University of Massachusetts Lowell Reads!

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind.
Books are humanity in print.”  ― Barbara W. Tuchman ( author of the The Guns of August )

Faculty, staff, friends, deans, and vice-chancellors of the University of Massachusetts Lowell were asked a simple question: "Would you please recommend 10 books that we should read?"  Here are the responses received to date. The recommenders are not necessarily declaring this to be their 10 books of all-time. Just 10 books they recommend reading. Fiction, Non-fiction, plays, essays, short stories can be in the mix too. More lists will be added.

UMass Lowell Commonwealth Honors students are encouraged to bring reading, full-force, into their daily lives. The summer is upon us!! Read any 3 books from these lists, read 3 more and then participate in the  UMass Lowell Commonwealth Honors Program's Fall Kicker presentations. Jump in. You can do it. Additional lists will be forthcoming. If interested, email james_canning@uml.edu.

Robert Tamarin
UMass Lowell Dean of Sciences

1. The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
2. Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
3. The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
4. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
5. Startup Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle, Dan Senor
6. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe
7. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
8. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
9. We Were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates
10. Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin

Visual: Documentaries, Exposes, and Historical Dramas
1. The Lottery
2. Waiting for Superman
3. John Adams ( HB0)
4. Penn and Tell's Bull**** (R rated)
5. The Boys of 2nd Street Park

Bridget Marshall
UMass Lowell Faculty, Department of English

1. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
2. Dracula, Bram Stoker
3. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
4. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
5. Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, Sarah Vowell
6. Straight Man, Richard Russo
7. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
8. Beloved, Toni Morrison
9. St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell
10. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Patricia Yates
Assistant Dean, Career Services

1. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
2. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
4.The Novel, James Michener
5. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
6. The Princes of Tides, Pat Conroy
7. Among School Children, Tracy Kidder
8. If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails, Barbara Corcoran
9. Please Understand Me II, David Keirsey
10. Big Russ and Me: Father and Son: Lesson of Life, Tim Russert
Troy Roberts
Friend of the UMass Lowell Honors Program

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
2. The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
3. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
5. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
6. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
7. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
8. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
9. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
10. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Doreen Arcus
Faculty, Department of Psychology
Former Director of the Honors Program

1. Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear
2. Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
3. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
4. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
5. A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
6. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
7. The Secret History of the War on Cancer, Devra Davis
8.The State of Boys Rebellion, Michael D'Antonio
9. Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins
10. The Great Influenza,  John M. Barry

Linda Kistler
Retired Faculty, Dean, Past Athletic Department Faculty Rep.

Published Author of Two Fiction Books

1. The Idea Factory, Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation Jon Gertner
2. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
3. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
4. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
5. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
6. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
7. Crytonomicon, Neal Stephenson
8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre
9. Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
10. The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

David Kalivas
Professor of History, Director of Commonwealth Honors Program
Middlesex Community College

1. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11, Lawrence Wright
2. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, Joseph Stiglitz
3. The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over Ameican History,  Jill Lepore
4. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
5. Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East, Rashid Khalidi
6. Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire, Bernard Lewis
7. When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome
8. Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times, Morris Rossabi, Richard E. Rubenstein
9. Hypatia of Alexandria, Maria Dzielska
10. The Places in Between (travel diary of a walk across Afghanistan, 2002), Rory Stewart

Dana Skinner
Athletic Director
UMass Lowell

1. Playing the Enemy,  John Carlin
2. Lincoln on Leadership, Donald Phillips
3. Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela
4. A Call to Heroism, Peter Gibbon
5. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
6. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
7. Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
8. Profiles in Courage, John Kennedy
9. Jackie Robinson, Arnold Rampersad
10. Make Gentle the Life of this World, Maxwell Kennedy Taylor
Robert Kunzendorf
Faculty, Psychology Department
UMass Lowell

1. Escape from Evil, Ernest Becker
2. Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger
3. Denial of Death, Ernest Becker
4. The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the greatest mathematical  clash of all time, Jason Socrates Bardi
5.Discovery of the Unconscious, Henri Ellenberger
6. Gallileo (play), Bertold Brecht
7. Calligula (play),  Albert Camus
8. Game, Set, and Match, by Len Deighton (spy story)
9. Hook, Line, and Sinker, by Len Deighton (spy story cont.)
10. Faith, Hope, and Charity, by Len Deighton ( spy story finale)

Julie Nash
Acting Dean, College of FAHSS
UMass Lowell

1. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
2. Persuasion, Jane Austen
3. Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
4. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
5. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
6. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
7. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
8. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
9. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
10. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

