The ������Ƶ & Sciences asked faculty members for recommendations on the best books they’ve read on U.S. history, and Georgetown professors of history, government, English, performing arts, psychology and other fields offered their suggestions for readers of all kinds as America commemorates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The list of 20 recommended books includes a modern classic novel; a memoir written by an Indigenous spiritual leader; an examination of music in the United States by a music historian; a Pulitzer Prize for History-winning book on Harriet Tubman; and even a book that blends history and psychology about the way American emotional norms have changed over time. 

Read on about the books below, arranged alphabetically by title, to get inspired for your summer reading.

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles

It’s a gorgeous book about an enslaved mother’s love, the tragedy of slavery and the resilience of family. But it is also evidence of how historians bring their feelings and lives to their work, and testament to the irreplaceable importance of museums for preserving American heritage, even that which is troubling or hidden. I’ve assigned this book several times and students love it.

—, professor in the Department of History

American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style by Peter N. Stearns

When I came to the United States as an exchange student from the USSR, I often heard the well-intentioned phrase, “All children smile in the same language.” I wondered whether this could be true, as the Americans I encountered seemed different, especially when it came to emotions. To what extent are emotions universal or shaped by our environment? This book addresses that question and places the seemingly private world of emotions at center stage, tracing the evolution of American emotional norms over time. 

—, associate professor in the Department of Psychology

American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century by Gary Gerstle

Is one defined by one’s “tribe” or by allegiance to a more encompassing national identity? That crucial question of how Americans think of themselves is at the center of Gary Gerstle’s engrossing history, American Crucible (originally published in 2001 and updated in 2017). Starting with Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency and proceeding through the harsh immigration legislation of the 1920s, FDR’s New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, the Reagan era, the rise of multiculturalism and into War on Terror and the Obama presidency, Gerstle explores how our country has contended with two contradictory ideas of itself: a racial nationalism that conceived of America as “a people held together by common blood and skin color and by an inherited fitness for self-government,” versus a far more inclusive “civic nationalism” in which the melting-pot promise of full citizenship is open to all. 

—, the Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism in the Department of English 

America’s Musical Life: A History by Richard Crawford

While primarily focused on American music, the stories in this book offer visceral perspectives on the history of demographic changes, technologies, media and cultural events in the United States. It does this by contextualizing the many musical practices that have developed here. Notably, since the book centers on music, it provides insights into the emotions and expressions that Americans have developed and conveyed throughout history, spanning from the Indigenous population to the close of the 20th century. What sets this book apart is its argument that “American music” is a distinct music, yet it’s a highly varied and continuously evolving set of practices that have sounded through the centuries in unexpected and remarkable ways. 

—, professor of music and chair of the Department of Performing Arts

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

This is the best single-volume history of the American Civil War, and it illuminates some of the politics that continue to shape our country today. What makes it especially good, in addition to being well-written and fast-paced, is that it integrates so many topics: the politics leading up to and during the war, the military campaigns, the human drama. It is informed by many other historical studies and embodies the best of their insights. McPherson’s talent for storytelling weaves mountains of information together into a fluid narrative.

—, professor and chair in the Department of Government

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

This irreverent 1961 novel about U.S. Army airmen during World War II is both hilarious and a brilliant dissection of the official lies and bureaucratic foolishness intrinsic to every military conflict.

—, professor in the Department of History

Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This dystopian novel is set in the near-future United States, where incarcerated people fight for their freedom in death matches sponsored by the “Criminal Action Penal Entertainment” program, which commercializes and televises gladiator-style contests along with the intimate lives of those on the chains in an accompanying reality TV show. The novel offers a trenchant indictment of the United States’ central paradoxes: its persistent promotion of freedom contrasted with enduring practices of confinement, its celebration of violence in the name of security, and the destruction of Black bodies, which are feared yet commodified for profit and entertainment. 

—, assistant professor in the Department of History

Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda L. Fields-Black

In prose as beautiful as the landscapes it evokes, Combee recounts how Harriet Tubman grew from an enslaved girl determined to keep her family together on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a warrior leading a Union Army raid deep into South Carolina during the Civil War. Tubman’s raid furthered Union military aims, achieved the liberation of hundreds of enslaved people and moved the U.S. closer to realizing the aspirational ideals of its founding.

