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These Are the Books That Colleges Think Every Freshman Should Read

By  Audrey Williams June and 
Jacquelyn Elias
July 21, 2021

Many students heading off to college for the first time this fall already have a college-level assignment to complete: Read a book over the summer, and come to campus prepared to discuss it.

But those students won’t be reading just any book. It will be a “common reading,” a book selected by their institution to create a shared experience and be the subject of group discussions among freshmen. Some of the books are intended to help raise awareness of social issues, and are the subject of lectures, performances, or author visits.

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These Are the Books That Colleges Think Every Freshman Should Read

By Audrey Williams June and Jacquelyn Elias

July 21, 2021

Many students heading off to college for the first time this fall already have a college-level assignment to complete: Read a book over the summer, and come to campus prepared to discuss it.

But those students won’t be reading just any book. It will be a “common reading,” a book selected by their institution to create a shared experience and be the subject of group discussions among freshmen. Some of the books are intended to help raise awareness of social issues, and are the subject of lectures, performances, or author visits.

The tradition goes by many names. It’s “One Book, One Campus” at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania and Pierce College. It’s called “The Big Read” at Purdue University and at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. At Sussex County Community College, it’s called “Campus Novel.” And Washburn University’s common-reading program is dubbed “iRead.”

As varied as the names of the programs is what students read. The Chronicle analyzed four academic years’ worth of common reads — more than 1,000 titles at more than 700 institutions — to learn more about the books students are asked to read and the topics explored.

Among the findings: Students don’t always read books. Individual essays, poems, short stories, a podcast, TedTalks, films, and even a Netflix series (BoJack Horseman, if you’re wondering) all made an appearance.

Personal narratives were especially popular: One out of five assignments were biographies or memoirs. The topics of the common readings included immigration, education, technology, politics, history, and psychology, among others (see the Methodology section below for more information about how we categorized the main themes).

Check out more trends, and explore the data set, below.

These Were the Most Common Readings

Title
1
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (73 occurrences)
2
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (57 occurrences)
3
What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha (37 occurrences)
4
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (35 occurrences)
5
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (32 occurrences)
6
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (31 occurrences)
7
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet (29 occurrences)
8
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah (28 occurrences)
8
Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work by David Isay (28 occurrences)
9
There There by Tommy Orange (24 occurrences)
10
Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream by Joshua Davis (21 occurrences)

Contemporary Works Dominate

A Focus on America’s Fraught Racial Past and Present

Topics Ebb and Flow

Some Books Are Campus Favorites

Becoming a Learner: Realizing the Opportunity of Education by Matthew L. Sanders
Monmouth College
A Few Good Men by Aaron Sorkin
The Citadel
Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera
University of California - Santa Cruz, Cowell College
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
University of California - Santa Cruz, Cowell College
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
University of California - Santa Cruz, Oakes College
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, eds.
University of Louisiana - Monroe

From 2017 to 2020, Just Mercy was assigned by more colleges than any other.

It held the top spot for 2017 and 2018, while Educated claimed the lead in 2019 and 2020.

Four of the top reads were made into films: Between the World and Me, Just Mercy, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream.

More than 70 percent of the common-reading works were produced in or after 2010.

But some were produced centuries ago, such as The Odyssey by Homer, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

About four in 10 common reads were about African Americans or race or race relations.

From 2017 to 2020, the share of books about African Americans saw a decline while books on race or race relations saw a comparable increase.

Several other topics, including religion, history, family, immigration, and others, saw decreases from 2017 to 2020.

Freshmen at these institutions were assigned to read the same book all four years.

Explore the full data set below.

Clear Search
xYour search did not return any results. Check for mis-spellings or try shortening your search term.
All topics
  • All topics
  • Africa
  • African American
  • Anthropology
  • Asia
  • Asian
  • Asian American
  • Biology
  • Business
  • Caribbean
  • Christianity
  • Climate Change
  • College/College Life
  • Coming of Age
  • Crime/Criminal Justice
  • Criticism
  • Disability
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Family
  • Fantasy/Sci-Fi
  • Feminism
  • Fine Arts
  • Food
  • Genetics
  • Health
  • History
  • Holocaust
  • Humor
  • Immigration
  • Inspirational
  • Islam
  • Journalism
  • Latin America
  • Latino/a
  • LGBTQ
  • Mythology
  • Native American
  • Philosophy
  • Physics
  • Politics
  • Psychology
  • Race/Race Relations
  • Religion
  • Science
  • Self-Help
  • Social Justice
  • Sociology
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Travel
  • Urban Studies
  • War
All publish dates
  • All publish dates
  • Published before 1950
  • 1950-59
  • 1960-69
  • 1970-79
  • 1980-89
  • 1990-99
  • 2000-9
  • Since 2010
Year assigned
  • Year assigned
  • 2017-18
  • 2018-19
  • 2019-20
  • 2020-21
Reading format
  • All formats
  • Audio
  • Book
  • Short Subjects
  • Visual Arts
 

SOURCE: Penguin Random House Common Reads

Methodology

The Chronicle’s analysis is based on the common first-year reading lists compiled by the publisher Penguin Random House for four academic years: 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21. The lists are not comprehensive, meaning that some colleges’ common-reading programs are not included or are not included in every year. The lists may have been updated by Penguin Random House since mid-May, when The Chronicle downloaded the titles to analyze them.

Forty-three institutions were excluded from the data set because their common-reading programs were suspended due to the pandemic or they did not list individual titles.

The dates of publication are grouped by decade for ease of sorting and presentation. For books, the date is based on the year the work was published, according to the Library of Congress or Goodreads. For films, podcasts, videos, and TV shows or series, the publication date is when they were first aired. For speeches and lectures the publication date is when they were first delivered, except for those labeled in the lists as part of a book that was published later. The publication date for plays is when they were first published.

In general, we used the Library of Congress or Goodreads to determine what topics to assign to each work. In some cases, we also used a combination of book summaries, book and video excerpts, and our best guesses.

Although some works spanned multiple topics, we limited the number to three for each title and chose the ones that seemed to best fit it. The number of topics in the entire data set was limited to 53; some of them are meant to encompass more-specific subject areas. For instance, “Health” covers books about physical and mental health, and “Crime/Criminal Justice” refers to true-crime stories, accounts of gun violence, and books about the criminal-justice system. “African American,” “Native American,” “Latino/a,” “Asian American,” and the like cover works whose subject matter centers on those racial or ethnic groups.

Genres represent subcategories within the various formats of the works. For example, fiction, nonfiction, and biography/memoir are genres within the book format. Films, TV shows, videos, and paintings are genres of the visual-arts format.

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Update (July 27, 2021, 5:49 p.m.): The database has been updated to remove books that were originally listed as assigned by Princeton University but were choices of the undergraduate student government, and to replace a book listed for CUNY-Baruch College. The charts have been updated to reflect those changes.
A version of this article appeared in the August 6, 2021, issue.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
DataTeaching & LearningStudent Success
Audrey Williams June
Audrey Williams June is the news-data manager at The Chronicle. She explores and analyzes data sets, databases, and records to uncover higher-education trends, insights, and stories. Email her at audrey.june@chronicle.com, or follow her on Twitter @audreywjune.
Jacquelyn Elias
Jacquelyn Elias is a news applications developer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She builds data visualizations and news applications. Follow her on Twitter @jacquelynrelias, or email her at jacquelyn.elias@chronicle.com.
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