This morning’s question: “What’s the ONE nonfiction book/work you’d assign to your graduate students above all? I know my answer*, am interested in yours.”

This morning’s question, recast to correct for heinous grammar: “What’s the one book above all that you’d assign to your grad students?” Thanks, Tweeps and Facebook friends, for the killer answers. (Have fun w/some of these links—happy little surprises scattered throughout.)

Taylor Bruce: John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Harper’s piece “Horseman, pass by”

Jerry Mitchell: Hiroshima

Jason Zengerle: Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas  

Joe Menn: Common Ground 

Jason Schwartz: A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger

Devin Friedman: The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer 

David Wolman: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Sam Douglas: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Alan Huffman: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Dave Rainey: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Jason Feifer: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Mark Adams: Letters from London by Julian Barnes

Jim Gund: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe

Rachel Layne: John Adams by David McCullough

Neely Tucker: “On Being a Reporter,” by Tommy Miller

Jill Spitznass: The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer 

Cristian Lupsa: “The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy” by Michael Paterniti

Geoff Van Dyke: Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc

Ricky Opaterny: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

Pat Walters: Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee

Adam Ross: The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes 

Rachel Ritchie: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder 

Kris Frieswick: The Big Short by Michael Lewis 

Jenny Davis: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 

Lucy Burningham: The Journalist & the Murderer by Janet Malcolm 

Ramesh Pillay: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Claire Campbell: Homicide by David Simon 

Kevin Sack: Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch

Annie Murphy Paul: A Collection of Essays by George Orwell

Jody Jaffe: Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand 

Laurie Wolf: ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound

Jim Gullo: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Julie Klam: The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson 

Max Potter: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer 

Adam Penenberg: Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Gabe Weisert: Among the Thugs by Bill Buford

Craig Pittman: The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Patrick Doyle: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Kenji Matsumoto: Among Schoolchildren by Tracy Kidder

John Falk: If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

Pam Colloff: The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann

Melissa Ludtke: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Diane Shipley: Red China Blues by Jan Wong

Benjamin Drake Gutsch: Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson 

Peter Ginna: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr

Rebecca Skloot: And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts

*Mine was Hiroshima

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