A native of Nashville, Tenn., John Thomas III is an assistant professor of political science whose research interests are comparative racial politics with a focus on Latin America, democratization and international development. He started collecting Starbucks mugs in graduate school and now has a collection of more than 500, including the one he’s holding.
His reading list covers books from high school and college that not only were memorable then, but continue to teach him new lessons even now.
“A good book is timeless,” he says. “You can always come back to it, and – no matter how many times you read it – there is always something new.”
- No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe
- The Good Earth, Pearl Buck
- Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy
- The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
- A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
- Cotton Comes to Harlem, Chester Himes
- The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, James Weldon Johnson
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, C.S. Lewis
- Destruction of Black Civilization, Chancellor Williams
- The Mis-Education of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson
(Honorable mention: the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the top.)