Be Ready To Discuss This Fall

A number of colleges are assigning homework before their freshmen even set foot on campus--mandatory summer reading. The schools typically choose one book that will spark debate, remind freshmen that there is life outside the undergraduate ivory tower--and not be too heavy to make it from the bookshelf to the beach. Here's a look at some books on incoming freshmen's reading lists for this summer. --By Molly Worthen

DUKE UNIVERSITY An expose of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America's public schools

ITHACA COLLEGE The Color of Water, a memoir of growing up in a family of 12 children in New York City housing projects

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY The author's journey through a modern-day South still obsessed with the Civil War

LAFAYETTE COLLEGE Michael Frayn's play about a fateful meeting between pioneers of the nuclear bomb

U OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL The best-selling, firsthand account of minimum-wage life in the U.S.