"The Professors' Bookshelf" from the UC College Magazine, the Core

I love articles where readers name their favorite books.  Here's a good one from University of Chicago professors. Among the books they named are:

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars.

The Bible, "especially the New Testament."

Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, a title given by a senior lecturer in Economics who"had the honor of studying under [Friedman] and [who] became lifelong friends with [him], for his argumentation, logic, take-no-prisoners attitude, and willingness to tackle tough issues and take unpopular stands." The senior lecturer also likes Stephen King, whom he views "as the contemporary equivalent to Mary Shelley or Edgar Allen Poe."

Lolita - " the novel [that] taught me how to read anew  And it does so every time I read it."  This teacher also names Bohumil Hrabal's novel I Served the King of England, which he describes as "irredeemably beautiful."  Odd description:  Why would you want to redeem something beautiful, anyway?  Is that a sort of oxymoron?

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, from another professor.  He also names Giorgia Agamben's Homo Sacer.  He said the book he "most enjoys teaching" is Dante's Inferno.  I much enjoyed being taught it at Duke.

Alex Kotlowitz' There Are No Children Here.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.