Be Ready To Discuss This Fall

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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.

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.