Cultural and Historical Texts and Poetry

Recommended for College-Bound Readers

by the College Board

Classic Cultural and Historical Texts

Author                                       Title

--                                              The Arabian Nights

Kennedy, John F.                         Profiles in Courage

--                                              The Bible

King, Martin Luther, Jr.                 A Testament of Hope: The Essential

                                                Writings and Speeches of Martin

                                                Luther King, Jr.

Adams, Henry                             The Education of Henry Adams

Malory, Sir Thomas                      Le Morte D’Arthur

Aesop                                        Aesop’s Fables

Machiavelli, Niccolo                     The Prince

Andersen, Hans Christian             Andersen’s Fairy Tales

Marx, Karl                                  The Communist Manifesto

Aristotle                                     Nicomachean Ethics

Paine, Thomas                            Common Sense

DuBois, W.E.B.                            The Souls of Black Folk

Plato                                         The Republic

Franklin, Benjamin                       Autobiography

Tocqueville, Alexis de                  Democracy in America

Hamilton, Edith                           Mythology

X, Malcolm                                 The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Hamilton, Alexander, et al.           The Federalist Papers

Poetry

Blake, William                             “London” and “The Tyger”

Keats, John                                “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “La Belle Dame

                                                 Sans Merci,” and “The Eve of St. Agnes”

Brooks, Gwendolyn                      “We Real Cool,” “The Mother,” and “The

                                                 Bean Eaters”

Moore, Marianne                          “Marriage,” “Poetry,” and “The Fist”

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor              “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”

                                                “Kubla Khan,” and “Frost at Midnight”

O’Hara, Frank                              “Why I Am Not a Painter,” “The Day Lady

                                                 Died,” and “Poem” (Lana Turner Has

                                                 Collapsed)

Dickinson, Emily                          “There’s a Certain Slant of Light,” “I Felt

                                                 a Funeral in My Brain,” and “Because I

                                                 Could Not Stop for Death”

Shakespeare, William                   “Sonnets”

Donne, John                               “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,”

                                                “Death Be Not Proud” and “The Flea”

Stein, Gertrude                            Tender Buttons, Stanzas in Meditation

Eliot, T. S.                                 “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of

                                                 J. Alfred Prufrock”

Williams, William Carlos               “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to

                                                 Say,” and Spring and All

Hopkins, Gerard Manley                “God’s Grandeur,” “Windhover,” and

                                                “Carrion Comfort”

Wordsworth, William                    “Tintern Abbey,” “Prelude,” and Lyrical

                                                 Ballads (with S. T. Coleridge)

Hughes, Langston                       “Theme for English B” and “The Negro

                                                 Speaks of Rivers”