Historian, writer and assistant professor Blake C. Scott is interested in the diverse cultures and ecologies that make up the U.S. South and the Caribbean. At the College, he teaches in the international studies program, examining a range of issues related to globalization, travel and migration, and environmental change in the 21st century. When not in the classroom or deep into reading and writing, Scott is often wandering and wondering through the marshes and waterways of the Lowcountry on his 32-foot Charlie Morgan sloop, Pelican.

Here is Scott’s top 10 list of his favorite books.

1. Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Rebecca Solnit

2. The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy

3. Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

4. Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays (Library of America version),James Baldwin 

5. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway  

6. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy  

7. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid    

8. Plato’s Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology, William Ophuls   

9. Essential Writings (Orbis Books version), Thich Nhat Hanh 

10. Reindeer Chronicles: And Other Inspiring Stories of Working with Nature to Heal the Earth, Judith D. Schwartz