Peter Weston
UMass Lowell Math and Honors Adjunct Professor


1. The Radiance of Being, Allan Combs
2. The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3. The Ever-Present Origin, Part One, Jean Gebser
4. The Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
5. Integral Psychology, Ken Wilbur
6. Spiral Dynamics, Mastering Values, Leadership and Change,  Don Beck and Christopher Cowan
7. Pyschology of the Future, Stanislav Grof
8. A New Science of Life, Rupert Sheldrake
9. Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas
10. Science and the Akashic Field, An Integral Theory of Everything, Ervin Laszlo

Bill Moloney
Faculty and a Founder of the Department of Computer Science
Voice of Reason
UMass Lowell

1. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
2. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer
4. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
5. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
6. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
7. Collapse, Jared Diamond
8. Trinity, Leon Uris
9. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
10. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

Charlotte Mandell
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
UMass Lowell

1. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. Harry Potter (all 7 books), JK Rowling
4. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
5. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
6. The Ghosts of Belfast, Stuart Neville
7. The Power of One, Bryce Courtney
8. A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George
9. The Number one Ladies Detective Agency, Alexander Smith
10. Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin



Jim Canning
Faculty, Department of Computer Science
Director, Commonwealth Honors Program
UMass Lowell


1. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
2. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
3. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
4. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
5. Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley with Ron Powers
6. My Antonia, Willa Cather
7. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
8. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
9. Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt
10. Crime and Punishment,  Fyodor Dostoevsky

Beth Donaghey
Coordinator, Commonwealth Honors Program
UMass Lowell

1. The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Barabbas, Par Lagerkvist
3. Maus, Art Spiegelman
4. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
5. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw
7. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
8. Children of the Resistance, Lore Cowan
9. Irish Trilogy, Walter Macken
10. The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life, Laurie Notaro
Anita Greenwood
Dean, College of Education
UMass Lowell

1. I, Claudius, Robert Graves
2. Persuasion, Jane Austen
3. Rosalind Franklin - The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox
4. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
5. Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
6. Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
7. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
8. Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
9. The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
10. Will in the World - How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt

Sneak Listen: Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto
Ester Carroll
Database Administrator, Office of Institutional Research
UMass Lowell

1. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
2. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
3. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyan, Edward Fitzgerald
4. Salem's Lot, Stephen King
5. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
6. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
7. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
8. Art Buchwald's Paris, Art Buchwald
9. Least Innocent Blood Be Shed, Philip Hallie
10. Narrative of teh Life of Frederick Douglas,  Frederick Douglas

Jacqueline Moloney
Executive Vice Chancellor
A Founder of the Honors Program
UMass Lowell


1. Bread and Wine, Ignazio Stone
2. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
3. March, Geraldine Brooks
4. The Once and Future King, E.H. White
5. The March, E. Doctorow
6. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Thurston
7. Garden of Last Days, Andre Dubus
8. Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
9. Encouraging the Heart, Kouzes and Posner
10. Let Your Life Speak, Palmer Parker

Stephen Pennell
Former Director and a
Founder of the Honors Program
Head of the Mathematical Sciences Dept.
UMass Lowell

1. USA Trilogy, John Dos Passos
2. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. The Mind-Body Problem, Rebecca Goldstein
5. Virgin Time, Patricia Hampl
6. Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick
7. An American Childhood, Annie Dillard
8. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula LeGuin
9. Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro
10. At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Young Adult Books You May Have Missed

1. Across Five Aprils. Irene Hunt
2. Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech
3. Johnny Tremain, Ester Forbes
4. Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool
5. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred Taylor
6. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
7. Bridge to Terabethis, Katherine Patterson
8. Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson
9. Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
10. Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver

Steven Tello
Associate Vice Chancellor for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development

1. The Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkun
2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
3.The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
4. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Steven Johnson
5.The World is Flat: A Brief History fo the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman
6. The Andrmeda Strain, Michael Chrichton
7. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
8. The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
9. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Norman Maclean
10.One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Poems:
1. Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Emily Dickenson
2. Bells,  Edgar Allen Poe
3. Howl, Alan Ginsburg
4. When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloom'd, Walt Whitman
5. My Favorite Things, John Coltrane (poetic song)
Ahmed Abdelal
Provost
University of Massachusetts Lowell

1. Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, Tim Jeal
2. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
3. The Cat's Table, Michael Odaatje
4. Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff
5. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Partha Chowdhury
Professor of Physics
University of Massachusetts Lowell

1. The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
2. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4. 1984, George Orwell
5. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
6. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
7. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
8.The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carre
9. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury





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