Ken had an idea of blogging about the most influential readings we encountered in undergraduate and/or graduate school. So I’m getting the ball rolling:

undergraduate
Ralph Ellison “The Invisible Man” — this book and Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions…” started a lifelong fascination with race and identity. Even though the book was about the black experience in the US, the idea of bouncing from setting to setting, wearing different masks, without ever really being “seen” resonated with me. Even thought his experience and mine were distinctly different (I was a Cuban boy from Miami attending Florida State University in Tallahassee), I instantly got what Ellison meant when by the phrase “keep this n****r-boy running.” In addition, this was the only book I could remember reading that wasn’t written by someone either from Europe or a direct descendant of Europeans. The English department at FSU in the 1990’s apparently had no idea that they wrote novels in the Americas.

Chris Matthews “Hardball” (don’t laugh)… I had to think a lot about this for a while. I was a Literature and Communications major and while other authors might have reached me stylistically and intellectually (Joyce, Blake, Coleridge, Beckett, Yeats, Keats, etc.) they didn’t shape my next career move. Up until I was 20, I thought I was going to be either an English Professor or a Journalist. I took a political communication class the summer of my junior year and we read Chris Matthews book about the keys to effective campaigning. I was hooked! I had never taken a political science course before. I only remember particular anecdotes from the book, but it set me on a brief career working in politics that led me to ultimately become a political scientist and to have more dignified books to put on my list of influential graduate school texts….but that’s for another post.

What were your most influential books as an undergrad???