Home>The 2020 Summer Reading List is here!

03.08.2020

The 2020 Summer Reading List is here!

Summer reading 2020

Dear readers,

For the third year in a row, discover Sciences Po’s Summer Reading List.

Although this summer feels very different to previous ones, reading continues to be crucial - whether it is to feed our knowledge, better understand the news and events that have been shaking up our lives or to fuel our imaginations in and outside of study.

This year, we want to celebrate engagement, action, diversity, and as always, youth. Here is our recommended reading for this summer on the themes of pandemic, anti-racism, and climate change, as well as titles for those reading for reading's sake! We hope you enjoy them, and we thank our community for sharing with us their recommendations for a not-so-normal summer via the hashtag #ScPoSummerReading.

Remember to share with us what you’re reading on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Linkedin with the hashtag #ScPoSummerReading.

The Sciences Po Editorial Team

Summer Reading 2020

Anti-racism non-fiction

Collage of book covers for anti-racism non fiction
  • Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts
  • How to be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
  • Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
  • Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
  • Heavy, An American Memoir by Keise Laymon
  • The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs
  • Give Me Liberty by Eric Foner
  • White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
  • The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton
  • So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo

Pandemic, Climate, and Society

Collage of book covers for pandemic, climate, and society
  • Epidemics and Society. From the Black Death to the Present by Frank Snowden
  • Our House is on Fire by Greta Thunberg
  • The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease by Steven Taylor
  • Disasterland by Sandrine Revet
  • The Great Influenza by John Barry
  • Climate Justice by Mary Robinson
  • Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
  • The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz
  • We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • The Parasitic Mind by Gad Saad

Fiction and Literature

Collage of book covers for fiction and literature
  • Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
  • The Overstory by Richard Powers
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
  • A Little History of Poetry by John Carey
  • Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  • My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

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