The Hero's Journey

The pivotal year of the American Revolution, told as narrative.

Scrooge's conversion. Read it aloud at Christmas. Read the original, not an abridgment.

Read in selections. Johnson is opinionated, well-written, and gives a strong narrative spine.

The other good first Shakespeare: fairies, lovers, and a play within a play.

Phileas Fogg's wager and global circumnavigation in 1872. Brisk and delightful.

Augustine's account of his boyhood. The full Confessions can wait until 16-18.

Dickens's most autobiographical novel and arguably his best. A long but rewarding investment.

Older end of this range. A governess, a brooding employer, and one of literature's great heroines.

The Pulitzer-winning biography. A good entry into the founding generation.

A good first Shakespeare: clear plot, famous speeches, political weight.

Prose versions of Shakespeare's plays. The traditional bridge before reading a real play.

Selected chapters at this age; full reading at 16-18. The "Right and Wrong" opening is the place to start.

A Bohemian girl on the Nebraska prairie. Cather's great novel of the American immigrant story.

A first full Dickens novel. Workhouses, thieves, and London.

The parallel biographies of Greek and Roman statesmen. Start with Alexander, Caesar, Brutus, Cato.

Austen at her wittiest. Older end of the range; some readers prefer it at 14-15.

The Great American Novel by most counts. Be ready to discuss the language and the moral arc.

The founding myth of Rome, recast for younger readers without losing the weight.

Wrongful imprisonment, escape, fortune, and revenge. Read an unabridged or generously abridged edition.

Sutcliff's prose retelling is the best entry point at this age. Full translation can wait until 14-15.

A white boy raised by the Lenape is returned to his colonial family. About belonging and divided loyalty.

The full trilogy. Tolkien's Catholic imagination rendered as English myth.

Hemingway distilled. Short, perfect, and a good first encounter with his style.

A young Union soldier confronts his own fear in battle. Brief, intense, foundational.

A senior demon advises his nephew on how to corrupt a soul. Funny, terrifying, useful.

Short, profound, accessible. The little way, in the saint's own words.

D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, Aramis. The original buddy adventure.

A boy and a fawn in the Florida scrub. Pulitzer winner.

Atticus Finch, Scout, the Robinson trial. The American moral education novel.

Lewis and Clark and the opening of the American West.

Christian sets off from the City of Destruction with a great burden on his back. He falls into the Slough of Despond, loses his load at the Cross, fights the monster Apollyon, passes through Vanity Fair, and comes at last to the Celestial City. Bunyan wrote it in Bedford jail; a child who meets it at twelve or thirteen can still feel the road under his feet.

Shipwrecked with only what he can pull from the wreck, Crusoe builds a house, plants corn by the phases of the moon, and cuts a notch in a post for every day. Later he meets Friday. The notches are the part a child remembers longest.

The Heaney translation is the standard. A prose version is also acceptable at this stage.

Use Fitzgerald, Wilson, or Lattimore. Sutcliff's prose Wanderings of Odysseus is a fine on-ramp.

A single jury room, twelve men, ninety minutes. The civic virtue film.

Thomas More refuses to swear an oath. The conscience film.

Bogart, Bergman, "round up the usual suspects." The Hollywood film.

"God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." The Eric Liddell film.

"If you build it, he will come." Baseball as American mysticism.

Gary Cooper alone against four killers and a town that won't help. The duty western.

A small-town Indiana basketball team. The platonic ideal of an American sports film.

A British frigate in the Pacific during the Napoleonic Wars. The best naval film made.

Opening Omaha Beach scene and closing cemetery scene with discussion. Full film is for ages 15+.

Three and a half hours and worth every minute. Kurosawa's defense-of-the-village epic.

Jesuits in eighteenth-century Paraguay. Profound and visually overwhelming.

John Wayne in rural Ireland. Sentimental, beautiful, very Irish-Catholic.

Gregory Peck as Atticus. Watch after reading the book.

Nine episodes that more or less established what a serious American documentary can be. The Shelby Foote narration alone is an education. Watch with a parent and pause to discuss.

Nine "innings," one per episode. The social history of twentieth-century America told through one game — immigration, race, money, and the long Brooklyn Dodgers tragedy.

Eight episodes on the American West from the Spanish entradas through statehood. Honest about the Indian Wars; honest about everything else.

Restored 70mm footage of the mission itself, with no talking heads, no retrospective interviews — just the eight days as they happened. Live it in real time.

