I'm teaching a class on politics and literature next semester and starting to puzzle over what I'm going to assign. I'm looking for thought provoking books over a wide range of areas more than a 'theme'. What might people reccomend?

The 4 books I'm leaning towards assigning right now (there will be more than 4) are

1984
Johnny Got His Gun
Ishmael (always wanted an excuse to teach that)
Antigone

Are you purposely leaning towards the 20th century? Would you teach something from an earlier age?

Brave New World... might be a bit redundant with 1984 though

Do you usually like the kids you teach? If not, assign them Atlas Shrugged.

Machiavelli - The Prince

Culture Warrior
The O'Reilly Factor For Kids

hahaha

Lord of the Flies

I assign the Prince in a number of classes. I mean fiction literature.


Lord of the flies is worth considering


Simple Torture--I'm not necessarily leaning towards the 20th century.

catch 22?

it's too long I don't think I could spin enough classes off of it. It's too bad. I love that book.

Something like Coetzee's Disgrace would be interesting, but I wonder if it's too focused on South African issues.

stip, I assume this is a college class, in which case I suggest The Villagers (Huasipungo) by Jorge Icaza. It's about a village of Indians in early 20th century Ecuador who rise up against the landlords who are going to sell off the land they've always lived on and forcibly relocate them. Very ugly and violent in places, but it's one of my favorite books. Plus I can guarantee none of them will have read it beforehand, and it lends itself very well to any number of lesson themes.

How about something like Thank You for Smoking, or something else by Christopher Buckley? His books typically take place within politics. As does Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, a truly great book.

I was going to suggest Dostoevsky's "Demons" but that would probably be way too long.

You should do some poetry. Your students will love you because you can just email them some scans of poems instead of having them buy books and they'll like that there aren't tons of pages to read. Try:

Marvell's "Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland": http://www.bartleby.com/106/65.html

Shelley's "Ozymandias": http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1904.html

Keats's "To Autumn": http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyri ... Autumn.htm

Yeats's "Easter, 1916": http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yeatspoems/Easter

and Yeats's "The Second Coming": http://www.csun.edu/~hceng029/yeats/yea ... econdComin

Oh and this Marquez story: http://www.hennessey.lib.ok.us/OneOfTheseDays.htm

cat's cradle

silver spoon

hey... that's clever!