Dear incoming Golden Bears,

We welcome you to UC Berkeley with the annual Summer Reading List for New Students, a selection of the very best readings enthusiastically suggested for you by Cal faculty, staff, graduate students, and your fellow undergraduates. Skim through the rich collection of fiction and nonfiction below, and you’re sure to find something that will pique your interest, whether you pick one of these up to read this summer or find it in one of the campus’s many libraries upon your arrival this fall.

This year’s theme is Connection(s). Every day we’re reminded of our connections to others, whether something as wonderful as our links to friends and loved ones or as concerning as this year’s COVID-19 pandemic. While you’re in college, you’re likely to make rich and deep connections — with other people, with your studies, and with the intersection of ideas across disciplines, history, and parts of your own life. We look forward to connecting with you when you get to Berkeley. In the meantime, we hope you’ll enjoy some of the fantastic readings offered here that suggest just a few of the many ways in which connections manifest themselves in the world.

Michael Larkin

Lecturer

College Writing Programs

Tim Dilworth

First Year coordinator

UC Berkeley Library

Image credit: Don't know where this R.R. was -short connecting line to where? “Our mother” is Mrs. Lawrence May with Elsie Jane May on her lap.

Bully Hill Mine Photographs Relating to the Lawrence May Family, ca. 1870-1919

BANC PIC 1982.063:37--PIC