Are you well read?

Are you well read?

What do you want to be when you grow up? I can’t recall how many times I was asked that when I was a youth. My response was usually that I didn’t know. I once wanted to emulate my father’s father and drive a coal truck making deliveries to households. I guess the propane truck has replaced the coal truck. Then I wanted to be a cartographer. Later an astronomer.

My friends growing up had parents that were electricians, insurance salesmen, mechanics and physicians. Mine were school teachers and Dad also worked at night as a postal clerk. I didn’t want to be any of those. Yet I was predestined and didn’t know it. My mother said that I always had my face in a book. I mainly read science fiction, books on geography, astronomy and the Civil War. My favorite place was the West Hunter street public library where I would go and spend hours. When I had read all that they had, they ordered me books from the main library in Atlanta – where I was barred from entering. My folks being teachers encouraged my reading and always brought me books that they thought I would enjoy. I still have an almost complete collection of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan novels and John Carter of Mars stories. I also have the copy of McKinley Cantor’s Andersonville that they gave me when I was still in elementary school.

Andersonville? Yes. My father was from Bainbridge, Georgia and the infamous Andersonville prisoner of war camp is in Sumter County. One day he took my brother and me to the camp and looking over the multitude of rows of gravestones, he told us the story of the horrors of the camp. Dad was pretty certain that there were black union POWs there as well but he could not verify it. There were no search engines during most of his lifetime. But that got me going and I started reading Civil War histories and fiction. I still do. And yes, there were black POWs and on a visit back to the site, there is actually a recognition of them at the camp.

So when I went to the University of Georgia and had to declare a major I said “pre-law” only because my Dad’s older brother was an attorney in Cincinnati. I enrolled in the business school rather than arts and sciences because a foreign language was not required. I had had a year of French and a year of Latin in high school and considered both a waste of time. Why would I want to take more language in college when the courses taught everything about the structure of the language but not how to speak it? Anyway I used to joke that my French was only good for being able to read a menu. 

I almost immediately realized that I wanted to be a professor. I remarked to a friend “You mean I can read for a living?” Now what subject? Was I going to be a law professor? That was a real possibility until I took the first course in economics. I made good grades in my pre-law course but also enjoyed math and philosophy. Ironically, I did not care for history because it was literally an all-white history and was different from what I had been taught growing up in all black schools. But I loved economics and from that day forward I added economics and business to my readings.

I probably have thousands of books and I read almost daily. To the list of subjects I have added historical fiction and mysteries. My students used to remark how did I know so much. I used to tell them that they were asking the wrong question. Students in my financial markets and institutions class would complain that this was a finance course and not one in history, civics, geography or philosophy. I told them “yes it is.”

So I considered myself as well read until one of my dearest friends sent me a first year reading list from Phi Beta Kappa. BTW I am not a member of that august society since I have a business degree and not one in arts and sciences. My senior year I got a call from the registrar’s office that my name was not on the Phi Beta Kappa list but all I had to do was to take three more electives in arts and sciences to get a BA degree rather than a BBA. Ironically I had already elected to take a year of German but opted not to do so because there were other business courses I wanted to take.

On the Phi Beta Kappa reading list I have read only three of the books and they are all classics: Brave New World, the US Constitution and the works of Socrates. I am somewhat shaken. How could I possibly be well read if I am not well read? But don’t you think that Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters and Louis L’Amour’s Education of a Wandering Man should be on the list?

https://www.pbk.org/programs/arts-sciences/first-year-reading-2025