Brendan Stern

Former basketball coach, current professor of American politics, future curmudgeon

Wonders

Because wonder is the mind’s favorite toy.

Poetry That Speak To Me

  1. Admonition, Sylvia Plath
  2. The Vacation, Wendell Berry
  3. This is Just to Say, William Williams
  4. Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot
  5. The Wind has Died, Charles Simic

Bookshops I Want To Live In For A Week

  1. Chamblin’s Uptown, Jacksonville
  2. The Strand, New York City
  3. Collected Works, Santa Fe
  4. WonderBooks, Frederick
  5. Malaprop’s, Asheville

 Books About U.S. Presidents

  1. Washington, Ron Chernow
  2. The Audacity of Hoop, Alexander Wolff
  3. The River of Doubt, Candice Millard
  4. American Lion, Jon Meachem
  5. Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Memoirs That Read Like Novels

  1. The Speechwriter, Barton Swaim
  2. If This is a Man, Primo Levi
  3. My Losing Season, Pat Conroy
  4. Good Arguments, Bo Seo
  5. Born a Crime, Trevor Noah

Books That Opened My Eyes And Mind

  1. Philosophy and Social Hope, Richard Rorty
  2. The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt
  3. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
  4. Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
  5. The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt

T.V. Shows That Made Me Forget I Was Watching a Show

  1. Breaking Bad
  2. The Wire
  3. The Studio
  4. The Affair
  5. Ted Lasso

Movies That Made Me Forget I Was Watching A Movie

  1. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  2. Life is Beautiful
  3. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  4. The Great Debaters
  5. 12 Angry Men

Novels That Should Be Required Reading

  1. I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe
  2. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
  3. Trust, Hernan Diaz
  4. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
  5. The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier

Documentaries That Should Be Required Viewing

  1. The Alpinist, 2020
  2. Time: The Kalief Browder Story, 2017
  3. Man on Wire, 2008
  4. Grizzly Man, 2005
  5. Hoop Dreams, 1994

Museums I Want To Visit Again… And Over And Over Again

  1. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield
  2. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
  3. FC Barcelona Museum, Barcelona
  4. Noguchi Museum, New York City
  5. The Basketball Experience and National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, Kansas City

Museums I Hope To Attend Someday

  1. Barack Obama Presidential Library, Chicago
  2. The Museum of Bad Art, Brookline and Smoerville
  3. The National Constitution Center, Philadelphia
  4. Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, Delhi
  5. Leonardo da Vinci Museum, Florence

Artwork That Splash Orange Juice Into My Eyes

  1. Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix
  2. Deluge, Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
  3. Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh
  4. Riding with Death, Jean-Michel Basquiat
  5. Tank Man, Jeff Widener

Places In The World Not Named Santa Fe, NM

  1. Barcelona
  2. Merida, Mexico
  3. Gili Air, Indonesia
  4. Paris
  5. New York City