This whole series started with our suggested reading list for incoming students, so we thought it only fitting that we should ask this year’s class which books on the list they picked to read prior to their year at Conway. Below were some of the class favorites, along with some runners up, plus a few titles that weren’t on the list, but maybe should be—we’ll be keeping track of them to possibly include in next year’s reading list. Do you have any suggestions for the Class of 2026? If so, please let us know! We’d also love to hear from you if you decide to read one of their picks.
Here are some of the books from our summer reading list that the Class of 2025 chose to read:
- The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman, Free Press (Simon & Schuster)
- Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney, University of North Carolina Press
- Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus, Harper Collins
- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, Penguin Putnam
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows, Chelsea Green
- Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, North Point Press
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, Vintage
- The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton University Press
- Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan and Heather Anne Swanson, University of Minnesota Press
- Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson, Taschen
Here are their recommendations outside our list:
- Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Oregon State University Press
- Biophilia: The human bond with other species by Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University Press
- Manifesto of the Third Landscape by Gilles Clément, Trans Europe Halles
- The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries From a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books
Want more reading suggestions?
