Book Recommendation

[Thalia H.]

Anyone who wants to learn more about slavery in the south, should read two books in the Dear America series:

"I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly" by Joyce Hansen
"A Picture of Freedom" by Patricia C. McKissack

;D

[Other book recommendation]

or perhaps you want to read about salem witch trials and witch hunts and all that stuff. theres a book called "witchhunt" by celia rees.. its a quick and exciting read. and it not boring like the textbook.

[Becca M.]

"Why Sinatra Matters" by Pete Hamill was really good as well.

[Alex T.]

try not to read guns of august, its a text book on ww1, it really is used ase a text book

[derek n]

DON'T READ SALEM POSSESSED. it's not long or hard to understand, but just reaaaaally boring.

[Robbie U.]

tolstoi said:

try not to read guns of august, its a text book on ww1, it really is used ase a text book

I'd have to disagree with this recommendation. If you're willing to read about 440 pages and absorb a lot of information, I'd highly recommend it. On the issue of it being a textbook, I'd have to agree somewhat because, I don't know what else could enlighten the reader on a subject so much. You can begin completely ignorant on the subject, and end being able to debate many possible alternate outcomes and paths to and of World War One including the possibility of a quick victory, and subsequently avoiding things such as as World War Two.

I give it two

And if you think I'm wrong, it's won a pultizer prize, so

[Melissa F.]

hey, i read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and it was kind of long and, to me at least, it felt like the author kept repeating the same information (which was kind of annoying but at the same time it really made eveything stick, so....) but it's really great for anyone who wants to learn about feminism in America.

[joezi]

try reading Blues People, I didn't really like it, but some of you will. It's about the origin of Jazz and you guessed it, the Blues. It also talks about slavery a little. The author is kind of wacko, though

[Jelissa G]

The book sister Carrie is really good. It deals with a woman who moves to chicago...has an affair with a married man... The novel is well written and only about 400 pages and which is really short. The relevance of this book is it show NY and Boston in 19th century.

[derek n]

read in cold blood by truman capote. our ta (whats her name?) brought it up and yeah i got really excited because i read it a couple years ago and its amazing. read it.

[Becca M.]

Allana's the TA's name.

I've heard amazing things about the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

"Four mothers, four daughters, four families whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's "saying" the stories. In 1949 four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to eat dim sum, play mahjong, and talk. United in shared unspeakable loss and hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Rather than sink into tragedy, they choose to gather to raise their spirits and money. "To despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable." Forty years later the stories and history continue.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of their matriarchal ties. Tan is an astute storyteller, enticing readers to immerse themselves into these lives of complexity and mystery"
-Amazon.com

I got it from the library, and I'm about to start it.

[Beth M.]

derek out ta (period 5) is named alex. and i would suggest ragtime cuz its good, but long and i didnt finish the whole thing... o well.

[Caitlin W.]

yeah......David McCullough's Truman is really good.....just amazingly long. I'd say get started on it really early. I got it right after the first paper was due. otherwise read it over the summer as the first one for september next year, you know. but it is really good, which is a lot coming from me, especially because my thoughts on Truman were "this is the man who came after FDR and dropped the atomic bombs"

[Becca M.]

Apparently "The Feminine Mystique" is pretty good, but really repetitive. Don't read it if you don't like feminism or, well, women.

[grandpoobah]

Some books are more popular with students than others including,
Amusing the Million, Kasson
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Blues People, Jones
Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson
Feminine Mystique, Friedan
Founding Brothers, Ellis
Gideon's Trumpet, Lewis
How the Other Half Lives, Riis
John Adams, McCullough
Joy Luck Club, Tan
The Jungle, Sinclair
Killer Angels, Shaara
A Midwife's Tale, Ulrich
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Ragtime, Doctorow
Salem Posessed, Boyer
Scars of Sweet Paradise, Echols
Sister Carrie, Dreiser
The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois
Why Sinatra Matters, Hamill
Why the Allies Won, Overy
Woman's Body, Woman's Right, Gordon

That doesn't mean these are the best books or anything, just the reports I read most often. There is no better resource for a recommendation than other students.

[Buddy S.]

Yo, i don kno bout you guys, but i read 600 page books both times. Am i the only one, cause i hope im not missing a memo. anyways i had a blast with Lee by Freeman, not because Lee was mad chill or nothing, but the way in which Freeman talks about everything, so that its not a book about lee so much as it's a book about Jackson and Longstreet and Davis, with a little lee on the side. That book rocked.

on a side note, if you're gonna read History of Standard Oil, don't go to the mplwd lib for it, cause aparently there is an abridged verion thats not 600 pgs long

[Caitlin W.]

read long books both times....well-uncle tom's cabinwasn't that bad, but truman made up for it

[Becca M.]

ha, I skimped out both times. "Why Sinatra Mattered" was only like 200ish? and "The Joy Luck Club" was around 300.

[Caitlin W.]

ha...beccas being a wissy

[Robbie U.]

I read like 400 and then 300 pages.