Students often ask me which books and films have influenced me the most over time, and which
they might enjoy if they are just starting to read or watch movies. The following works are those
that have made the greatest impact on me and probably helped me become the person I am today
(along with other obvious influences like great parents, a fantastic wife and caring family,
devoted friends, and societal conditioning). This is not meant to imply necessarily that I agree
with the messages espoused by all of these works; in fact, the opposite may be true at times,
because I may have realized as I was experiencing them that this was NOT the way to go. I
should also note that some of the ones listed here were read or viewed at different developing
stages of my life, and while they might have opened wide the eyes of a callow youth, I'm not
sure how I would respond to them today (2022).
The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The Alexandria Quarter by Lawrence Durrell
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The American Cinema by Andrew Sarris
The American College and University by Frederick Rudolph
The American Way by Edward Kearny, Mary Ann Kearney, and Jo Ann Crandall
The Areopagitica by John Milton
The Art of Alfred Hitchcock by Donald Spoto
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
'The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn
Adventure, Mystery, and Romance by John G. Cawelti
Age of Miracles by Karen Walker
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light by Patrick McGilligan
All That I Have by Castle Freeman
Also, Babylon by Pat Frank
America's Women: 400 years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Another Fine Mess by Saul Austerlitz Awakenings
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
'The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told to Jeff Guinn
Back in the World by Tobias Wolff
The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life by Jesse Bering
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bible
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
The Book by Alan Watts
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Big Picture by Edward Jay Epstein
Biocosm By James Gardner
A Blessing by James Wright
Brave Dames and Wimpettes by Susan Isaacs Barbershop
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Beauty
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The Christmas Box by Richard Evans
The Cinema of Frank Capra by Leland Poague
The Cinema of Generation X by Peter Hanson
The Collected Short Stories by Franz Kafka
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Comic Mind by Gerald Mast
The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
Carnival Evening by Linda Pastan Before Sunrise
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Changes by Gail Sheehy
Charlatan by Pope Brock
Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck
Cinema Nirvana by Dean Sluyter
City of Light by Lauren Belfer
Closely Watched Films by Marilyn Fabe
A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss Aguirre, Wrath of God The Wanderers
Cult Movies by Danny Peary
A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not"! Ripley
Dad by William Wharton
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
The Dark Side of Genius by Donald Spoto
The Dehumanization of Art by Ortega Y. Gasset
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean Dominique Bauby
The Dwarf by Paar Lagerkvist
Damage by Josephine Hart Cabaret Witness
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life by Steve Stewart Williams
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
Children of a Lesser God
Dostoevsky, Kierkegard, Nietzsche, and Kafka by William Hubben
Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dune by Frank Herbert
Editor 's Story by Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen
Enjoyment of Laughter by Max Eastman
Evil: A History of a Bad Idea by William Hart
Everyday by Davis Levithan (Unusual premise)
Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
Fatal Vision by Joe McGinnis
Femininity by Susan Brownmiller Crying Game
Figure From a Classical Tragedy by Jack Anderson
The Fifties by David Halberstam
The Film Experience by Roy Huss and Norman Silverstein
The Films of John Ford by J. A. Place
The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
The Floating Opera by John Barth
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Film As Art by Rudolf Arnheim
Film/Cinema/Movie by Gerald Mast
Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
First Aid at 4 A.M. by Christopher Bursk
First Freedom by Robert Downs
Floating Off the Page by Ken Wells
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Freakonomics by Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner
Frida by Hayden Herrera
George Lucas's Blockbusting by Alex Block and Lucy Wilson
Getting Even by Woody Allen
Ghosty Men by Franz Lioz
A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World's Extinct Animals by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
The Girls in their Summer Dresses by Irwin Shaw
The Grand Tour by Ron Miller and William Hartman
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Give Me a Break by John Stossel
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
Great Books by David Denby
Hardcore by Jim Thompson
Heaven by Lisa Miller
Higher Education by William C. DeVane
The Humans by Matt Haig
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hollywood Studios by Ethan Murdden
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
