Continuing a tradition that began in 2007, new students at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service have compiled a list of books they recommend others read.
The list contains 31 books not previously selected by students from 10 earlier classes and seven books that had been recommended at least once before. For the fifth time in 11 years, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho was chosen – the most for any book.
The list also includes two works by noted Nigerian author Chimamanda Negozi Adichie. Several of the books deal with issues of social change or injustice and a large majority are non-fiction.
The books will be on display at the Clinton School’s Sturgis Hall throughout the 2016-2017 year and will also be added to the school’s permanent collection. Printed lists will also be available at Wordsworth Books in Little Rock and at the Central Arkansas Library System’s main library. The list is also distributed to over 900 independent book stores throughout the country.
2016 Clinton School Recommended Reading List:
Darlynton Adegor: Holy Bible
Rebecca Agyei: Night by Elie Wiesel
Amie Alexander: Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an
Ordinary World by Bob Goff
Hannah Bahn: Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
by Debby Irving
Reggie Ballard: Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest your Destiny by Hill Harper
Caitlin Campbell: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Catherine Campos: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Madeleine Chaisson: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria
E. Anzaldua
Susanna Creed: Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Brittney Dennis: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the
Leap….and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Caroline Dunlap: We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Mollie Henager: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Zack Huffman: Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert
Lucy Kagan: Capital, Volume I by Karl Marx
Megan Kurten: Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography
Wonks by Ken Jennings
Steven Kwizera: Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man’s Tour of Duty
Inside the IRS by Richard Yancey
Domenick Lasora: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Jason Lochmann: On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
Emily Loker: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Crystal Mercer: The Coming by Daniel Black
Chelsea Miller: World Changing 101: Challenging the Myth of
Powerlessness by David LaMotte
Tony Nickerson: Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just by
Timothy Keller
Ross Owyoung: Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Colby Qualls: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by
Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Vinay Raj: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Natalie Ramm: The Circle by Dave Eggers
Liz Reich: Bridges Out of Poverty: Strategies for Professionals and
Communities by Ruby K. Payne
Paxton Richardson: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
Fiona Sloan: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Emily Smith: To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Thad Smith: Fathered by God: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach
You by John Eldredge
Josh Snyder: Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
Nick Stevens: Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of
Transformational Development by Bryant L. Myers
Emilie Street: Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim
Crow Justice by David M. Oshinsky
Ravyn Towns: #GirlBoss by Sophia Amoruso
Andrew Treviño: Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the
Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Brandon Treviño: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander