The purpose of the Common Read Program at Colorado College is to create a common intellectual experience across campus, including our new incoming undergraduate students, to introduce our core values as an academic community, and to teach how to engage as members of our community of scholars.

Campus Reading at CC 2024-25

Common Read at CC 2023-24

Common Read at CC 2022-23 (View the Reading Guide with links to more information for this author's work.)

Common Read at CC 2021-22

Common Reads at CC started in the 1970s. Here is a short list of some titles

2024   Belonging by bell hooks

2023    The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
2022    Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life by Katherine Standefer
2021    No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell Moore
2020    What the Eyes Don't See: a Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha
2019    Round House by Louise Erdrich
2018    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
2017    Citizen by Claudia Rankine
2016    Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele
2015    Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
2014    The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
2013    Hamlet by Shakespeare
2012    Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islam World by Robin Wright
2011    Ludlow by David Mason
2010    Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
2009    Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenriech
2008    The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
2007    A Long Way Gone by Ismael Beah
2006    Essay "Can Values Be Taught by the University by Toni Morrison
2005    American Smooth by Rita Dove
2004    Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid