Big Idea Reading List

Start a conversation and create change in your community with a book club. Our resources and ideas are here to support you.

It's Time to Understand the History of Black Voting Rights 

by Kim Warren, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, School of Social Welfare and Associate Professor of History, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Kansas

Read Warren's Big Idea Essay

• National Parks Service, “Series: Suffrage in America: The 15th and 19th Amendments”

• Martha S. Jones, “How the Daughters and Granddaughters of Former Slaves Secured Voting Rights for All,” Smithsonianmag.com, 8 March 2019 

Coupling Jim Crow and Jane Crow

by Ayesha K. Hardison, Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas

Read Hardison's Big Idea

• Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage by Pauli Murray
• “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott” by Mary Fair Burks, in Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Street by Ann Petry
• The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West
• Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
• Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist by Nancy Goldstein
• Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature by Ayesha K. Hardison

It’s Time to Recognize the History of Race and Baseball in Kansas: The Good, The Bad, and the Magnificent

by Phil S. Dixon, Author and Baseball Historian

Read Dixon's Big Idea

• Wilber "Bullet" Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs, by Phil S. Dixon
• The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America’s National Pastime,  by Phil S. Dixon
• The Kansas City Athletics: A Baseball History, 1954-1967, by John E. Peterson
• The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball, by Janet Bruce
• Walter Johnson: Baseball's Big Train, by Henry W. Thomas and Shirley Povich
• Kansas Baseball, 1858-1941, by Mark Eberle
• "Dean Brothers Face Negro Leagues Best in Barnstorming Tour," Miami County Republic, May 10, 2020
• "MLB Commemorates the 100th Anniversary of the Negro Leagues," NPR, July 31, 2020
• "A Road to Equality," National Baseball Hall of Fame
• "MLB Finally Recognizes Negro Leagues as the Major Leagues They Always Were," The Ringer, December 16, 2020

Seeing the World Through the Eyes of Gordon Parks

by Kirk Sharp, Director of the Gordon Parks Museum

Read Sharp's Big Idea

• Gordon Parks, A Choice of Weapons
• Gordon Parks, The Learning Tree
• Gordon Parks, A Poet and His Camera
   

It's Time to Tell the Stories of African American Entrepreneurs

by Robert E. Weems, Jr., Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, Wichita State University

Read Weems' Big Idea

• The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship, by Juliet E. K. Walker
• An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes, by Merah S. Stuart

Images from the Mind of a Bi-Racial Black Woman

by Ann Dean, professional photographer

Read Dean's Big Idea

• "The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History the United States" by Walter Johnson
• "A Choice of Weapons" by Gordon Parks
• "Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience"
•  "More Than Enough" by Elaine Welteroth
• "Freedom is a Constant Struggle" by Angela Davis
• "I Am Not Your Negro" by James Baldwin
• "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

• "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander

• "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison

• "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison

• "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston

• "Race Matters" by Cornell West

• "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" as told to Alex Haley

• "Miles: The Autobiography" by Miles Davis & Quincy Troupe

• "Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan" by Daryl Davis 

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

It's Time to Reconnect with Nature

by Leslie VonHolten, writer and executive director of Symphony in the Flint Hills

Read VonHolten's Big Idea

• Wendell Berry, The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 2017).
• Jim Harrison, The Essential Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).
• J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2016).
• Barry Lopez, Horizon (Alfred A. Knopf, 2019).
• Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (Vintage, 1992).

Changing How We Talk About the Civil Rights Movement

by Clarence Lang, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State University

Read Lang's Big Idea

• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

It's Time to Change How We Talk About Immigrants

by Kandace Creel Falcón, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead

Read Falcón's Big Idea

• A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez
• The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
• I'm Not Your Perfect American Daughter by Erika Sanchez
• Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

We Need to Elevate Black Women's Stories

by Donna Rae Pearson, Local History Librarian at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

Read Pearson's Big Idea

• How to be Less Stupid about Race by Crystal M. Fleming
• Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes and Black Women in America by Melissa Harris-Perry
• The Sisters are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America by Tamara Winfrey Harris

It's Time for More Representation in STEM

by Sarah Lamm, Colby native and doctoral student in planetary science at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff

Read Lamm's Big Idea

• Ed Dwight Was Set the Be the First Black Astronaut. Here's Why that Never Happened. (New York Times, July 16, 2019)
• Follow the Mars Curiosity rover (Twitter)
• This is What a Scientist Looks Like (Tumblr)
• LGBTQ Scientists are Still Left Out (Nature)
• Science in Kansas 150 Years and Counting (Ad Astra-KS)
• 500 Queer Scientists
• It's Time to Stop Excluding People with Disabilities from Science (Massive Science)
• Why the Universe Needs More Black and Latino Astronomers (Smithsonian Magazine)
• How Ashley Walker Shined a Necessary Light on Black Junior Astronomers (Astronomy in Color)
• The Native Astronomer (News Maven)
• Disabilities Don't Stop These Experts in Science (Science News for Students)

It's Time to Change the Way We Talk About Poverty

by Jason Wesco, Executive Vice-President of the Community Health Care Center

Read Wesco's Big Idea

• Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh. HK's Instagram Book Club is reading and discussing "Heartland" in September 2019. Join us!
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
• A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
• Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol
   

How Should We Honor Someone's Military Experience?

by Tai S. Edwards, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College

Read Edwards' Big Idea

• James M. Dubik, “Foreword: Expanding Our Understanding of the Moral Dimension of War,” in Nancy Sherman Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of Our Soldiers (Oxford University Press, 2015). 

• Robert Emmet Meagher and Douglas A. Pryer, eds., War and Moral Injury: A Reader (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018).

• Matt Richtel, “Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service,” The New York Times, February 21, 2015. 

• Phillip Carter, “For veterans, is ‘thank you for your service’ enough?” The Washington Post, November 4, 2011. 

• Max Fisher, “Why Some Veterans Hate it When You Say ‘Thank You,’” The Atlantic, December 11, 2010.