Outstanding and Recommended Books
for College Bound Students
and All Others Who Want the Advantages
in Life of Being Well-Read
All titles listed are available in the
Curtis Senior High School Library
2011
Nonfiction
Abraham Lincoln: the war years by Carl Sandburg
Act one: an autobiography by Moss Hart
Alive: the story of the Andes survivors by Piers Paul Read
All the President’s men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Anne Frank: the diary of a young girl by Anne Frank
Anne Frank remembered: the story of the woman who helped to hide the Frank family by
Miep Gies
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
Beautiful boy: a father’s journey through his son’s addiction by David Sheff
Bite of the mango by Mariatu Kamara
Bitterly divided: the South’s inner Civil War by David Williams
Black boy: a record of childhood and youth by Richard Wright
Black dance in America: a history through its people by James Haskins
Black music in America: a history through its people by James Haskins
Bloods: an oral history of the Vietnam War by Terry Wallace
Born standing up: a comic’s life by Steve Martin
Botany of desire: a plant’s-eye view of the world by Michael Pollan
Boy who harnessed the wind: creating currents of electricity and hope by William
Kamkwamba
Brief history of time: from the big bang to black holes by Stephen Hawking
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee: an Indian history of the American West by Dee Brown
Chinese Cinderella: the true story of an unwanted daughter by Adeline Mah
Clarence Darrow for the defense by Irving stone
Colleges that change lives: 40 schools that will change the way you think about colleges by
Loren Pope
Cosmos by Carl Sagan
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Damned lies and statistics: untangling numbers from the media, politicians, and activists by
Joel Best
Day one: before Hiroshima and after by Peter Wyden
Days of grace: a memoir by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad
Dear America: letters home from Vietnam, Bernard Edelman, editor
Death be not proud: a memoir by John Gunther
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
Devil’s highway: a true story by Luis Alberto Urrea
Devil’s teeth: a true story of obsession and survival among America’s great white sharks by
Susan Casey
Eagle blue: a team, a tribe, and a high school basketball season in Arctic Alaska by Michael
D’Orso
Eight men out: the Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof
Elements of library research: what every student needs to know by Mary George
Eric by Doris Lund
Everything we had: an oral history of the Vietnam War by thirty-three American soldiers
who fought it, Al Santoli, editor
Eyes on the prize: America’s civil rights years 1954-1965 by Juan Williams
Favorite folktales from around the world, Jane Yolen, editor
Fermat’s enigma: the epic quest to solve the world’s greatest mathematical problem by
Simon Singh
First freedom: the tumultuous history of free speech in America by Nat Hentoff
First they killed my father: a daughter of Cambodia remembers by Loung Ung
From clueless to class act: manners for the modern man by Jodi Smith
From clueless to class act: manners for the modern woman by Jodi Smith
Girls like us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon---and the journey of a generation by
Sheila Weller
Glass castle: a memoir by Jeannette Walls
Going over to your place: poems for each other, selected by Paul B. Janeczko
Gorillas in the mist by Dian Fossey
Greasy rider: two dudes, one fry-oil-powered car, and a cross-country search for a
greener future by Greg Melville
Green book: the everyday guide to saving the planet one simple step at a time by
Elizabeth Rogers
Growing up by Russell Baker
Having our say: the Delany sisters’ first one hundred years by Sara and Elizabeth Delany
Here I stand: a life of Martin Luther by Roland H. Bainton
Hiroshima by John Hersey
History of art by H.W. Janson and Anthony F. Janson
Hitler, a study in tyranny by Alan Louis Bullock
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Hungry planet: what the world eats by Peter Menzel
I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
In search of excellence: lessons from America’s best run companies by Thomas J. Peters
and Robert H. Waterman
In search of meaning: living religions of the world by Carl Voss
In these girls, hope is a muscle by Madeleine Blais
Into thin air: a personal account of the Mount Everest disaster by John Krakauer
Joy of music by Leonard Bernstein
Kaffir boy: the true story of a black youth’s coming of age in Apartheid South Africa by
Mark Mathabane
Lakota woman by Mary Brave Bird (Crow Dog) and Richard Erdoes
Land of our own: an oral autobiography by Golda Meir
Let the trumpet sound: the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Stephen B. Oates
Long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah
Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of
his time by Dava Sobel
Lucky by Alice Sebold
Maggie’s American dream: the life and times of a black family by James P. Comer
Magical life of Long Tack Sam by Anne Marie Fleming
Making movies work: thinking like a filmmaker by Jon Boorstin
Maus: a survivor’s tale by Art Spiegelman
Maus II, a survivor’s tale: here my troubles began by Art Spiegelman
Middle of everywhere: helping refugees enter the American community by Mary Bray
Pipher
Mosque by David Macaulay
My start-up life: what a (very) young CEO learned on his journey through Silicon Valley by
Ben Casnocha
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Napoleon by David Chandler
Never to forget: the Jews of the Holocaust by Milton Meltzer
Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
Night by Elie Weisel
Out law: what LGBT youth should know about their legal rights by Lisa Keen
Out of orbit: the true story of how three astronauts found themselves hundreds of miles
above the earth with no way home by Chris Jones
Paula by Isabel Allende
Photographer’s handbook by John Hedgecoe
Portrait of myself by Margaret Bourke-White
Power of myth by Joseph Campbell
Power of photography: how photographs changed our lives by Vicki Goldberg
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Profiles in courage by John F. Kennedy
Race beat: the press, the civil rights struggle, and the awakening of a nation by Gene
Roberts
Race to save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose
Radioactive boy scout: the frightening true story of a whiz kid and his homemade
nuclear reactor by Ken Silverstein
Rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang
Red scarf girl: a memoir of the cultural revolution by Ji-li Jiang
Rescue: the story of how gentiles saved the Jews in the Holocaust by Milton Meltzer
Reviving Ophelia: saving the selves of adolescent girls by Mary Pipher
Right stuff by Tom Wolfe
Roots by Alex Haley
Roosevelt family of Sagamore Hill by Hermann Hagedorn
Search for King Arthur by David Day
Second wind: the memoirs of an opinionated man by Bill Russell and Taylor Branch
Seven storey mountain by Thomas Merton
Silent spring by Rachel Carson
Small victories: the real world of a teacher, her students, and their high school by Samuel
G. Freedman
Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach
Super crunchers: why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart by Ian Ayres
Taste of sweet: our complicated love affair with our favorite treats by Joanne Chen
Terror in the name of God: why religious militants kill by Jessica Stern
There are no children here: the story of two boys growing up in the other America by Alex
Kotlowitz
This life by Sidney Poitier
Tipping point: how little things can make a big difference by Malcolm Gladwell
Tisha: the story of a young teacher in the Alaska wilderness by Anne Pardy
Tribe apart: a journey into the heart of American adolescence by Patricia Hersch
Tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man and life’s greatest lesson by Mitch Albom
Tweak: growing up on methamphetamines by Nic Sheff
Unbroken: a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption by Laura
Hillenbrand
Undaunted courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the opening of the
American west by Stephen E. Ambrose
Up from slavery: an autobiography by Booker T. Washington
Voices of AIDS: twelve unforgettable people talk about how AIDS has changed their lives
by Michael Thomas Ford
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Warriors don’t cry by Melba Beals
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Way past cool by Jess Mowry
Way we work: getting to know the amazing human body by David Macaulay
What color is your parachute? : a practical manual for job-hunters and career-changers by
Richard Nelson Bolles
What to listen for in music by Aaron Copland
Wheelchair warrior: gangs, disability, and basketball by Melvin Juette
Who the hell is Pansy O’Hara? : the fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved
books by Jenny Bond
Woman in the mists: the story of Dian Fossey and the mountain gorillas of Africa by Farley
Mowat
Woman warrior: memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston
Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and his family by Catherine Drinker Bowen
Fiction
1984 by George Orwell
Absolute true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Accidental tourist by Anne Tyler
Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel del Saavedra Cervantes
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
All quiet on the western front by Erich Maria Remarque
American tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Andromeda strain by Michael Crichton
Animal dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
Animal farm by George Orwell
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation, Vol. 1: the Pox Party by M.
