“College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.”
“大学：两百个人读同一本书。这显然是个错误。两百个人可以读两百本书。”
So wrote John Cage, composer, teacher, and lifelong student. And he had a point. If everybody in your class reads the same book, what hope is there of a chance encounter between two random texts?
作曲家、教师兼终身学习者约翰·凯奇如是写道 。他的确有道理。如果班上每个人都读同一本书，两本随机文本之间还有什么偶然相遇的希望呢？
Thanks to the Open Syllabus Project, you can now access the reading lists of more than 2,500 colleges around the country. Whatever subject you’re studying, it is now easy to diversify your reading without straying from reputable sources. Or, if you can’t enroll in college right now, create your own reading list for a bit of home-schooling.
得益于 “开放课程项目”（Open Syllabus Project） ，您现在可以访问全美超过 2500 所大学的阅读书目。无论您学习什么科目，现在都可以轻松地丰富您的阅读内容，而无需偏离可靠的来源。或者，如果您现在无法入读大学，也可以创建自己的阅读书目，在家学习。
Degree Query was curious what the landscape of American college books looks like. What are the texts that are informing tomorrow’s society?
Degree Query 很想知道美国大学教材的现状如何。哪些教材能够影响未来的社会？
We used Open Syllabus to identify the most commonly assigned college books in every state, overall, and in five core subjects: Political Science, Business, Computer Science, Economics, and (of course) English Literature.
我们使用开放教学大纲来确定每个州、总体以及五个核心学科中最常见的大学教材：政治学、商业、计算机科学、经济学和（当然）英语文学。
We also compared Ivy League reading lists to those of America’s top public schools. And finally, we analyzed the gender diversity of the books in our study. Don’t forget to shop indie!
我们还将常春藤盟校的阅读书单与美国顶尖公立学校的阅读书单进行了比较。最后，我们分析了研究中书籍的性别多样性。别忘了去独立书籍店看看哦！
Key findings 主要发现
- The most commonly assigned college book in the US is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
美国大学里最常指定的书籍是玛丽雪莱的 《弗兰肯斯坦》 。 - Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is the most-assigned book in Ivy League colleges, appearing in 209 syllabi.
托马斯·霍布斯的《利维坦》 是常春藤盟校指定使用最多的书籍，出现在 209 份教学大纲中。 - William Strunk’s The Elements of Style is the most-assigned book at America’s top public schools.
威廉·斯特伦克 (William Strunk) 的《风格的要素》 是美国顶尖公立学校指定使用最多的书籍。 - The most-assigned work of literature in American colleges is Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin.
美国大学指定最多的文学作品是凯特·肖邦的 《一小时的故事》 。 - Of the 100 most-assigned books in US colleges, 78 had male authors, 20 had female, and two had mixed authors.
在美国大学指定阅读次数最多的 100 本书中，有 78 本的作者是男性 ， 20 本的作者是女性 ，还有两本的作者是男女混合 。
The most commonly assigned books in US colleges, mapped
美国大学最常指定的书籍，地图
Everybody gotta write in college, so it’s no surprise that many of the most-assigned books in the US are writer’s handbooks.
每个人在大学里都要写作，因此美国许多指定阅读的书籍都是作家手册也就不足为奇了。
Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference and A Pocket Style Manual appear frequently across the map; the former is assigned across 1,734 courses in Alabama alone.
戴安娜·哈克 (Diana Hacker) 的 《作家参考书》 和 《袖珍风格手册》 在地图上频繁出现；前者仅在阿拉巴马州就被指定用于 1,734 个球场。
The book with the biggest punch, though, is The American Promise: A History of the United States. It appears on 3,273 syllabi in Texas, making it the book with the most assignations in any one state.
不过，最有影响力的书籍是 《美国的承诺：美国历史》 。它出现在德克萨斯州 3273 个教学大纲中，使其成为各州指定使用次数最多的书籍。
The book is particularly beloved of political and social history students, for whom the generous helping of illustrations and first-person testimony brings the story of America to life.