—, professor in the Department of History and director of the Georgetown Institute for Global History

Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability by Jay Timothy Dolmage

This is an especially important book to understand our current political moment wherein being a “real American” is regularly invoked as if that category were ever stable. It is also an important read to appreciate how and why disability is central to what it means to be a citizen.

—, Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and director of the Disability Studies Program

How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

Every nation has an official story, behind which stands the haunting figure of the shadow narrative. In the U.S. that narrative is not found in books and libraries, but inscribed in place names, city maps, monuments and buildings. This book excavates America’s shadow narrative by visiting Monticello, Jefferson’s celebrated home, which doubles as a site of mass enslavement. Angola prison sits on former plantation land, its name borrowed from the African homeland of the people once enslaved there. New York’s African Burial Ground, literally paved over until its rediscovery in 1991, exposes the North’s complicity in the enslavement of Africans. Through these and other stories, Clint Smith retrieves the shadow narrative and brings it into the light.

—, director of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

This book offers a powerful and necessary reinterpretation of American history through the experiences of Indigenous peoples, foregrounding issues of colonialism, displacement, resistance and historical memory. As a scholar of justice, peace and memory studies, I appreciate how Dunbar-Ortiz challenges dominant master narratives and encourages readers to confront the historical roots of contemporary inequalities. The book demonstrates how understanding our history requires engaging with multiple perspectives and acknowledging voices that have often been marginalized or excluded from historical accounts.

—, director and teaching professor of the Justice and Peace Studies Program (JUPS)

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

This sprawling 2003 novel tells the story of a community of Black slaveholders in 19th-century Virginia. The book isn’t a work of history, or even a work of historical fiction, traditionally defined, since almost every narrative detail is an invention. But I can’t think of a more powerful account of how history and memory intersect in the American context. On a whim, I assigned Jones’ novel in a seminar this past semester. The whole class was blown away. 

—, professor in the Department of English and Hubert J. Cloke Director of American Studies 

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand

I first picked up this book as a young journalist in a pre-9/11 world, and have come back to it regularly — as a political beat reporter, as an editor and more often than ever now that I’m back on the Hilltop as a journalism professor. It’s among the best source material I’ve found to help relay the historical and intellectual origins of one of the pillars of traditional news reporting in the United States in the postwar era: the ideal of journalistic objectivity, part and parcel of the continuing challenge of deciding on shared narratives in a polarized society. It’s literary nonfiction and a riveting intellectual history that recounts how the country reinvented itself after the Civil War and developed new ways of thinking about truth, debate and democracy. It’s smart, engaging and just as relevant as ever to many of the questions U.S. reporters — and the news consumers they serve — are still wrestling with today.

—, professor of the practice and director of the Journalism Program

Party Government: American Government in Action by E.E. Schattschneider

Schattschneider was probably the most influential thinker on American political parties. This book, more than a half-century old, goes a long way in explaining why political parties exist, and why we should center them in our understanding of American democracy. Political scientists feel contractually obligated to quote his line on page 1 of Party Government, “that the political parties created democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.” His writing still resonates, as one Georgetown student said in class, “he’s low-key eating here.”

—, associate professor in the Department of Government

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois and Blues People: Negro Music in White America by LeRoi Jones (Amira Bakara)

These two books, for me, represent the hardships and the hopes of Black people in the U.S. I read both decades ago and re-read every year. W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP and of Pan-Africanism, published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. He challenges America to live up to its promises and its debt to the descendants of America’s greatest sin — slavery. His famous line was, “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” That rings as true today in the 21st century. Amira Baraka wrote Blues People: Negro Music in White America in 1963. One of the world’s greatest poets, he takes us on a survey: musical, political, historical and social of Black people’s greatest gift to America, and indeed to the world.

