Image: A winter shot of the Bennington campus, with Commons Lawn, student houses, and a view of Mt. Anthony. Photo by Cynthia Locklin.

Field Work Term—the annual seven-week internship period that all Bennington students undertake each winter—gives students the chance to travel to points across the United States and the world, getting firsthand experience in fields that excite them.

Many students also take the opportunity to do a bit of reading for pleasure over FWT, a fact that inspired Oceana Wilson, director of library and information services, to email the entire faculty with a simple request:

“I’m looking for winter reading recommendations for students—the kind of books you would recommend to a friend.”

Bennington students and faculty work exceptionally closely together, in what’s known as a master-apprentice model of learning. Wilson thought that a list of their teachers’ favorite books could be “another way for the students to feel connected” to the Bennington community during their adventures afar.

The interests of any given Bennington faculty member are as wide-ranging as those of any given student, and the resulting list shows it. An architect recommends an 1825 treatise on gastronomy. A computer scientist endorses a book on “heroes of the imagination.” An anthropologist touts a literary adventure novel.

Copies of the list were available in the library just before the fall term ended, and Wilson reports that even in the rush of end-of-term projects and papers, half the books had been checked out by the time students left campus. And so, dear website reader, who may be looking to do a little winter reading of your own: We’re delighted to share this list with you.

Steven Bach
Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay
Before the Deluge: a portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich

Deirdre Bair
Murphy by Samuel Beckett
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

Doug Bauer
Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler

April Bernard
In Case We’re Separated by Alice Mattison
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Nick Brooke
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney
Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage

Annabel Davis-Goff
The Outermost Dream: Essays and Reviews by William Maxwell

Roberto DeLucca
The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi by Alexander Stille

Kathleen Dimmick
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

Marguerite Feitlowitz
The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

Becky Godwin
Lay of the Land by Richard Ford
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Karen Gover
But Is It Art? by Cynthia Freeland

Dan Hofstadter
Gabriel's Gift by Hanif Kureishi

Joe Holt
The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
The Creators by Daniel Boorstin

Mary Lum
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
The King of Capri by Jeanette Winterson

Carol Meyer
Freddy and Frederika by Mark Helprin
The Women's Decameron by Julia Voznesenskaya

Chris Miller
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
I Remember by Joe Brainard
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis
Pastoralia by George Saunders

Peter Pagnucco
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, et al.

Ann Pibal
Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival by Carl Safina
Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

Mirka Prazak
Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo

Robert Ransick
The Devil's Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea
Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing by Adam Greenfield

Sue Rees
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Dana Reitz
Silence by John Cage
Dance Writings by Edwin Denby

Allen Shawn
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin

Donald Sherefkin
Invisible Cities by Italio Calvino
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Species of Spaces by George Perec
The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

Betsy Sherman
Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt
French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Mark Wunderlich
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
Black Box by Erin Belieu

Jason Zimba
The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy
Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

More:

• On Teaching at Bennington: Quotes from the Faculty
• The Plan Process: Bennington's Academic Structure
• About Field Work Term
• Ask a Student

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