he 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived by AllanLazar, Dan Karlan, and Jeremy Salter
Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought by Crane Brinton
I Do and I Don't by Jeanine Basinger
I'll Mature When I'm Dead by Dave Barry
Importance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pear
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
he Immortalist by Alan Harrington
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
In Our Hearts We Were Giants by Yehuda Koren
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
I Still Dream about You by Fannie Flagg
Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell
It's Getting Better All the Time by Stephen Moore and Julian Simon
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious by Sigmund Freud
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Keaton by Daniel Moews
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy
The Language of Sand by Ellen Block
The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
Life: The Movie by Neal Gabler
A Light in August by William Faulkner
Lilydale by Elizabeth Wicker
Little Big Man by Thomas Berger
A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton
Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination by Susan Douglas
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan Ghost
Looking by W.D. Snodgrass
Love in the Time of Algorithms by Dan Slater
Love is Hell by Matt Groening
Love, Medicine, and Miracles by Bernard Siegel
Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Language Police by Diane Ravitch
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
The Meaning of Life by Hugh Moorhead
The Misanthrope by Moliere
The Movies in Your Mind by Harvey Greenberg
The Munchkins Remember by Stephen Cox
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
Man in Full by Thomas Wolfe
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Margaret Mead and Samoa by Derek Freeman
Marriage Confidential by Pamela Haag
Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Martin Luther King by Marshall Frady
Memoirs of an Imaginary Kid by Matthew Dicks (highly recommended)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka ( Maybe the most famous first sentence in literature)
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield
Monster Movies by John Landis
Movie Made America by Robert Sklar
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Native Son by Richard Wright
Night Driving by Dick Allen
1984 by George Orwell
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
he Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
The New Hollywood Cinema by Geoff King
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Open by Andre Agassi
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Patrimony by Philip Roth
Peanuts by Charles Schulz
Philosophy: The Classics by Nigel Warburton
Projected Fears by Kendal Phillips
Prologue to the American System of Higher Education bE.D. Duryea
Rats, Lice, and History by Hans Zinsser
The Rise of the Image and the Fall of the Word by Mitchell Stephens
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
Realms of Meaning by Philip Phenix
Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser
Reel Women by Ally Acker
Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg
Star Wars: The Magic of Myth by Mary Henderson
Stepin Fetchit by Mel Watkins
Suits Me by Diane Middlebrook
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill
School is Hell by Matt Groening
Seeing Through Movies by Mark Crispin Miller
Self Made Man by Norah Vincent
Seven Theories of Human Nature by Leslie Stevenson
Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cecilda Jetha
The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Silent Movies by Neal Sinyard
Skywalking by Dale Pollock
The Shining by Stephen King
The Silent Clowns by Walter Kerr
The Story of Utopias by Al Morton
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
The Story of Hollywood by Barry Norman
The Story of Utopias by Lewis Mumford
The Street by Ann Petry
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Taking Laughter Seriously by Jack Morreall
Telling It Again and Again by Bruce Kawin
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Theory of the Avant Garde by Renata Poggioli
Three Views of Man by Robert Nye
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To the Virgins to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
Tolstoy by Henri Troyat
Tragedy and Comedy by Walter Kerr
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
Understanding Movies by Louis Giannetti
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Utopia by Ian Todd and Michael Wheeler
Utopias and Utopian Thought by Frank Manuel
The Unicorn by Nancy Hathaway
The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleheim
The Vanishing Hitchhiker by Jan Harold Brunvand
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Walden Two by B. F. Skinner
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
A Woman's View by Jeanine Basinger
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (prepare to put your life on hold for a few months)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Watership Down by Richard Adams
When the Shooting Stops and the Cutting Begins: A FilmEditor's Story by Ralph Rosenblum and Robert Karen
Whispers by Dean Koontz
Whistling in the Dark by Leslie Kagan
Who Are You People? by Shai Caudron
Why Things Bite Back by Edward Tenner
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood
Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Natta Jr