—, professor in the Department of History and affiliate professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Performing Arts

Tom Paine and Revolutionary America by Eric Foner

Although this classic biography of the revolution’s most influential anti-monarchical propagandist appeared 50 years ago, it feels timely in this era of “No Kings” agitation. Paine’s “Common Sense” anticipated and shaped the Declaration of Independence, yet his combative style and radically democratic vision led to his marginalization in the new republic. Although few attended Paine’s 1809 funeral, Foner shows how his ideas lived on to inspire future generations to build a more perfect union — work obviously still very much unfinished. 

—, professor in the Department of History and co-director of Georgetown’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor (KI)

Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation by Kariann Akemi Yokota

Although published over a decade ago, it holds enduring value as a reminder of the unique challenge Americans faced upon independence: how to differentiate themselves socially and culturally from the British. As a U.S. diplomatic historian, I frequently use this book to highlight the importance of foreign relations in shaping the United States as a nation. It is exceptionally well-written and engaging, featuring many amusing, insightful anecdotes that demonstrate how 1776 was merely the starting point of a long process of forging a unique national identity in a postcolonial setting.

—, associate professor in the Department of History and School of Foreign Service

Until I Am Free by Keisha N. Blain

This biography of Fannie Lou Hamer demonstrates how ordinary citizens can become extraordinary political leaders. Blain situates Hamer’s activism within broader struggles for voting rights, economic justice and human dignity, offering a powerful account of grassroots democracy in the United States.

—, professor in the Department of Government and the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program

The Wind Is My Mother: The Life and Teachings of a Native American Shaman by Bear Heart with Molly Larkin

This is one of my all-time favorite books, not just about U.S. history, but about how to approach life. Born in 1918, the author — Marcellus “Bear Heart” Williams — was one of the last traditionally-trained healers from the Muscogee Creek Nation. He was also a minister in the American Baptist Church. I recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand a portion of U.S. history from the perspective of a Native American healer and to anyone seeking inspiration on how to live a full and complete life with love, compassion and presence.

—, professor in the Department of Computer Science and the McDevitt Chair in Computer Science, Ethics, and Society

“In both cases, you are trying to pursue a positive future not just for yourself, but also for other people,” Freund said.

This fall, he will be enrolling in at the University of Cambridge. Freund is to be selected as part of the 2026 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars. The prestigious scholarship program fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge.

During his four years there, Freund, who majored in psychology and minored in German and history in the ������Ƶ & Sciences, plans to research the changing role of judicial discretion at sentencing. It will bring him closer to his ultimate career goal of becoming a professor of criminology. 

After graduating from Georgetown in 2023, Freund worked as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Berlin and earned a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Oxford. He is currently serving as program coordinator for the Prison Education Project (PEP) at Washington University in St. Louis. 

“I think I have always been interested in justice and using the privilege that I have in service of other people,” Freund said. 

Psychology and the Legal System

Born in New York, Freund and his family moved to San Diego when he was around the age of 4. His parents still live there.

Freund did not think he would move more than 2,600 miles across the country to DC for college, but attending a for admitted students swayed his decision. 

“I feel like among the schools I got into, Georgetown presented the most compelling vision of attending to its students,” he said. “The whole concept of cura personalis really came through to me.”

Initially, Freund thought he would major in government on the Hilltop. His main interest in high school, he said, was competing on the mock trial team, and Freund figured law school would be in his future. 

But he discovered that it was his psychology courses at Georgetown that he enjoyed the most. The class Psychology and the Legal System with , a professor of psychology and vice dean for faculty affairs in the College, helped him learn how to apply psychology and social sciences to the operations of the legal system, Freund said.

That led him to propose an honors thesis that combined concepts from that class and his Cultural Psychology class with , an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. 

Freund’s thesis compared two different video layouts for videoconferencing during pretrial hearings in the courtroom. He consulted with a judge and faculty members at Georgetown to videotape a simulated courtroom hearing, then used an eyetracker and surveys to examine self-assessed recall, self-assessed understanding, procedural fairness and outcome fairness between the two video layouts.

Woolard called it “one of the most interesting undergraduate thesis projects I have supervised.” 

“Rafi has a very active mind,” Chentsova Dutton said. “It is clear that his goal is not just to get a good grade but to understand human complexity better.”

