Davidson Professors: What books changed your life in college?

As the school year commences once again, it’s unlikely you’ll find yourself with much free time.  When those rare, luxurious moments do occur, however – whether a class is canceled, or you simply feel the need to spend a quiet Saturday night recuperating – there are few pleasures greater than curling up with a good book.  Reading is also a great opportunity to discover new interests and learn outside the classroom.  As Mark Twain once quipped, “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.”  In that spirit, we asked Davidson professors which books they read and found most influential, when they were in college.  Here are their responses.

Dr. Meghan Griffith, Philosophy

The Republic – Plato

The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky

“Although the works are different in many ways and have different messages, both authors beautifully illustrate the complexities of human nature and the interplay between our emotional and rational selves. Both emphasize the importance of continually struggling to learn and understand. And both stress that education is not a dry exercise consisting of filling one’s head with information. True enlightenment, in many ways, comes from within. It has much to do with how we orient our whole selves towards the world. This is a powerful personal message, but also one that has had a deep influence on the way I try to teach.”

Dr. Peter Ahrensdorf, Political Science

The Iliad– Homer

The Republic– Plato

Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville

Marlborough: His Life and Times– Winston Churchill

“What impressed me most about the Iliad, aside from the beauty of its poetry, was the moving and unforgettable account of friendship, love, and compassion in the midst of war. Plato's Republic was the first book to give me some idea of what philosophy is and what an education is. It also offered a wonderfully vivid account of teaching and of the distinctive relationship between teachers and students--the best account that I know of. Tocqueville's Democracy in America offered me a radically new and powerful perspective on democratic society and therefore on myself, since it explained how it shapes the souls of those who live in it. Churchill's book on the life and times of his great ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, gave me a beautifully written, witty, and exciting portrait of aristocracy and the aristocratic human being.”

Dr. Michael Mossinghoff, Mathematics

Gödel, Escher, Bach– Douglas Hofstadter

“This is really about some of the most surprising results in twentieth-century mathematics: the so-called incompleteness theorems of Godel.  More broadly, though, it looks at intricate structure and self-reference in math, art, and music, all with some extremely clever, self-referential writing.”

Anything by Martin Gardner

“Gardner wrote the "Mathematical Recreations" column of Scientific American for many years, and I discovered some of his collections when I was a student.  Gardner had a knack for explaining interesting and new mathematics through his columns, and I'm sure I'm not the only mathematician who found their interests sparked by his writings.  In fact, there's a large conference held each year dedicated to his memory.”

The C Programming Language– Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie

“I picked this book up early in my undergraduate years, even though my courses were using different languages at the time.  The clean design of this language changed the way many people, including me, have thought about programming since then.”

Dr. David Robb, Philosophy

The Selfish Gene– Richard Dawkins

“When I read it as a student, this book, especially its famous second chapter, was a revelation.”

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion– David Hume

“Hume’s masterpiece showed me the power of careful, systematic philosophical reasoning.”

The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul – Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett

“This is filled with philosophical puzzles and thought-experiments, some of them deep, some just fun. When I read it, I was still deciding on a major—this settled it.”

Dr. Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, History

The Archaeology of Knowledge – Michel Foucault