Literature



So here is the story. It happened several years ago. I am an Arts & Sciences graduate with degrees in Social Science and Mathematics. I and another Arts & Sciences graduate (in Chemistry) had several problems with the engineering graduates. They never seemed to know anything about History, Geography, World Culture or Human Behavior. They could not understand references made by authors in newspaper or magazine articles. They did not know how to talk to our customers about anything, but our products.

I created a list of books with the help of my friend to help solve the problem. The premise of this list is you should read all the books on the list to be considered educated. So as not to create problems I will not name my friend as in the end we still did have a disagreement on some of the titles. His complaint was not that these are not books that should be read. Instead the disagreement is if you had to make a list of 50, is this the correct 50.

As I look back at the list, I would change the list a little in his direction. One of the changes would be restricting myself to one book by an author. However, I present you with the original list as it was presented to the engineering graduates.

As one might guess none of the engineers given the list proceeded to read all the books. However, a few of the engineers read some of the books. So I think the world is somewhat better because there are now a couple more engineers in the world that can talk about more than technical specifications.

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