A Passion for Education

Freund also developed his passion for education at Georgetown. 

He spent three years as a teaching assistant for the Probability and Statistics course with , a teaching professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. That experience helped him realize that he loved teaching and standing in front of a classroom. Freund was also involved in the and as a tutor for the . 

“Rafi has all the qualities that make for an excellent TA,” Meyer said. “What distinguished Rafi was his attention to detail and sensitivity to his students’ needs as learners. He always paid close attention to students’ common mistakes and misconceptions while grading the assignments and interacting with students during labs and office hours.”

To Freund, his interests in criminal justice and teaching are not distinct. 

“They coalesce in a belief that all people should be able to benefit from a high-quality education,” he said.

At the University of Cambridge, Freund plans to research how sentencing operates and how the role of judicial discretion has changed over time. In his research and work experience, Freund has found that rigid approaches to sentencing can leave people doubting procedural and outcome fairness. 

The limits on discretion, he said, are being placed faster than the field is considering the potential consequences of those limits, particularly as many anticipate the integration of artificial intelligence in sentencing decisions. 

Freund wants to take a step back and ask: Is there something lost alongside the human judge? What happens when judges are prevented from being able to engage with the people they’re sentencing?

“This is a really urgent thing to think about,” he said.

(Top photo courtesy of Rafi Freund, taken at Washington University in St. Louis)

Three professors received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award: , and ; and two staff members received the Distinguished Staff Award: (G’11) and (M’89). 

received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award, received the Stevens Faculty Excellence Award and received the Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award. (G’91, G’95) received the Condé Nast Award.

“It’s important to recognize the great work that goes on in the ������Ƶ & Sciences in all areas,” said Dean . “We recognize the faculty for their teaching, research and service to this institution, for which we are all so grateful — especially the students, both undergrad and grad. We also recognize our staff. All of us who have been around Georgetown, around higher education institutions, know that it’s staff who are the glue in our institution and hold so much together and allow us to do the great work that we do on behalf of our students.”

Get to know the award recipients, their work at Georgetown and what makes them a proud member of the College.

Kostadin Kushlev, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award

Kushlev, an associate professor in and director of the , received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award. 

His research examines how digital technologies — especially smartphones and social media — impact well-being, fragment attention and promote or undermine social connection. His work aims to identify ways technology can be designed to support happier and healthier lives.

Arik Levinson, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award

Levinson, at Georgetown University and a research associate at the , received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.  

He is currently of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. 

Levinson’s recent projects calculate the degree to which industrialized countries have been offshoring their most polluting economic activities, and evaluate the way some industries and the U.S. government have proposed to calculate carbon emissions caused by grid-connected electricity use.

Josiah Osgood, Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award

Osgood, a professor in , received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award. 

Osgood has taught at Georgetown since 2002 and served as chair of the Classics department from 2016 to 2022.  He regularly offers classes in Roman history and in Latin language and literature. For many years, he co-directed study abroad programs in which students visited archaeological sites in Greece, Turkey and Italy. 

Osgood’s research focuses on politics in ancient Rome and he has written about civil war, Roman women and Roman historical writing, among other topics. He is currently working on research about senators and their families in imperial Rome.

Colva Weissenstein (G’11), Distinguished Staff Award

Weissenstein, the program manager for , received the Distinguished Staff Award. 

This award is given to staff who have a record of extraordinary service within a department or program, and who have demonstrated selflessness as people for others, cura personalis, commitment to community in diversity and creative leadership and service in support of academic excellence.

Weissenstein holds a B.A. in English from George Mason University and an M.A. in from Georgetown. With expertise in film and media studies — particularly horror cinema and advertising — as well as university administration, Weissenstein brings both intellectual curiosity and organizational care to her work.

Weissenstein is especially proud of cultivating a vibrant, supportive community among American Studies students and faculty, where collaboration and connection are central. Through sustaining beloved program traditions, including pedagogical field trips, she has helped foster a culture defined by curiosity, creativity and playfulness. Committed to joy as a meaningful part of academic life, she works to ensure that the program remains not only rigorous, but also welcoming, dynamic and deeply human.

