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Christian's Reading List

The following is an eclectic list of books that have affected me in one way or another, both as a person and as a scholar. Since a scholar's professional life overlaps in many ways with her or his personal life, I make no clear distinction here. I share them simply because I think they're worth knowing. The list includes both fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, novels and plays, and several other genres as well.


Aeschylus. The Oresteia.

Aristophanes. The comedies.

Bryson, Bill. 1999. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

Cather, Willa. 1918. My Antonia.

Copland, Aaron. 1939. What to Listen for in Music.

Dryden, Ken. 1983. The Game.

Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questioning Technology.

Foucault, Michel. 1975 (trans. 1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Frayn, Michael. 2000. Copenhagen.

Gawande, Atul. 2007. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1995. Dinosaur in a Haystack.

Greene, Graham. 1955. The Quiet American.

Hoffmann, Roald. 1995. The Same and Not the Same.

Homer. The Iliad.

Janovy, John Jr. 1994. Dunwoody Pond: Reflections on the High Plains Wetlands and the Cultivation of Naturalists.

Kooser, Ted. 2002. Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps.

Kooser, Ted. 2004. Delights & Shadows.

Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Latour, Bruno, and Woolgar, Steve. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts.

Levi, Primo. 1975 (trans. 1984). The Periodic Table.

Libbey, Ted. 1994. The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

McCullough, David. 2001. John Adams.

Miller, Kenneth R. 1999. Finding Darwin's God.

Nasar, Sylvia. 1998. A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr.

Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.

Peters, John Durham. 1999. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication.

Plato. The Phaedrus.

Price, Reynolds. 1996. Three Gospels.

Robinson, Marilynne. 2004. Gilead.

Ross, Alex, 2007. The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.

Sacks, Oliver. 2001. Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.

Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Sellen, Abigail J., and Harper, Richard H. R. (2001). The Myth of the Paperless Office.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.

Shakespeare, William. Richard III.

Sobel, Dava. 1999. Longitude.

Spiegelman, Art. 1996. Maus: A Survivor's Tale.

Steinberg, Michael. 1995. The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. (Also his similar books on the concerto and choral music.)

Thomas, Lewis. 1974. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher.

Tillich, Paul. 1957. Dynamics of Faith.

Weir, Alison. 1991. The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Wheelan, Charles. 2002. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science.

White, Ronald C. Jr. 2002. Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural.

Wills, Garry. 1992. Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America.

Woolf, Virginia. 1927. To the Lighthouse.

[Updated January 23, 2009]

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