100 books like At the Intersection

By Robert Longwell-Grice (editor), Hope Longwell-Grice (editor),

Here are 100 books that At the Intersection fans have personally recommended if you like At the Intersection. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success

Mark E. Crawford Author Of When Two Become Three: Nurturing Your Marriage After Baby Arrives

From my list on growing great kids and maintaining a great marriage.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a clinical psychologist for over thirty years, a husband for thirty years, and a father for twenty-seven years. Being the best husband and father that I can possibly be is my highest priority. I sincerely believe that healthy families are the building blocks of healthy societies. Being a good spouse and a good parent (at the same time, no less) is challenging, to say the least. However, creating a family full of love, laughter, and support during the inevitable difficult seasons of life is worthy of a lifetime of study and effort. I’m constantly looking for resources to help me and others to pursue this goal. 

Mark's book list on growing great kids and maintaining a great marriage

Mark E. Crawford Why did Mark love this book?

Julie was a former Dean of Students at Stanford University. She shares how she realized that she was working with kids who had “checked every box” and earned acceptance to one of the most selective universities in the world. However, she could not help but notice that despite their stellar list of achievements and impressive resumes, they sorely lacked the skills necessary to transition to the adult world of navigating normal roommate conflicts or even making minor decisions without the help of their parents.

This book is a great reminder that as parents, our ultimate goal is to prepare our kids to transition into adulthood with the necessary tools and skills to “adult” successfully. I had the opportunity to meet Julie personally, and her compassion, wisdom, and experience are genuine – this is required reading for parents. 

By Julie Lythcott-Haims,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked How to Raise an Adult as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Across a decade as Stanford University's dean of freshmen, Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed a startling rise in parental involvement in students' lives. Every year, more parents were exerting control over students' academic work, extracurricular, and career choices, taking matters into their own hands rather than risk their child's failure or disappointment. Meanwhile, Lythcott-Haims encountered increasing numbers of students who, as a result of hyper attentive parenting, lacked a strong sense of self and were poorly equipped to handle the demands of adult life. In How to Raise an Adult, Lythcott-Haims draws on research, on conversations with admissions officers, educators, and employers,…


Book cover of My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student

Andrea Malkin Brenner Author Of How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You're There)

From my list on under-prepared first-year college students.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having worked on college campuses for 25 years as a professor, administrator, and first-year experience program designer, I’ve seen first-hand how freshmen are increasingly failing at “adulting” because they are unprepared for the realities of campus life. I take on this needed preparation as co-author of How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There) and as the creator of the Talking College™ Card Deck, discussion prompts for college-bound students and their parents/guardians. I share my insider knowledge with college-bound students and their parents at talks and workshops throughout the U.S. My goal is to help both groups thrive as they prepare for the upcoming transition.

Andrea's book list on under-prepared first-year college students

Andrea Malkin Brenner Why did Andrea love this book?

Anthropology professor Rebekah Nathan made the bold decision to do what anthropologists do best: live amongst those of a misunderstood culture. After fifteen years of teaching at a large university, she left her faculty position and went undercover as a freshman. Nathan moved into a dorm, ate off the student meal plan, and enrolled in courses as a full-time student. The book is filled with thoughtful insights about the challenges first-year students face, including academic stressors, looming student debt, and an increasingly disengaged student culture. My Freshman Year exposes a realistic view of the new transactional-cultured university campus, while simultaneously offering a compassionate peek into the daily struggles of new students.

By Rebekah Nathan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked My Freshman Year as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

After more than fifteen years of teaching, Rebekah Nathan, a professor of anthropology at a large state university, realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students. Fewer and fewer participated in class discussion, tackled the assigned reading, or came to discuss problems during office hours. And she realized from conversations with her colleagues that they, too, were perplexed: Why were students today so different and so hard to teach? Were they, in fact, more likely to cheat, ruder, and less motivated? Did they care at all about their education, besides their grades?Nathan decided to put…


Book cover of The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids

Andrea Malkin Brenner Author Of How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You're There)

From my list on under-prepared first-year college students.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having worked on college campuses for 25 years as a professor, administrator, and first-year experience program designer, I’ve seen first-hand how freshmen are increasingly failing at “adulting” because they are unprepared for the realities of campus life. I take on this needed preparation as co-author of How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There) and as the creator of the Talking College™ Card Deck, discussion prompts for college-bound students and their parents/guardians. I share my insider knowledge with college-bound students and their parents at talks and workshops throughout the U.S. My goal is to help both groups thrive as they prepare for the upcoming transition.

Andrea's book list on under-prepared first-year college students

Andrea Malkin Brenner Why did Andrea love this book?

