Too few academics read widely outside their discipline. In truth, they often read little outside their specialty. Sociologists are no exception. Ironically, it is the human condition, in its most expansive understanding, that grounds our work as sociologists. This list of novels, essays, plays, and poems are some of the works that have provided meaning for my intellectual journey. I promise that they are works of substance, and that they will challenge you as they have challenged me. This list, and others like it, make us more fully human, humanistic sociologists, so to speak. The list is not static; what I list today has changed since yesterday and, hopefully, it will be transformed by tomorrow. That should be the story of the life your own mind.<\/p>\n
The Castle, Kafka<\/p>\n
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson<\/p>\n
The Plague, Camus<\/p>\n
Rules for Radicals, Alinsky<\/p>\n
Inferno, Dante<\/p>\n
A Pen Warmed up in Hell, Twain<\/p>\n
Fierce Attachments, Gornick<\/p>\n
Invisible Man, Ellison<\/p>\n
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe<\/p>\n
The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories, Tolstoy (Pervear & Voloshonsky translation)<\/p>\n
Baudelaire: Poems, Baudelaire<\/p>\n
Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu<\/p>\n
Selection from the Essays, Montaigne<\/p>\n
The White Album, Didion<\/p>\n
Three Plays, Wilson<\/p>\n
From Dictatorship to Democracy, Sharp<\/p>\n
Moby Dick, Melville<\/p>\n
The Communist Manifesto, Marx<\/p>\n
The Hamlet, Faulkner<\/p>\n
Tell Me a Riddle, Olsen<\/p>\n
Julius Ceasar, Shakespeare<\/p>\n
The Wisdom Books [of the Bible], Alter<\/p>\n
Escape From Freedom, Fromm<\/p>\n
All the King’s Men, Warren<\/p>\n
Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, Bly<\/p>\n
On Liberty, Mill<\/p>\n
Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut<\/p>\n
Learning to Drive, Pollitt<\/p>\n
Three Plays, Wilder<\/p>\n
The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, Burtt<\/p>\n
Plath: Poems, Plath<\/p>\n
A Gathering of Old Men, Gaines<\/p>\n
Angels in America, Kushner<\/p>\n
The Elegance of the Hedgehog,\u00a0Muriel Barbery<\/p>\n
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell<\/p>\n
Ecce Homo, Nietzsche<\/p>\n
Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas, Thompson<\/p>\n
Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner<\/p>\n
Hughes: Poems, Hughes<\/p>\n
Three Plays, Chekhov<\/p>\n
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers<\/p>\n
Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez<\/p>\n
The Long Haul, Horton<\/p>\n
The Vintage Sacks. Sacks<\/p>\n
Blood Meridan, McCarthy<\/p>\n
Faust Part I, Goethe<\/p>\n
Notes of a Native Son, Son Baldwin<\/p>\n
My Antonia, Cather<\/p>\n
The Heart of William James, Richardson<\/p>\n
John Berryman Selected Poems, Berryman<\/p>\n
Selected Stories of Anton Checkhov, Pervear & Voloshonsky translation<\/p>\n
Waiting for Godot, Beckett<\/p>\n
Open Letters, Havel<\/p>\n
Rimbaud: Poems, Rimbaud<\/p>\n
Borderlands,\u00a0Anzaldua<\/p>\n
The Courage to Teach, Palmer<\/p>\n
Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut<\/p>\n
Macbeth, Shakespeare<\/p>\n
The Search for Meaning, Frankl<\/p>\n
Six American Poets, Conarroe<\/p>\n
Collected Works, O’Connor<\/p>\n
Under the Glacier, Laxness<\/p>\n
Howl, Ginsberg<\/p>\n
Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1944-1961, Kushner<\/p>\n
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck<\/p>\n
Darkwater, Du Bois<\/p>\n
Montaigne’s Essays<\/p>\n
Black Feminist Thought, Hill Collins<\/p>\n
Facing Unpleasant Facts, Orwell<\/p>\n
Philip Larkin Poems, Amis<\/p>\n
The Road, McCarthy<\/p>\n
Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus, Jaspers<\/p>\n
Crises of the Republic, Arendt<\/p>\n
In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck<\/p>\n
The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard<\/p>\n
Frost: Poems,\u00a0<\/strong>Hollander<\/p>\n Drawing the Line Once Again, Goodman<\/p>\n Plainsong, Haruf<\/p>\n The Rebel, Camus<\/p>\n The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, Niebuhr<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too few academics read widely outside their discipline. In truth, they often read little outside their specialty. Sociologists are no exception. Ironically, it is the human condition, in its most expansive understanding, that grounds our work as sociologists. This list of novels, essays, plays, and poems are some of the works that have provided meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/monte\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}