Ten Books Every Student Should Read in College

HUMAN EVENTS ^ | Week of June 2, 2003 | 28 distinguished scholars and university professors

[ml/nj]

So I guess the bottom line is that you just read about Cornell, and I as a conservative American adult have visited and sat in on classes there. But you know better, and I must be too stupid to put this in simple enough terms for you to understand.

Maybe you should get a job for the New York Times? You could even dateline your columns, "Ithaca" !

ML/NJ

[Remedy]

Amazon.com: Books: Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted

A review of 'The Hollow Men' by Charles Sykes.

Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It

Authors: Jerry L. Martin, Ph.D., President, ACTA

Anne D. Neal, Executive Director, ACTA

 It was not only America that was attacked on September 11, but civilization. We were attacked not for our vices, but for our virtues-for what we stand for. In response, ACTA has established the Defense of Civilization Fund to support the study of American history and civics and of Western civilization. The first project of the Fund is Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It. The report calls on college and university trustees to make sure their institutions offer strong core curricula that pass on to the next generation the legacy of freedom and democracy.

---

Grove City College - Authentically Christian, Challenging

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has compiled this Portfolio of Excellence to help
alumni and other donors identify outstanding programs and organizations that they may want to
support. ACTA's Fund for Academic Renewal helps donors direct their gifts to existing or newly-created
programs and activities.

Enclosed you will find examples of exemplary higher education projects across the country. There
is no attempt to be exhaustive. Projects are included on the basis of descriptions provided to ACTA
and have not been independently verified.

GREAT BOOKS and LIBERAL ARTS

Auburn University

Austin Peay State University

Bethel College

California Institute of Technology

California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo

Claremont McKenna College

Clemson University .

Columbia University

Delta State University

Gardner-Webb University .

Hillsdale College

Kansas State University

Louisiana State University at Shreveport

Loyola University of Chicago

Middle Tennessee State University

Rose Hill College .

St. Ignatius Institute at the University of San Francisco

St. John's College .

Temple University

Theodore Roosevelt School at Medaille College

Thomas Aquinas College

The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts .

University of Chicago .

University of Montevallo

University of Wisconsin .

Wilbur Wright College

II. HONORS COLLEGES

Adelphi University

James Madison College at Michigan State University .

III. CORE CURRICULA

Boston University

Brooklyn College

St. Anselm College

St. Olaf College .

University of Dallas

University of North Carolina at Asheville

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

IV. AMERICAN IDEALS AND LIBERTY

Duke University .

The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions Ð

Princeton University .

James Madison Program of the Sabre Foundation

Vanderbilt University

V. PHILOSOPHY

Bowling Green State University .

Harvard University

Indiana University .

Missouri Baptist College

VI. ECONOMICS

Auburn University Ð College of Business

[AdamSelene235]

It was customary for the writers of that era to use pen names. Hamilton had a variety of them: Continentalist, Julius Caesar,

How modest.

He, Madison and Jay all use Publicus for the FP. He was not trying to hide his identity and anyone who was interested knew who was writing them.

Really, how many cases can you document?

There is also the little issue of Hamilton fraudulently claiming credit for 63 numbers of the Federalist, some of them plainly written by Madison.

Patrick Henry was not a nationalist and did not want a government strong enough to create a more perfect union. After a great start he too wound up on History's Loser List.

I very much doubt Patrick is concerned with your opinion. What exactly does a "more perfect union" mean? For me a free society will suffice, others equate the ability to control and dominate others with "greatness".

[Paulus Invictus]

Who was Atals and why did he shrug? Mysterious!

[LanPB01]

He was the twin brother of Atlas. He shrugged whenever a tpying error was committed.

[NerdDad]

Ping for your freshman reading list.

[LonghornFreeper]

Thats funny stuff, really. Theology is the most important topic for Christians, myself included, but it is not a science. As for philosophy being a higher science, and more important that the "lesser" (i.e. real) sciences, tell that to all the philosophy majors who now work at Walmart and all the Engineers making six figure salaries. Aristotle's policy of all thinking, no experiment lead to brilliant thoughts like heavy objects fall faster than light objects, heat comes from "caloric", and the earth is the center of the solar system.

[LonghornFreeper]

I definately agree that you need to know the Bible, that is why I said many of the books. You can do everything you mentioned without knowing the philosophies of Plato, or Augustine, or Dante (trust me, I have done those things, and I haven't read any of the books on the list except the Bible and the Federalist papers). If you didn't have the sciences, there would be no cars take on dates, or bikes for that matter, and your children would be far less healthy without biology and medicine.

[LonghornFreeper]

I agree that Luther made some errors, but not on the scale of the Catholic church and its blatant violation of multiple sections of the Bible, such as praying to saints, worshipping someone other than God (Mary), and randomly deciding that Priests must be celibate, when the Bible clearly states that church leaders can be "the husband of but one wife".

[Remedy]

substitutions, rearrangement?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Please, Aesop's fables are current and instructive because they condense human folly and behavior to a few paragraphs totally unlike Rand's collection of sermons dressed up as fiction. Beliveable characters are the first requirement of good fiction. Her's don't have that quality.

No non-religious society will ever resist socialism. Rand's lack of religioius understanding prevents her from understanding how people think and the reasons they act. Atheists cannot have a clue about law and justice since they do not understand the human heart. Law can be based on nothing but force in the world without God.

