Kemper Reading Picks

Kemper Fellows, MU faculty recognized for their teaching excellence, have compiled the following list of influential books. Rather than reinventing the many existing lists of top books, these outstanding Mizzou professors from multiple disciplines chose books published since the year 1900 that have been influential in society or in their personal lives.

After Kemper Fellows from across campus made numerous suggestions, a committee of Kemper Fellows and representatives from Ellis library and MU’s University Affairs division hammered out the final list. Books were chosen based on whether they were well-written, would appeal to high school students and could easily be found in libraries, online or in bookstores. Committee members also wanted to make sure the list included diverse authors and a balanced mix of topics. In most cases, they chose only one book per author.

Special thanks to committee members for their hard work: Bill Bondeson, professor of philosophy and family and community medicine; Mary Kay Blakely, associate professor of journalism; Chris Blose, editor, Web Communications; Rachel Brekhus, librarian, Ellis Library; Meera Chandrasekhar, professor of physics and astronomy; Bridget Garwitz, marketing assistant, University Affairs; John Howe, professor of finance; Mary Ryan, head of Ellis Library Reference Services; Nancy West, associate professor of English; and Karen Worley, executive director, MU Publications and Alumni Communication.

 

Smart Reads from Mizzou’s
Top Professors

100 Great Poems of the Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Strand

A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking

A Civil Action, Jonathan Harr

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller

All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren

All the President’s Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, Jonathan Kozol

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman

Animal Farm, George Orwell

Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis

Art as Experience, John Dewey

The Art of Living. The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness, Epictetus with interpretation, Sharon Lebell

A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid

Becoming a Master Student, David Ellis

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Beloved, Toni Morrison

Biophilia, Edward O. Wilson

Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years, Margaret Mead

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, John G. Neihardt

Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin

Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, William Least Heat-Moon

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington

The Coming of the New Deal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The Courage to Create, Rollo May

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton

Daddy Was a Number Runner, Louise Meriwether

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd

Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee, Karl Von Frisch

Dark Harbor: A Poem, Mark Strand

The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick

The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, James D. Watson

Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan, Ronald Spector

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology, Horace Freeland Judson

The Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels

The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery, Janwillem van de Wetering

Eve’s Rib: The Groundbreaking Guide to Women’s Health, Marianne J. Legato

Existentialism and Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

The Feeling Good Handbook, David D. Burns

The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking, Stephen K. Campbell

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen L. Dubner

Frederick Douglass, William S. McFeely

Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love, Dava Sobel

Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Augusto Boal

Gandhi: An Autobiography. The Story of My Experiments With Truth, Mohandas K. Gandhi

Gender and the Musical Canon, Marcia J. Citron

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

The Hours, Michael Cunningham

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

I and Thou, Martin Buber

In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

I Never Had it Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson, Jackie Robinson

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, John Allen Paulos

In the Palm of Darkness, Mayra Montero

In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall

In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics, William Dunham

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

Joys and Sorrows: Reflections, Pablo Casals

King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hochschild

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Language in Thought and Action, S. I. Hayakawa

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South, James Agee and Walker Evans

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

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

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character, David Riesman

Long Goodbye, William Colby

The Lorax, Dr. Seuss

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes

Mandela: The Authorized Biography, Anthony Sampson

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan, Robert Kanigel

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks

Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

My Antonia, Willa Cather

Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women, Geraldine Brooks

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One Two Three … Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science, George Gamow

On Photography, Susan Sontag

On the Road, Jack Kerouac

Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, Peter Hessler

The Other America, Michael Harrington

Palm Sunday, Kurt Vonnegut

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Taylor Branch

Peace Like a River, Leif Enger

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard

The Plague, Albert Camus

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester

The Puzzle Palace: Inside America’s Most Secret Intelligence Organization, James Bamford

Recollections of Things to Come, Elena Garro

Red Azalea, Anchee Min

The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe

Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey

Silent Spring, Rachel Carson

Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

Smart Boys: Talent, Manhood and the Search for Meaning, Barbara A. Kerr and Sanford J. Cohn

Smart Girls: A New Psychology of Girls, Women and Giftedness, Barbara A. Kerr

The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois

The Spiritual Life of Children, Robert Coles

“Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P. Feynman

The Teammates: A Portrait of Friendship, David Halberstam

Tempest-Tost, Robertson Davies

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Thomas Jefferson: A Brief Biography, Dumas Malone

Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

To Know a Fly, Vincent G. Dethier

The Tortilla Curtain, T.C. Boyle

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer

Truman, David McCullough

Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man and Life’s Greatest Lesson, Mitch Albom

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West, Stephen Ambrose

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, John W. Dower

Wasp Farm, Howard E. Evans

W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919, David Levering Lewis

What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Martin Luther King Jr.

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, Robert M. Pirsig