In the year of her tenth reunion, journalist Alexandra Robbins returns to her former high-pressure public high school in Bethesda, MD. For the next year, she follows eight intelligent, motivated, and overachieving high school students through their daily lives. The author presents a host of complicated issues plaguing high-achieving suburban high schools including intense stress amongst students in AP courses, an epidemic of cheating, parental pressures to perform, unprescribed ADD drug use, and a cutthroat college admissions process. Although this is a nonfiction book scaffolded by investigative journalism, it reads like a novel. Robbins presents a clear warning to students as they navigate the pressures of achieving at peak levels and to parents about how serious the “Ivy-league obsession” is in American culture.

By Alexandra Robbins,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Overachievers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The bestselling author of Pledged returns with a groundbreaking look at the pressure to achieve faced by America's teens

In Pledged, Alexandra Robbins followed four college girls to produce a riveting narrative that read like fiction. Now, in The Overachievers, Robbins uses the same captivating style to explore how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins goes back to her high school, where she follows heart-tuggingly likeable students including "AP" Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed; Audrey, whose panicked perfectionism overshadows her life; Sam, who worries his…


Book cover of The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done

Keith E. Stanovich Author Of The Bias That Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking

From my list on university identity politics and political correctness.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an emeritus professor living in Portland, Oregon, officially retired, but still writing articles and books. Although I am a lifelong US citizen, I spent the heart of my career as the Canada Research Chair of Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto. Most of my books are about aspects of rationality, especially cognitive biases. I have also worked on tools for measuring individual differences in rationality. Lately, I have focused on ways to reduce political polarization by taming the myside bias that plagues all human thought, and by reforming institutions (especially universities) that are currently failing in their role as knowledge adjudicators. 

Keith's book list on university identity politics and political correctness

Keith E. Stanovich Why did Keith love this book?

Ellis chronicles the history of how the university turned from an institution of open inquiry into a political monoculture that requires those in it to adhere to a particular ideology. Ellis is particularly good at showing how the strengths of the traditional university were turned into weaknesses and allowed it to be captured by the adherents of identity politics. Old-style independent scholars are hard to organize, Ellis points out, because they are just that—independent. But these truly independent scholars were no match for the politically organized groups that wanted to use the university to advance a political agenda.

By John M. Ellis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Breakdown of Higher Education as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis.

Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck led to the success of a…


Book cover of Successful Fund Raising for Higher Education: The Advancement of Learning

Mark William Roche Author Of Realizing the Distinctive University: Vision and Values, Strategy and Culture

From my list on faculty who find themselves in administration.

Why am I passionate about this?

The year after I got tenure, I became a chairperson, overseeing more than twenty faculty members in my department at Ohio State University. I continued in administration for the next seventeen years, serving as a dean at Notre Dame for more then a decade. I am convinced that the best books on higher education interweave ideas, anecdotes, and data. I pursued that genre here, engaging the questions, what makes a university distinctive and how can one best flourish as an administrator.

Mark's book list on faculty who find themselves in administration

Mark William Roche Why did Mark love this book?

When you enter higher administration, you need a vision and you need the people and resources to realize that vision.

Most books for chairpersons and deans are about vision and about hiring and mentoring faculty and staff, but how to garner resources is perhaps the area that is addressed the least. I found this book helpful as an initial guide.

Basically, it offers a comprehensive account of academic fundraising, with practical advice and detailed examples from academic leaders and senior development professionals. The introduction and first two chapters provide a superb introduction for persons new to academic fundraising.

By Frank H.T. Rhodes (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Successful Fund Raising for Higher Education as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Successful Fund Raising is a compilation of essays by university presidents and chief advancement officers who share their fundraising successes and demonstrate the importance of a team effort among the campus chief executive officer, the trustees, and the senior staff officer in charge of the advancement program. The authors discuss how the advancement function is integrated into an institution's ongoing planning process, as well as the respective roles and responsibilities of key players in this process. The contributing authors also share specific information about their advancement programs, including their goals, strategies, and tactics. The successful programs covered in this book…


Book cover of The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: Thomas Jefferson's Idea of a University

John A. Ragosta Author Of For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry's Final Political Battle

From my list on recent history about USA and problems.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian of early America who previously practiced law for 20 years. I have both my PhD and JD from the University of Virginia. I have taught at the University of Virginia, George Washington University, Hamilton, Oberlin, and Randolph Colleges. I have also worked at Jefferson’s Monticello for many years. While American history is often misused for narrow political ends, I am convinced that good history is not only fascinating but can assist us in understanding our world and current challenges.

John's book list on recent history about USA and problems

John A. Ragosta Why did John love this book?

As a double UVA grad, I knew that Jefferson was the founder and that the school had been built largely by enslaved laborers. This book uplifted and depressed me: I was uplifted by the ferocity with which Jefferson pursued the importance of a secular university (owned by the state and without religious affiliation) and the revolutionary flexibility of its curriculum.

I was depressed by how much of the structure and the University’s early life were completely intertwined with slavery. Some of the stories are shocking.

By Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Already renowned as a statesman, Thomas Jefferson in his retirement from government turned his attention to the founding of an institution of higher learning. Never merely a patron, the former president oversaw every aspect of the creation of what would become the University of Virginia. Along with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, he regarded it as one of the three greatest achievements in his life. Nonetheless, historians often treat this period as an epilogue to Jefferson's career.

