My Booklist

  • Here is a list of books I recommend students read that will supplement the learning taking place in class.

Prehistory to Civil War

  • My Brother Sam Is Dead

    My Brother Sam Is Dead

    by James Lincoln Collier Year Published: Average
    The classic story of one family torn apart by the Revolutionary War. All his life, Tim Meeker has looked up to his brother Sam. Sam's smart and brave -- and is now a part of the American Revolution. Not everyone in town wants to be a part of the rebellion. Most are supporters of the British -- including Tim and Sam's father. With the war soon raging, Tim know he'll have to make a choice -- between the Revolutionaries and the Redcoats . . . and between his brother and his father.

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

    by Frederick Douglass Year Published: Challenging
    The impassioned abolitionist and eloquent orator provides graphic descriptions of his childhood and horrifying experiences as a slave as well as a harrowing record of his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom. Published in 1845 to quell doubts about his origins, the Narrative is admired today for its extraordinary passion, sensitive descriptions, and storytelling power. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)
  • The Last of the Mohicans

    The Last of the Mohicans

    by James Fenimore Cooper Year Published: Challenging
    A massacre at a colonial garrison at Fort William Henry during the French Indian War, the kidnapping of 2 pioneer sisters by Iroquois tribesmen, the treachery of a renegade brave, and the ambush of innocent settlers create an unforgettable picture of American frontier life in this imaginative, innovative, and classic 18th-century adventure — the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales."

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Uncle Tom's Cabin

    by Harriet Beecher Stowe Year Published: Challenging
    The moving abolitionist novel that fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852 and melodramatically condemned the institution of slavery through such powerfully realized characters as Tom, Eliza, Topsy, Eva, and Simon Legree. First published more than 150 years ago, this monumental work is today being reexamined by critics, scholars, and students.

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)

Religious Texts

Post-Civil War to Present Day

  • All Quiet on the Western Front

    All Quiet on the Western Front

    by Erich Maria Remarque Year Published: Challenging
    Considered by many the greatest war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front is Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpiece of the German experience during World War I. I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . . This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive.

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)
  • Hiroshima

    Hiroshima

    by John Hersey Year Published: Average
    "At, exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk." When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, few could have anticipated its potential for devastation. Pulitzer prize-winning author John Hersey recorded the stories of Hiroshima residents shortly after the explosion and, in 1946, Hiroshima was published, giving the world first-hand accounts from people who had survived it. The words of Miss Sasaki, Dr. Fujii, Mrs. Nakamara, Father Kleinsorg, Dr. Sasaki, and the Reverend Tanimoto gave a face to the statistics that saturated the media and solicited an overwhelming public response. Whether you believe the bomb made the difference in the war or that it should never have been dropped, "Hiroshima" is a must read for all of us who live in the shadow of armed conflict.

    Note: This book is available in our Library.
    Comments (-1)

Works of the Muckrakers