… to the knowledge presented in books.

Knowledge liberates the mind and enhances one’s imagination.

As experience has shown, academic and professional success is often dependent upon one’s communicative skills – effective oral and written communication and critical, analytical, and logical reasoning. In order to cultivate such skills one needs to read.

Sample and read books, newspapers, magazines, sports periodicals, novels, autobiographies, or anything that interests you.

Reading will let you have a good conversation with yourself.

Here is a short, recommended reading list.

General

Bible, especially the “Book of Job.”

Homer, The Odyssey

Sophocles, Oedipus the King

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Sports Illustrated

Science News

Angelou, M I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, J Go Tell it to the Mountain

Biko, Steve Black Consciousness in South Africa

Cade, Toni The Black Woman

Cervantes Don Quixote

Clarke, John H. Malcolm X: The Man and His Times

Darwin, Charles The Origin of the Species

Dickens, Charles Great Expectations

Douglas, Frederick Autobiography

DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks

Epstein, H Children of the Holocaust

Haley, Alex Roots

Huxley, A Brave New World

LoveJoy, Arthur The Great Chain of Being

Melville, Herman Moby Dick

Shakespeare, W. Hamlet

Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath

Tennessee, W. The Glass Menagerie

Thoreau, Henry Walden and Civil Disobedience

Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina

Twain, Mark Huckleberry Finn

Bushnaq Iner Arab Folktales

De Onis, Hariet Spanish Stories and Tales

Clarke, John H. American Negro Short Stories

Dineson, Isak Seven Gothic Tales

Sociology

Durkheim, Emile Suicide

Weber, Max The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Mills, C. Wright The Power Elite

De Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America

Freud, Sigmund Civilization and Its Discontents

Anthropology

Mead, Margaret Sex and Temperament

Turnbull, Colin M. The Lonely African

Montagu, Ashley Man and Aggression

Malinowski, B Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Embree, Edwin R. Indians of the Americas

Read to keep the flame of knowledge burning. It shall set you free!