In The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind, Andrew O'Shaughnessy offers a twin biography of Jefferson in…


Book cover of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study

J. Moufawad-Paul Author Of Austerity Apparatus

From my list on the state and state repression.

Why am I passionate about this?

One of my long-standing interests, as a political philosopher, has been to examine the deployment of state power and the state forms (what I call states of affairs) the capitalist mode of production takes in order to preserve its economic order. Since I completed my doctorate, which was on the articulation of settler-colonial power in relationship to remaining settler states, I have largely been invested in thinking politics: how dominant politics maintain the current order, how counter-hegemonic politics disrupt this order. 

J.'s book list on the state and state repression

J. Moufawad-Paul Why did J. love this book?

I first read The Undercommons in a virtual reading group during the early months of the COVID pandemic and was quite taken by its poetics and unfolding conceptual terrain. Beginning with an analysis of academia as a significant ideological state apparatus, Moten and Harney also discuss multiple forms of state violence and capture in racial capitalist formations. From the notion of the settler-capitalist garrison responding to “the surround” of the colonized and marginalized, to the connection between policy and policing, to the logic of reified colonial conquest, to logistics and professionalization, The Undercommons is a meditation on methods of state repression and forms of resistance. Arguing that recognition of the “general antagonism” that underlies the state is necessary for revolutionary politics, Moten and Harney end up echoing Lenin’s insights about class antagonism and false reconciliation in The State and Revolution.

By Stefano Harney, Fred Moten,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Undercommons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Literary Nonfiction. African American Studies. Politics. Philosophy & Critical Theory. Introduction by Jack Halberstam. In this series of essays, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney draw on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition as it supports, inspires, and extends contemporary social and political thought and aesthetic critique. Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control: the proliferation of capitalist logistics, governance by credit, and the management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in THE UNDERCOMMONS, Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of…


Book cover of College in Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration

Mneesha Gellman Author Of Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison

From my list on college in US prisons.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been involved with teaching in prison for the last 22 years, and have taught everything from creative writing to meditation to college classes across carceral facilities in New York, California, and Massachusetts. As the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College’s campus at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, I constantly work with faculty and students who are navigating the teaching and learning environment under some of the most adverse circumstances. These books have helped me feel less alone in this work.

Mneesha's book list on college in US prisons

Mneesha Gellman Why did Mneesha love this book?

In Daniel Karpowitz’s book, he takes readers behind the scenes in college-in-prison classrooms to explore what a liberal arts education can offer people who are incarcerated, and the educators who facilitate them. Karpowitz was a mentor and a guide as I was building my own college-in-prison program. His steadfast belief in the human capacity for transformative learning shines through in these accessible, riveting pages of what it means to read the canon from a position of marginalization.

By Daniel Karpowitz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked College in Prison as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The nationally renowned Bard Prison Initiative demonstrates how the liberal arts can alter the landscape inside prisons by expanding access to the transformative power of American higher education. American colleges and universities have made various efforts to provide prisoners with access to education. However, few of these outreach programs presume that incarcerated men and women can rise to the challenge of a truly rigorous college curriculum. The Bard Prison Initiative, however, is different. As this compelling new book reveals, BPI has fostered a remarkable transformation in the lives of thousands of prisoners. College in Prison chronicles how, since 2001, Bard…


Book cover of Higher Education Accessibility Behind and Beyond Prison Walls

Mneesha Gellman Author Of Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison

From my list on college in US prisons.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been involved with teaching in prison for the last 22 years, and have taught everything from creative writing to meditation to college classes across carceral facilities in New York, California, and Massachusetts. As the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College’s campus at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, I constantly work with faculty and students who are navigating the teaching and learning environment under some of the most adverse circumstances. These books have helped me feel less alone in this work.

Mneesha's book list on college in US prisons

Mneesha Gellman Why did Mneesha love this book?

McMay and Kimble’s edited volume brings together a wide range of case studies looking at some form of higher education behind bars. Meant to showcase many different forms of higher education in prison, this book underscores the diversity of what higher education in prison can look like. In each case study, strengths and challenges of a given approach are visible and provide an honest look at how to support learners in a range of circumstances.

*Disclaimer—I have a chapter in this volume.

By Dani V. McMay (editor), Rebekah D. Kimble (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Higher Education Accessibility Behind and Beyond Prison Walls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Numerous studies indicate that completing a college degree reduces an individual's likelihood of recidivating. However, there is little research available to inform best practices for running college programs inside jails or prisons or supporting returning citizens who want to complete a college degree. Higher Education Accessibility Behind and Beyond Prison Walls examines program development and pedagogical techniques in the area of higher education for students who are currently incarcerated or completing a degree post-incarceration. Drawing on the experiences of program administrators and professors from across the country, it offers best practices for (1) developing, running, and teaching in college programs…


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