Philippe Petit's 1974 wire walk between the World Trade Center towers, told as a heist film. About what an artist will do for one perfect act.

A real espresso from a real machine. Standing at the bar in Italy is the right context.

Espresso, steamed milk, foam. Before 11 a.m. only, if you want to be Italian about it.

A long-fermented loaf from a serious bakery: dark crust, open crumb, sour finish.

Square fried dough, smothered in powdered sugar. Café du Monde in New Orleans is the place.

Beet soup, often with beef. Topped with sour cream and dill.

Flour, water, yeast, salt. Knead, rise, bake. The fundamental food of the West.

Bacon, gravlax, pastrami, smoked brisket. The traditional preservation skills.

Chickpea or fava bean fritters, fried fresh. The crisp shell to soft interior contrast is the point.

Beef, paprika, onions, slow-cooked. The Hungarian national dish.

Slow-roasted leg or shoulder with garlic, lemon, oregano. Easter Sunday food.

Know ribeye from strip from tenderloin from skirt. Hot grill, salt, rest. Reverse-sear thicker cuts.

Dark roux, the holy trinity, andouille, shrimp or chicken. Louisiana in a pot.

Chickpeas, tahini, lemon, garlic, olive oil. Made fresh, not from a tub.

Animal style, double-double. A California regional rite of passage.

The Louisiana rice dish. Cousin to paella and pilaf.

Lamb or chicken, marinated and grilled on skewers. With flatbread, yogurt, herbs.

Spiced lamb roasted on a vertical spit, shaved into pita with garlic sauce and pickles.

Tipo 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, fior di latte. Cooked very hot, very fast. A different food from American pizza.

Flour, eggs, salt. Make tagliatelle by hand, then ravioli with a filling. Worth the day.

Potato-cheese or sauerkraut filling, boiled then fried in butter with onions.

Battered or grilled white fish, cabbage, crema, lime. Baja-California style.

High heat, salt the day before, butter under the skin. The single most useful cooking skill.

Six or eight small dishes: jamón, manchego, tortilla, gambas al ajillo, olives, bread.

A slow-cooked tomato meat sauce, or béchamel/velouté/espagnole. The day-long Sunday project.

Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Czestochowa, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in DC. Even a regional shrine matters.

Start with Genesis, Exodus, the Gospels. A study Bible (Ignatius, Didache) helps enormously.

In a real theater with real actors. The plays were written to be performed, not read.

Anything Gothic. Even a smaller one — the California missions, Mission San Diego de Alcalá — does the work.

The Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson, the Vietnam Wall after dark. The American civic pilgrimage.

Mass in B Minor, St. Matthew Passion, the cantatas. Bach is the Mount Everest.

Dvořák in America. The Largo second movement is the famous one ("Goin' Home").

The Songbook series she recorded for Verve. Ella sings Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Ellington.

The Capitol years (1954-1962). Start with In the Wee Small Hours and Songs for Swingin' Lovers.

The original country voice. Cold Cold Heart, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, Lost Highway.

Mozart's unfinished Mass for the dead, completed by Süssmayr. The Lacrimosa is the famous moment.

The classic period: Talking Book, Innervisions, Songs in the Key of Life.

Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, the White Album, Abbey Road. All of it, in order.

The root of American country and folk music. Wildwood Flower, Can the Circle Be Unbroken.

Red Headed Stranger, Stardust, the duets with everyone.

Child's nineteenth-century collection of three hundred English and Scottish ballads — the deep folk-tradition source for a thousand later songs. Read Tam Lin, Sir Patrick Spens, Barbara Allen, The Twa Corbies. Better, listen to them sung: Anne Briggs, Martin Carthy, June Tabor, Dick Gaughan.

Christina's World, the Helga pictures, the Maine and Pennsylvania paintings.

Uffizi, Florence. The two great secular mythological paintings of the early Renaissance.

Sixteenth-century Netherlandish life rendered with detail and warmth. Vienna and Brussels hold most.

Sixth-century Byzantine cathedral, now a mosque. The dome that defined Eastern Christian architecture.

Milan. The moment Christ says "one of you will betray me," with each apostle's reaction.

Vatican. The creation, the fall, the flood, the prophets and sibyls. The peak of Western painting by some counts.

Vatican. Every great philosopher of antiquity in one room. The visual emblem of Western intellectual tradition.

Vatican. The largest church in the world. Michelangelo's dome, Bernini's baldachin, the Pietà.

Vermeer's extant paintings number around 35. Every one is worth knowing.

The American sea and shore painter. The late Prout's Neck oils especially.