“Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institutions – such call I good books.”                                                  –  Henry David Thoreau

Ranging in topics from literature to philosophy to physics and in time periods from ancient to modern, these great written works seek to inspire, challenge, and deepen your faith and understanding.

The books listed below have been used in recent University Scholars courses.  Changes will occur from year to year.

USCH 1000 University Scholars Seminar

• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes by Robert Brown
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
• Bruchko by Bruce Olson

USCH 1111 Texts and Contexts I

• The Iliad by Homer
• History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
• Republic by Plato
• Ethics by Aristotle
• On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius
• Aeneid by Virgil

USCH 1112 Texts and Contexts II

• Confessions by Augustine
• Inferno by Dante
• The Rule of St. Benedict
• Discourse on Free Will by Erasmus & Luther
• The Prince by Machiavelli
• Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• Paradise Lost by John Milton

USCH 1113 Texts and Contexts III

• The New Organon by Francis Bacon
• Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (selections) by John Locke
• Candide by Voltaire
• Critique of Judgment (selections) by Immanuel Kant
• The Phenomenology of Mind (selections) by W.F. Hegel
• Romantic poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• On Liberty (selections) by John Stuart Mill
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

UFDN 1000 Honors Christian Formation

• The Book of Common Prayer
• Silence by Shusaku Endo
• Large Catechism by Martin Luther
• Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard
• Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
• Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster

PHY 1111 University Scholars Physics

• Great Ideas in Physics by Lightman
• The Fabric of the Cosmos by Greene

USCH 3910 Faith and Science I

• The Tests of Time: Readings in the Development of Physical Theory, ed. by Doling and Statile
• When Science and Christianity Meet by Lindberg and Numbers
• Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy by Michael Polayni

USCH 4910 Faith and Science II

• When Science and Christianity Meet by Lindberg and Numbers
• Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, ed. by Keith Miller
• Lying Awake: A Novel by Mark Salzman

USCH 4950 Christianity and Scholarship

• Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation by Henry
• How to Write a BA Thesis by Lipson
• The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship by Marsden

Literature for University Scholars courses varies from year to year.  For up-to-date information about reading requirements, students should contact their course instructor.

For more information about the University Scholars program, refer to the University Catalog.  You may also contact Luke Reinsma, Director of University Scholars, at lreinsma@spu.edu or (206) 281-2093.

For more information about the University Scholars program, refer to the University Catalog. You may also contact Luke Reinsma, Director of University Scholars, at lreinsma@spu.edu or (206) 281-2093.