Summer Reading

There is no silence quite like the one that fills an empty classroom on the last day of school, when all the children have gone. The stillness settles over the stacked books and rows of desks and echoes down the lifeless halls. For many teachers, that silence holds a golden promise of long, sleepy summer weeks ahead. Of time to reflect, to relax, and to catch up on things. Of whole hours, even days, without interruptions, when there's plenty of time for diving into a good book.

Powerful is the urge, certainly, to spend some of that valuable reading time traveling far, far away from the world of education. For that journey, we happily refer you to the works of John Grisham, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, and others. But for many teachers, the break also provides a chance to explore authors and ideas that will help them think about what they teach and how they teach it, so they can return to their subjects, and their students, with fresh enthusiasm and energy in the fall.

With that in mind, we've gathered from 15 teachers around the country a list of books they found thoughtful, challenging, and entertaining. Books that offered a new way of looking at science or math, English or art. We asked them to recommend books in their subject fields, but not scholarly works or academic tomes. Books so good that teachers from other disciplines would enjoy...