Belief in God is the strongest motivation and most effective force against the socialism Rand hated so much but she undermines her strongest ally. Surely she understood why the commies made the Church its first enemy yet she ignores that.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Antis were opposed to a federal system and preferred one dominated by the states as it was under the confederation.
Nationalists understood the need for a strong Union, having just fought a war to gain nationhood. State-righters preferred to think in small terms and concentrate on their local corrupt political machines which they could control rather than be concerned about a large nation which would not be susceptible to their bribery and spoils systems. Their victory would have meant the death of the United States of America.

Most of the anti-federalist papers are of little use at all, some are positively lunatic in their paranoia and hysteria. Reading the titles are sufficient to realize they would not stand against thinkers like Hamilton and Madison.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Since H. was replying to Cato (George Clinton) - Julius Caesar was an appropriate choice of names. In view of his end, it was not a little ironic.

Hamilton indeed wrote 2/3 of the papers most authorities agree. He wrote about 15 of those in conjunction with Madison. Jay wrote 5. Madison could not write with anything like the speed of H., the greatest newspaper columnist of his day. His words were read by more people over a long period of time than any of his contemporaries. Had Madison been required to take a greater role the series would never have reached 85 essays.

Hamilton understood, unlike his enemies, that freedom needed a bulwark to survive and that history had repeatedly shown that it failed to survive when that fortress was missing. That was the goal behind his policies.

Had our first president been one of the democrat-republicans rather than Washington I have no doubt the nation would not have survived. Or if it had it would have been destroyed by a Confederate victory and the loser would have been mankind as a whole.

[E Rocc]

Interestingly enough, the No. 1 book our judges decided every college student should read is a volume that has been virtually banned in public schools by the United States Supreme Court.

That's entirely false. The Bible may be read by students during free time including study hall, and may be studied as literature or a historically significant document. It may not be presented as divinely imspired or read devotionally during classroom time in public schools. That's all.

-Eric

[E Rocc]

Oddly enough, I was forced to read Ayn Rand in High School and hated it. I don't get all the Ayn Rand worshipers on this forum who says Rand "converted" them to conservative thought. I was conservative long before Rand and her novel Anthem put me to sleep, Orwell wrote on the same theme and did it much better instead of hitting you over the head with it.

Heinlein did more to make me a conservative than Rand did, and many of his books are more teen-friendly.

-Eric

[mware]

Here was the spring reading list for St. John's of Annapolis

2003 January Freshmen Reading List.

Homer, Iliad.

Homer, Odyssey.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Thucydides, Peloponnesian War.

Plato, Gorgias.

Plato, Meno.

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.

Plutarch, Lives; Lycurgus; Solon

SPRING BREAK

Plato, Republic.

Aristophanes, The Clouds

Plato, Apology, Crito

Plato, Phaedo

Plato, Symposium

Sophocles, Antigone

Plato, Theaetetus

Plato, Sophist

SECOND SEMESTER

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle, Politics

Sophocles, Philoctetes

Aristotle, Poetics

Plato, Timaeus

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

Aristotle, Physics

Euripides, Hippolytus

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Plato, Phaedrus

Now that is what I call an education!!!!!

[Desdemona]

ping

[rdb3]

The Prince -- Niccolo Machiavelli

The Art of War -- Niccolo Machiavelli

The Art of War -- Sun Tzu

The Book of Five Rings -- Go Rin No Sho

The Illiad & The Odyssey -- Homer

The Canterbury Tales -- Chaucer

The bombing starts in five minutes.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Among about 1000 others...

Additions:

Ellis, Edward S., A.M. and Horne, Charles F., M.S., Ph.D. The Story of the Greatest Nations. New York: Francis R. Niglutsch, 1907.

Heilman, Robert B. Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York : Penguin, 1989.

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday, 1968.

Lenson, David. Achilles’ Choice, Examples of Modern Tragedy. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Lewis, William Dodge, A.M., Ph.D., Litt.D., Henry Seidel Canby, Ph.D., Thomas Kite Brown, Jr., Ph.D.; Eds. The Winston Simplified Dictionary. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1927.

Nave, Orville J., A.M., D.D., LL.D., chaplain in the Army of the United States. Nave's Topical Bible; A Digest of the Holy Scriptures. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1897.

Naville, Edouard, trans. Egyptian Book of the Dead of the XVIII to XX Dynasties, Berlin,
1886.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Rpr. First Vintage Books Edition, September 1991, New York.

Paglia, Camille. Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s. http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm (An expanded version of a lecture delivered on 26 March 2002 at Yale University, sponsored by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at Yale.)

Potts, L.J. Aristotle on the Art of Fiction. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

Rand, Ayn. The Ayn Rand Lexicon. Ed. Harry Binswanger. New York: Penguin, 1988.

Tannahill, Reay. Sex in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1980.

Velikovsky, Immanuel. Oedipus and Akhnaten; Myth and History. New York: Doubleday, 1960.

West, Willis Mason. The Ancient World. Revised edition. New York: Allyn and Bacon,
1913.

Williams, Raymond. Modern Tragedy, Essays on the idea of tragedy in life and in the drama, and on modern tragic writing from Ibsen to Tennessee Williams. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

[x]

A fine list. I'm only now coming to realize how important Aristotle was for the Western mind. If I were going to add something, I'd say Shakespeare and some Greek tragedy. Philosophers, theologians, and scientists can explain how the world works. Poets, though, can show us how it often doesn't. The ancient conviction of order, unity, harmony and permanence can be the touchstone of our view of the world, but we also need the modern knowledge of disorder, multiplicity, variety and change to understand it.