Common Book Criteria, Suggestions

The WAC committee gathers suggestions and input from the MCC community for a potential Common Book and selects a Common Book from these suggestions based on the criteria listed below.

Ideally, a common book would have the following virtues:

  • It would have a clear application to a number of different academic areas
  • It would be reasonably easy to read and hard to put down
  • It would deal with issues appealing to a diverse student population
  • It would be rich enough to be discussed, analyzed, and approached from many different angles without becoming boring

Although Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama is the current Common Book for 2009-2010, we are always looking for your suggestions and input. Given that no book will have all the above virtues, please suggest any book that you think would be suitable for consideration as the next Common Book.

Please send all suggestions to Tom Laughlin, Chairperson of Writing Across the Curriculum, HH 101, email: laughlint@middlesex.mass.edu , or drop off your suggestions at the Writing Center in either the Bedford or City Campus.

List of Recent Suggestions for the Common Book

Last Modified: 8/4/23