Remedial reading

These books you should have read in school were chosen by Stephen Granbard, former editor of Daedalus and professor emeritus at Brown (PW Daily, November 8):

* Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville (University of Chicago Press). First published in 1835, this work extols the U.S. while warning of its vulnerabilities, particularly the "tyranny of the majority."

* An American Dilemma, by Gunnar Myrdal (Transaction). Published in 1944, it documents the centuries of injustice and oppression that made the treatment of black men and women a national and international disgrace.

* The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (Penguin). Brilliantly ironic, Gibbon's 1776 masterpiece remains a welcome reminder of the contribution a man of genius can make to an incontestably important theme: the evanescence of empires.

* Hitler: 1889-1936; Hubris and Hitler: 1936-1945, by Ian Kershaw (Norton). This massive two-volume biography is an incomparably erudite study of the tyrant whose rise and Fall reminds us of the folly of nations and of the thin veneer civilized behavior proves to be in a troubled age.

* Road From Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway (Vintage). A moving autobiography from a writer raised in a world too little known: the Australian outback. From that context, Conway offers a book that manages to reveal a great deal about the 20th century.

* Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (Bantam). This work by a very young woman shows an understanding of the human heart that has rarely been surpassed.

COPYRIGHT 2004 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning