- Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation
- Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart
- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
- Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches
- Nancy Howell, Demography of the Dobe !Kung
- Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman that Never Evolved
- Jerome Kagan, Three Seductive Ideas
- Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace
- Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
- Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations
- Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons
- Thomas Schelling, Strategy of Conflict
- B. F. Skinner, Walden Two
- William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts
- Cornel West, Race Matters
- US Presidential speeches (e.g., Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865; Woodrow Wilson’s ”The world must be made safe for democracy,” 1917; Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address, 1933; John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961; Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1987, or others)
- Civil rights speeches (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr., "I have a dream," 1963; Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Speech, 1895; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Solitude of Self, address to Congressional Committee of the Judiciary, 1892; Frederick Douglass, What the Black Man Wants, 1865, or others)
These works, all taught previously, are also recommended:
- The Federalist Papers (#10, 34, 35, 36, 43, 51, 63, 72, or others)
- Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
- Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Machiavelli, The Prince
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
- Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority
This list was prepared by Lawrence's social science faculty and revised in March of 2010. There are five divisional lists, and the syllabus for Freshman Studies must include at least one work from each of them.
