Improve Your Civic Knowledge: ISI Issues Summer Reading List

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) Offers a Summer Reading List to Improve Student Knowledge of American History, Institutions and Culture

WILMINGTON, Del., July 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For students looking to add a little culture and history to their summer breaks, a new list of books from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) offers compelling vacation- and beach-reading options. The list, which includes thirty books covering a wide range of important figures and themes in American history, political thought, and literature, is offered in response to the dismal results college students nationwide have produced on ISI civic literacy tests.

ISI's national studies on collegiate civic education have empirically demonstrated the failure of American colleges to teach basic knowledge of American history and institutions. Both the 2006 and 2007 studies tested 14,000 freshmen and senior students from 50 colleges and universities across the country, including 25 top-ranked universities and 25 randomly selected schools. Seniors produced an average score of 53 percent in 2006 and 54 percent in 2007, and not one school -- including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton -- could boast a "C" average. The studies also found that the schools themselves bear much of the blame for low scores, since the vast majority do not require the types of core classes and curricula in which students would gain important civic knowledge. The full results of ISI's American civic literacy study and the complete survey questions can be found at www.americancivicliteracy.org.

"The summer months are a perfect time for students to take charge of their own education on America," affirms Dr. Richard Brake of ISI's University Stewardship Division. "We hope that by encouraging students to read these American classics, that they will return to campus hungry for the kinds of courses that will add, not subtract from, their knowledge of American political and cultural life. Teaching America's story must once again become a priority for our nation's colleges and universities, and reading just a few of these books from our list is not a bad place for students to start this life-long process of learning and acculturation."

Below are ISI's thirty recommended books, organized by the categories of American Political Thought, Biography, and Literature:

    Civic Literacy Summer Reading List


    Category One: Political Thought

    Title                    Author              Editor (Publisher) of
                                                 Suggested Edition

    1) "Speech on            Edmund Burke        In Select Works of Edmund
    Conciliation                                 Burke, vol. 1, ed. F.
    with America"                                Canavan (Liberty Fund, 1999)



    2) The Federalist /      Alexander Hamilton, Ed. G. Carey and J.
    The Anti-Federalist      James Madison,      McClellan (Liberty Fund,
                             John Jay,           2001)/Ed. H. Storing (U. of
                             George Clinton,     Chicago,1981)
                             Robert Yates,
                             Samuel Bryan, et al.

    3 )Political Writings of John Adams          Ed. G. Carey (Gateway
    John Adams                                   Editions, 2001)

    4) Democracy in America Alexis de            Ed. H. Mansfield (U. of
                            Tocqueville          Chicago, 2002)

    5) The Lincoln-Douglas  Abraham Lincoln,     Ed. H. Holzer (Fordham Univ.
    Debates: The First      Stephen A. Douglas   Press, 2004)
    Complete, Unexpurgated
    Text

    6) The Civil War: A     Shelby Foote         (Vintage Books, 1986)
    Narrative
    (3 vols.)

    7) Frederick Douglass:  Frederick Douglass    Ed. H. L. Gates
    Autobiographies                               (The Library of America
                                                  College Editions, 1996)

    8) Roots of American    Russell Kirk          (ISI Books, 2003)
    Order

    9) Witness              Whittaker Chambers    (Regnery, 1978)

    10) Unsettling of       Wendell Berry         (Sierra Club Books, 2004)
    America


    Category Two: Biography/Autobiography

    1) Patriarch : George   Richard Norton Smith  (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)
    Washington and the New
    American Nation

    2) John Adams           David G. McCullough   (Simon and Schuster, 2001)

    3) American Sphinx:     Joseph J. Ellis       (Vintage Books, 1998)
    The Character
    of Thomas Jefferson

    4) Alexander Hamilton,  Richard Brookhiser    (Simon & Schuster, 2000)
    American

    5) Abraham Lincoln:     Allen C. Guelzo       (Eerdmans, 2003)
    Redeemer President

    6) Theodore Rex         Edmund Morris         (Random House, 2002)

    7) No Ordinary Time:    Doris Kearns Goodwin  (Simon & Schuster, 1994)
    Franklin and Eleanor
    Roosevelt: The Home
    Front in World War II

    8) Eisenhower:          Stephen Ambrose       (Simon & Schuster, 2004)/
    Soldier, General of                           (Simon & Schuster, 1985)
    the Army, President-Elect,
    1890-1952 (vol. 1) /
    Eisenhower: The
    President (vol. 2)

    9) The Years of Lyndon  Robert A. Caro        (Vintage Books, 1990, 1991,
    Johnson (3 vol.)                              2003)

    10) The Reagan Diaries  Ronald Reagan         Ed. D. Brinkley
                                                  (HarperCollins, 2007)

    Category Three: American Literature

    1) The Complete Tales   Washington Irving     Ed. C. Neider (De Capo
    of Washington Irving                          Press, 1998)

    2) The Scarlet Letter   Nathanial Hawthorne   (Barnes and Noble, 2004)

    3) Moby Dick            Herman Melville       (Barnes and Noble, 2003)

    4) The Adventures of    Mark Twain            (Barnes and Noble, 2003)
    Huckleberry Finn

    5) The Red Badge of     Stephen Crane         (Bantam Doubleday Dell,
    Courage                                       1981)

    6) The Magnificent      Booth Tarkington      (Dover Publications, 2006)
    Ambersons

    7) The Great Gatsby     F. Scott Fitzgerald   (Simon & Schuster, 2004)

    8) Death Comes for the  Willa Cather          (Knopf Publishing, 1990)
    Archbishop

    9) Absalom, Absalom!    William Faulkner      (Random House, 1993)

    10) To Kill a           Harper Lee            (Grand Central Publishing,
    Mockingbird                                   1988)

Though certainly not an exhaustive list, ISI encourages students to use it as a foundation for building their own catalogue of books for future reading. According to Dr. Brake, the organization welcomes comments and suggestions about the lists and hopes the selections help stir a revival in American civic education, furthering the process of improving the civic literacy of all Americans.

About the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) (www.isi.org) was founded in 1953 to further in successive generations of American college youth a better understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that sustain a free and humane society. With ISI's volunteer representatives at over 900 colleges, and with more than 50,000 ISI student and faculty members on virtually every campus in the country, ISI directs tens of thousands of young people each year to a wide array of educational programs that deepen their understanding of the American ideal of ordered liberty.