The One Book, One Community Program enhances the academic and intellectual culture of the college and its community through a shared reading experience.
A committee of faculty & staff meet monthly to choose the One Book One Community annual selection and plan associated programming. The committee determines the book's themes and sets up an academic year's worth of events pertaining to those pertinent issues. The book selected serves as a catalyst for community wide reading; the resultant considered conversations often focus on issues about history, culture, society, human interactions and social justice. The books we choose tend to just push along the edges, so while people may start conversations with feelings about the book or topic, they soon move into thoughtful, intellectual engagement with one another.
Criteria for book selection include:
Please feel free to suggest a book for our program by filling out this form.
You may find that the book has been integrated into your course syllabi, faculty may mention the book during a class as a supplemental read for a course topic, or the libraries may post information about the book and its author.
It goes beyond in-class discussion, however.
Over the course of the academic year, you will have many opportunities to share and compare ideas about the One Book. Many faculty and staff will also have read the book, providing a broad base for discussion outside the classroom. Additionally, many of the lectures, discussions, exhibits, films and concerts that take place during the semester are specifically chosen to complement the book.
Books will be available in the college libraries and bookstore. Join fellow classmates, faculty, and staff in the excitement of the One Book by attending discussions, presentations and events.
Watch for news of the latest selection on the Massasoit Website, Portal and the Library pages.
Fall 2019/Spring 2020 Selection is here !
March: Book One, Book Two, and Book Three
by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Illustrated by Nate Powell
Congressman John Lewis (Georgia) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and non-violence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated school.
Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950's comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle. Now, March brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement's young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear them apart. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, joins co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell to bring the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. By the Fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action, SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice, but for every step forward, the danger grows more intense: Jim Crow strikes back through legal tricks, intimidation, violence, and death. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression:"One Man, One Vote." To carry out their non-violent revolution, Lewis and an army of young activists launch a series of innovative campaigns, including the Freedom Vote, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and an all-out battle for the soul of the Democratic Party waged live on national television. With these new struggles come new allies, new opponents, and an unpredictable new president who might be both at once. But fractures within the movement are deepening ... even as 25-year-old John Lewis prepares to risk everything in a historic showdown high above the Alabama river, in a town called Selma.