T. Anderson
Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation, Vol. 2: The kingdom on the
waves by M. T. Anderson
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Bean trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Bell for Adano by John Hersey
Bell jar by Sylvia Plath
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Bleak house by Charles Dickens
Bluest eye by Toni Morrison
Book thief by Markus Zusak
Brave new world by Aldous Huxley
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Caine mutiny by Herman Wouk
Call of the wild by Jack London
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger
Cat’s cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
China boy by Gus Lee
Chocolate war by Robert Cormier
Chosen by Chaim Potok
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Color purple by Alice Walker
Complete tales and poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cry, the beloved country by Alan Paton
Curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Death in the family by James Agee
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dune by Frank Herbert
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Ella Minnow Pea: a novel in letters by Mark Dunn
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
Ender’s game by Orson Scott Card
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Everything that rises must converge by Flannery O’Connor
Extremely loud & incredibly close by Sung J. Woo
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fall of the House of Usher, and other tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Far from the madding crowd by Thomas Hardy
Farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fathers and sons by Ivan Turgenev
Feed by M. T. Anderson
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
For whom the bell tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Forgotten fire by Adam Bagdasarian
Go tell it on the mountain by James Baldwin
God of animals by Aryn Kyle
Going after Cacciato: a novel by Tim O’Brien
Golden compass by Philip Pullman
Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell
Grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck
Great expectations by Charles Dickens
Green mansions by W. H. Hudson
Grendel by John Gardner
Gulliver’s travels by Jonathan Swift
Handmaid’s tale by Margaret Atwood
Heart is a lonely hunter by Carson McCullers
The house on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
How the Garcia girls lost their accents by Julia Alvarez
I never promised you a rose garden by Joanne Greenberg
If Beale Street could talk by James Baldwin
In country by Bobbie Anne Mason
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Joy luck club by Amy Tan
Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Killer angels by Michael Shaara
King must die by Mary Renault
Kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
Lesson before dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Life is funny by E. R. Frank
Little prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Look homeward angel: a story of the buried life by Thomas Wolfe
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Love is eternal by Irving Stone
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Martian chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Member of the wedding by Carson McCullers
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Mill on the floss by George Eliot
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr
Native son by Richard Wright
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nineteen minutes by Jodi Picoult
Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts
Nothing but the truth by Avi
Of human bondage by William Somerset Maugham
Of mice and men by John Steinbeck
Of such small differences by Joanne Greenberg
Old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway
Once and future king by T. H. White
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey
Painted bird by Jerzy N. Kosinski
Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac
Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Pillars of the earth by Ken Follett
The plot against America by Philip Roth
Portrait of an artist as a young man by James Joyce
Postman by David Brin
Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen
Red badge of courage by Stephen Crane
Road by Cormac McCarthy
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard
Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Schindler’s list by Thomas Keneally
Sea of grass by Conrad Richter
Secret life of bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Ship breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
Shizuko’s daughter by Kyoko Mori
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Slaughterhouse five; or, the children’s crusade by Kurt Vonnegut
Sold by Patricia McCormick
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011
Someday this pain will be useful to you by Peter Cameron
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Stranger by Albert Camus
Sula by Toni Morrison
Sunrise over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
Tale of two cities by Charles Dickens
Tell me that you love me, Junie Moon by Marjorie Kellogg
Terminal man by Michael Crichton
Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe
Things they carried: a work of fiction by Tim O’Brien
Time machine by H.G. Wells
To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
War and peace by Leo Tolstoy
Warriors don’t cry by Melba Beals
What is what: the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: a novel by Dave Eggers
When legends die by Hal Borland
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West: a novel by Gregory Maguire
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Yearling by Marjorie Rawlings
Yellow raft on blue water by Michael Dorris
Created by J. Carlson, Curtis Senior High School, April 2011