Dr. Mary Beth Connell (M’89), Distinguished College Service Award 

Connell, an associate dean and the director of , received the Distinguished College Service Award.

This award is given to staff who have a record of extraordinary service within the College, and who have demonstrated selflessness as people for others, cura personalis, commitment to community in diversity and creative leadership and service in support of academic excellence.

In her roles at Georgetown, Connell oversees the advising of pre-health students, chairs the Pre-Health Recommendation Committee and directs the , which is for students who have completed their undergraduate education in a non-science area and wish to change careers.  

Connell received her M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1989. She also completed a residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation and practiced at INOVA Fairfax Hospital. She has served Georgetown University since 1993, initially through Georgetown’s , then on the Board of Governors, Directors and Regents. Her favorite role is guiding students on their journey to a health professions career.

Abigail Marsh, Farr Faculty Excellence Award

Marsh, a professor in the and and the co-director of the , received the Farr Faculty Excellence Award (Natural, Quantitative and Interdisciplinary Science).

This award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovative dissemination of scientific knowledge. 

Marsh received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and conducted post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Her research uses functional and structural brain imaging as well as behavioral, cognitive and pharmacological approaches and the study of special populations to answer the questions: How do we understand what others think and feel? What drives us to help other people? What prevents us from harming them? 

She is the author of 100-plus peer-reviewed publications and an award-winning trade book, . Her research has received awards that include the Cozzarelli Prize for scientific excellence and originality from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The S&R Foundation’s Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good and the Richard J. Wyatt Fellowship award for translational research from NIMH. She is the co-founder of .

Dagomar Degroot, Stevens Faculty Excellence Award

, an associate professor of , received the Stevens Faculty Excellence Award (Social Science).

​​The award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovation in a social sciences field.

Degroot’s first book, The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560-1720, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018 and named by the Financial Times as one of the ten best history books of that year. His new book, , was published by Harvard University Press and Penguin, and is a Scientific American, New Scientist and Nautilus book of the year. He is currently editing several books on past climate change, including the forthcoming . 

He also writes, narrates and produces , an award-winning podcast, video series and website on the history of climate change. He has shared the unique perspectives of the past with policymakers, corporate leaders and journalists in many cities, from Wuhan to Washington, DC. Degroot teaches courses on such topics as existential risk, space exploration and the history of climate change. 

Charles McNelis, Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award

McNelis, a professor of who also serves as the faculty director of Graduate Liberal Studies and the interim director of the , received the Tosetti Faculty Excellence Award (Humanities).

The award honors excellent research, effective mentoring of student research and innovation in the humanities.

McNelis has been a member of the faculty since 2002. He teaches Latin at all levels, as well as a range of courses on ancient Greek and Latin literature and culture. 

His research focuses on the connections between Greek and Latin literature, particularly in the genre of epic poetry. He is the author of and , co-written with . Most recently, he has published a commentary on Statius’ Achilleid, a poem which takes as its subject Achilles, the greatest Greek hero. McNelis received his undergraduate degree in Classics from Columbia University, his M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles.

Diana Glick (G’91, G’95), Condé Nast Award

Glick, a teaching professor of the , received the Condé Nast Award. 

Founded in 1966 by the Georgetown College Student Council to honor the memory of the first president of the student body, this award is given by the ������Ƶ & Sciences to faculty who have served the College with distinguished teaching, research, service and leadership.

For more than 30 years on the Hilltop, Glick has taught everything from general chemistry to inorganic and spectroscopic methods, working with both large lecture classes and small groups of majors. A passionate advocate for science education at all levels, Glick has developed courses for non-science majors and championed the integration of research throughout the undergraduate experience.

Glick earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University wherein she developed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic techniques for polyoxometalate complexes. Since 2010, she has served as director of undergraduate studies and as faculty advisor to the student chemistry community, roles through which she has mentored countless students. Her efforts were further recognized in 2015 when she received the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

She is known across campus for helping students find confidence in challenging subjects — and on occasion, even convincing them that chemistry can be fun. She continues to believe that small moments in the classroom can make a lasting difference in a student’s life.