Past Common Texts

Past Common Text Selections:

2024: Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua

2023: What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha

2022: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

2021: The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose by Chris Wilson

2020: Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

2019: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

2018: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

2017: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

2016: How To Win an Election by Quintus Tullius Cicero (translated by Philip Freeman)

2015: Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris 

2014: The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison 

2013: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, by Mark Haddon

2012: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

2011: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

2010: The Complete Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

2009: Acts of Faith, by Eboo Patel

2008: Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder

2007: When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka

2006: Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli