Latest Update 05 April 2006

We are dealing with a literate crowd in these novels.  I started this list by noting what our favorite gumshoe was reading but noticed that he was not the only one enriching his mind.  I think this is complete but if you notice any omissions please call them to my attention.

Promised Land
Susan: "The Children of the Dream: Communal Child-Reading and American Education" by Bruno Bettelheim

The Judas Goat
Spenser: "Regeneration through Violence" by Richard Slotkin

Early Autumn
Spenser: "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman.

A Savage Place
Spenser: "Play of the Double Senses: Spenser's Fairie Queen" by A. Bartlett Giamatti (later President of Yale)
Spenser: "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Ceremony
Spenser: "Sartoris" by William Faulkner.
Spenser: An unnamed novel by John LeClair

The Widening Gyre
Spenser: "Legends of the Fall" by Jim Harrison.
Susan: "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck.

A Catskill Eagle
Jerry Costigan: A thick book by Karl Von Clausewitz.  Probably "On War."
Spenser: "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam" by Barbara W. Tuchman.
Spenser: "One Writer's Beginning" by Eudora Welty.
Spenser: "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck.
Susan: "Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession" by Janet Malcomb.

Crimson Joy
Hawk: "Common Ground" by J. Anthony Lucas.

Playmates
Spenser: "Season Ticket: A Baseball Companion" by Roger Angell.

Walking Shadow
Christopholous: "The Elizabethan World Picture" by E.M.W. Tillyard.
Hawk: "Race Matters" by Cornel West.

Thin Air
Leighton: "Mode of Being: The Tactical Personae of Men and Women in the Modern World" by Paul Weiss.

Chance
Hawk: "Remembering Denny" by Calvin Trillin.

Small Vices
Susan: (my guess) "Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute" by Frederick Crews 
Hawk: (my guess) "Black Lies, White Lies : The Truth According to Tony Brown" by Tony Brown 

Widow's Walk
Hawk: "History of Britain" by Simon Schama.

Back Story
Hawk: "What Evolution Is" by Ernst Mayr
Hawk: "Einstein's Universe" by Nigel Calder

Bad Business
Spenser: "Rembrandt's Eyes" by Simon Schama
Spenser: "Genome" by Matt Ridley
Hawk: "The Teammates" by David Halberstam

Cold Service
Spenser: "Longitudes and Attitudes" by Thomas L. Friedman

You can look most of these up on Amazon.com find out what they are about.  I may expand this later but here are a couple of examples:

"Common Ground." - The 1986 Pulitzer Prize winning novel about racial relations and tensions in Boston during the sixties and seventies, leading to the infamous troubles over forced bussing. 

"The Road Less Traveled." - The 1978 book by Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck. In the era of "I'm OK, You're OK" Peck was courageous enough to suggest that "life is difficult" and personal growth is a "complex, arduous and lifelong task."

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