Raul Yzaguirre
President, National Council of La Raza
"LaRaza: Forgotten Americans (Papers in Memory of Charles de Young Elkus)," edited by Julian Samora
"Barrio Boy" by Ernesto Galarza
"Down These Mean Streets" by Piri Thomas
"North From Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States" by Carey McWilliams
"Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"Dance of Legislation" by Eric Redman
"Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" by Marshall McLuhan
"Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith
"Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis" by Graham T. Allison
Note: These lists were collected by and published in "The American Oxonian"
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