这本书尤其受到政治和社会历史学生的喜爱，书中丰富的插图和第一人称的证词让他们生动地讲述了美国的故事。
What are the most-popular college books in 5 different fields of study?
5 个不同研究领域最受欢迎的大学书籍是什么？
Next, we broke down our study by subject. Click the arrow to scroll between maps of the most-assigned books in Political Science, Business, Computer Science, Economics, and English Lit.
接下来，我们按学科细分了研究内容。 点击箭头即可滚动查看政治学、商业、计算机科学、经济学和英语文学等学科中被指定次数最多的书籍地图。
You might expect political science texts to be divided along political lines, but tomes such as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order are popular in both red and blue states. Indeed, one criticism of the book (levied by the likes of Chomsky and Said) is that the book’s argument is weighted towards the maintenance of an American hegemonic monoculture.
你或许会以为政治学教材会按政治立场划分，但像 《文明的冲突》和《世界秩序的重塑》 这样的巨著在红州和蓝州都很受欢迎。事实上，有人批评这本书（乔姆斯基和萨义德等人提出）认为，该书的论点倾向于维护美国霸权的单一文化。
Frankenstein roams from east coast to west on literature syllabi. In fact, Mary Shelley’s seminal science-fiction horror is the most-assigned book in our whole study, appearing on upwards of 5,000 courses. And Oedipus Rex may be the oldest book to be widely studied in the States: Sophocles wrote the play nearly two-and-a-half millennia ago.
What ivy league students are reading that you aren’t
There is a distinctly literary edge to public school book recommendations next to the social, political, and economic books that top the Ivy League chart. But both groups are clearly fixed on studying human nature.
Thomas Hobbes’ legendary societal critique is number one for Ivy League schools, and Joseph Conrad’s take on the imperialist mindset is the most-assigned unique title for top public schools.
Perhaps more notable are the books that overlap. Marx’s manifesto and Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons go to battle over the socio-economic responsibilities of the state and of the individual. As time goes by, these classic texts take on fresh meaning in new contexts without ever offering easy answers. But thanks to the appearance of Strunk’s classic writing manual on both lists, at least the essays will be readable.
Ivy league and top public colleges compared: Top book recommendations in 5 key subjects
Here are the top-assigned books across different subjects. Click the arrow to scroll from discipline to discipline.
There is notably zero overlap between the books most recommended in English lit, business, and computer science.
Each bunch of schools has its preferred writing guide: Strunk for public schools and the more academically oriented They Say / I Say for Ivy Leaguers. The public school list also features a book about writing, rather than writing about, fiction.
Curiously, there are some exact matches in the priorities of the schools’ economics and political sciences. The two groups both favor Leviathan and The Clash of Civilizations as essential PS texts, while Adam Smith is a mainstay on economics courses.
Only 22% of America’s most-popular college books have a female author
Our final graphic shows the gender breakdown of the 100 most-popular books in American colleges.
It is a stark visual. Only 20 of the books have a sole female author, two are mixed, and the remaining 78 are written by men.
Of those 22 with female authors, around a quarter apply to the stereotypically female occupation of nursing. And several are more or less explicitly concerned with feminism, from Wollstonecraft’s proto-feminist Vindication to Harriet Jacobs autobiography of slave life to Gilman’s ‘feminist gothic’ short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.
Sure, students have plenty of reading to keep them going through the dark months. But nothing expands the mind like an unexpected passage in a privately discovered book.
Whether you’re a student looking to boost your official reading list or an autodidact looking for direction, there’s plenty of food for thought in this challenging collection of frequently assigned college books.
METHODOLOGY & SOURCES
We used the Open Syllabus Explorer to find out the most-popular book in every state by field of study and the top 100 most-popular books nationwide.
To determine the most-popular books at Ivy League schools and public schools, we aggregated the ranks of the top 100 books at each Ivy League school and the top 8 schools on the list of the 2021 Top Public Schools of the U.S. News & World Report.
For the full research behind this study, visit bit.ly/AmericanSyllabus.
This article first appeared on Degreequery.com.
