Summer Reading List — 2026

Les Miserables the musical

Ambitious, but with the start of May, enticing

Join with me this summer with your own list.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo — finished April

• A true classic: being read by one of my students so I read it again--finished it this week.

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

• A great work about the KKK in the 1920s

The First Populist by David S. Brown

• Biography of Andrew Jackson

Amiable Scoundrel by Paul Kahan

• Biography about former Sen. Simon Cameron [close family ties]

Disastrous Floods and the Demise of Steel in Johnstown by Pat Farabaugh

• Looking forward to this by SFU prof and my friend Pat Farabaugh

  
  

Hoods and Shirts by Philip Jenkins

• PSU prof and expert on the KKK and right wing groups

The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left by William O’Rourke

• One from my youth that I never read

Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase-Riboud

• A novel about Thomas Jefferson's slave and mother of six children

Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh

• Book about an abortion clinic by former Cambria County woman

Augie by John Bacchus

• Bio of former MLB umpire Augie Donatelli from Cambria County

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters by James W. Douglas

• Reviews say that this is a must for JFK lovers

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

• A master of prose

Candide by Voltaire

• Another classic

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

• Not sure about this, but it is on the shelf