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New England Seminar Past Readings
2023
- Martha Ackmann, These Fevered Days
- Deborah Cohen, Last Call at the Hotel Imperial
- Ann Petry, The Narrows
- Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain
- Scott Borchert, Republic of Detours
- John Taylor Williams, Shores of Bohemia
2021–2022
- Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
- Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War
- Madeline Miller, Circe: A Novel
- George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle
- Henry James, The Aspern Papers
- Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury
- Tobey Pearl, Terror to the Wicked
- Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea
- John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
- Andrea Barrett, The Air We Breathe
- Donna Tartt, The Secret History
- Ernest Hebert, The Dogs of March
- Mark Frost, The Greatest Game Ever Played
- Jennifer Haigh, Mercy Street
2020–2021
- Eve LaPlante, American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans
- Carolyn Chute, The Beans of Egypt
- Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
- Stephen Puleo, Voyage of Mercy
- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (optional reading J. C. Woods, The Voices of Silence: Meditations on T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets)
- Tracey Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer
- Jeanna Ellsworth and Kent Garrett, The Last Negroes at Harvard
- Dorothy West, The Wedding
- Nicholas Weber, Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to New Art
- Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance
- Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
- Kerri Greenidge, Black Radical
2019–2020
- Patrick Keefe, Say Nothing
- William Heat-Moon, Blue Highways
- Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members
- Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age
- Jenna Blum, The Lost Family
- Katharine Smyth, All the Lives We Ever Lived
- Kevin Birmingham, The Most Dangerous Book
- Christopher Castellani, Leading Men
- Richard Russo, Empire Falls
2018–2019
- Donald Hall, String Too Short to be Saved
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
- Donna Lucey, Sargent’s Women
- Anita Diamant, The Boston Girl
- Jennifer Haigh, Heat and Light
- Charles Mann, 1491
- Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
- Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings
- Jane Goodrich, The House at Lobster Cove
- George Santayana, The Last Puritan
2017
- Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
- Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers
- Howard Frank Mosher, Stranger in the Kingdom
- John Kaag, American Philosophy
- Elyssa East, Dogtown
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
- David Grann, The Lost City of Z
- George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
- Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Donald Hall, String Too Short to be Saved
2016
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time
- John E. Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson
- Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
- Jane Brox, Clearing Land
- Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin
- Patricia O’Toole, Five of Hearts
- Geraldine Brooks, People of the Book
- Colin Woodward, Lobster Coast
- Edith Wharton, Fighting France: From Dunkirk to Belfort
2015
- David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest
- Elizabeth Hope Cushing, Community by Design
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Autocrat of Breakfast Table
- John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
- Stephen Vincent Benet, “The Devil and Daniel Webster”
- Henry James, The Bostonians
- Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence
- Megan Marshall, Margaret Fuller
- Jill Lepore, Book of Ages
- Colm Tóibín, The Master
2014
- John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
- Herman Melville, Typee
- Louisa May Alcott, Transcendental Wild Oats
- Eugene O’Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra
- W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks
- Danzy Senna, Caucasia
- Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts
- John Cheever, The Wapshot Scandal
2013
- Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
- Robert Edsal, The Monuments Men
- R.H. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
- John Updike, Couples
- Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
- Brian Moore, Black Robe
- Henry Beston, Northern Farm
- Jill Lepore, The Name of War
- Witold Rybcynski, Clearing in the Distance
- Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
2012
- Michael Rawson, Eden on the Charles
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun
- John Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father
- Thomas O’Connor, Civil War Boston
- Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics
- Annette Gordon-Reed,The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
- Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- Alex Ross, Listen to This
- Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
- Paul Schneider, The Enduring Shore: A History of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket
2011
- Daniel McCall, Citizens of Somewhere Else: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James
- James Boswell, London Journal, 1762-1763
- Colm Toibin, The Master
- Rachel Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the 18th Century Northeast
- Henry James, The Sacred Fount
- Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- Michael J. Rawson, Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston
2010
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, A Team of Rivals
- Trevor Corson, The Secret Life of Lobsters
- Samuel Pepys, A Pepys Anthology
- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
2009
- David Remnick (ed.), Just Enough Liebling
- Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
- Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
- John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
- David McCullough, The Great Bridge
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
- Lukas, Common Ground
- Hentoff, Boston Boy
- Strout, Olive Kitteridge
2008
- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
- G. Edward White, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Shaun O’Connell, Imagining Boston
- Richard Russo, Empire Falls
- Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes
- Robert Caro, The Power Broker
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- Alfred Kazin, A Walker in the City
- Wilfred Sheed, The House That George Built
2007
- Henry Adams, Esther
- R. H. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
- C. F. Woolson, “Miss Grief” & “St. Clair Flats”
- Henry James, The Aspern Papers
- Edith Wharton, Summer & Ethan Frome
- Stephen and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk
- David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed
- Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower
- Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury
- John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Evangeline”
2006
- John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tulmutuous Election of 1800
- Andrew Delbanco, Writing New England: An Anthology from the Puritans to the Present
- Megan Marshall, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism
- Gary Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America
- Henry Adams, The History of the United States of America During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson
- Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
- Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
- Ida Hay, Science in the Pleasure Ground: A History of the Arnold Arboretum
- Zadie Smith, On Beauty
- Nicholas F. Webber, Patron Saints: Five Rebels Who Opened America to New Art
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (with essay by D. H. Lawrence)
2005
- Larry McMurtry, Duane Depressed
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking
- Emily Dickinson (selected poems)
- Andrew Delbanco, Writing New England, Dissident Dreamers
- Simon Schama, Dead Certainties
- Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
- Peter Davison, The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston, 1955-60
- Henry W. Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha
2004
- Robert Lowell (selected poems)
- John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Short Essay on Civil Obedience
- William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
- Robert Frost (selected poems)
- William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes
- Henry Adams, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
- John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
2003
- Henry James, The Europeans
- Arthur Miller, The Crucible
- Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America
- Mona Domosh, Invented Cities
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard
- Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma
- Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin
- Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure
2000–2002
- George Santayana, The Last Puritan
- Henry James, The Bostonians
- Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick L. Olmstead & America in the 19 th C.
- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
- Herman Melville, Billy Budd
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Blithedale Romance
- Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club
- Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
- Robert Linscott, ed., State of Mind
- Edwin O’Connor, The Last Hurrah
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (selected short stories)
- Alice Stone Blackwell, Growing Up in Boston’s Gilded Age 1872-74
- Robert B. Parker, Looking for Rachel Wallace
- Dorothy West, The Living is Easy
- Henry Mayer, All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison
- J.P.Marquand, The Late George Apley
- William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham