An informal survey of journalists and academics resulted in a handful of suggested readings that update Sandburg’s 92-year-old list. It’s at least an interesting starting point for water cooler/barstool debates:
International relations: Correspondents Joe Galloway (“We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young”) or Robert Fisk (“The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East”)
Statesmen: Dwight D. Eisenhower or Mohandas Gandhi
Grassroots poet: Chuck D. (front man of Public Enemy and author of “Chuck D.: Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary”) or Edward Sanders (author of “America: A History in Verse” and leader of the ‘60s group “The Fugs”)
Scripture: the Quran or The Analects of Confucius
Militarism: Dick Cheney’s Simon & Schuster memoir, due next year, or Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf
Novelist: Isabel Allende (Chilean-American author of 1982’s “The House of the Spirits” and one-time journalist) or George Orwell
Environmental writer: Aldo Leopold (Sand County Almanac), Rachel Carson (“Silent Spring”) or Sandra Steingraber (“Living Downstream”)
Government document: “9/11 Commission Report” or “The Warren Commission Report” (on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy).
Philosopher: Jean-Paul Sartre or the Dalai Lama
Artist: M. F. Husain (“Barefoot across the Nation: M F Husain and the Idea of India”) or Anish Kapoor
Other: scientist Norman Borlaug, the subject of Leon Hesser’s “The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger”, or Carl Sagan (“Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”)
–Bill Knight
