Ed. Magazine On My Bookshelf: Senior Lecturer Katherine Boles Posted June 6, 2014 By Marin Jorgensen Currently reading: David McCullough's The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. It's incredibly long, and it'll take me months to finish it, but I am totally in love with the way McCullough writes. The thing that drew you to it: I got hooked on McCullough after a historian friend told me to read The Great Bridge years ago. I was fascinated by the story of the building of the [Brooklyn] bridge and the back story of the lives of the workers who built it. They were poor Brooklyn Irishmen, and the book gave me a sense of my own ancestry. As I read the book, I kept thinking of a story my father told me about my grandmother, who, as a little girl, before the building of the bridge, hid in a barrel that her laborer father was transporting across the East River. She hid in the barrel to save the nickel it would have cost had she been a passenger. It was a favorite story in my family. Favorite book from childhood: Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey was my favorite. I remember my mother reading it to my younger sister, and then I read the book myself a million times to my own children. Now it's the gift I give to every new mother and father I know. Favorite books you were asked to read for school: I loved A Tale of Two Cities in high school. I remember the feel of the black cover, the characters, and the setting in Paris. Then in college, I loved Germinal by Emile Zola. In grad school I hung on every word of The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change by Seymour Sarason. Seymour was my husband's mentor at Yale, and when I started writing about teaching and teachers, he became a staunch supporter of my work. I was so proud. I loved The Culture of the School, and I adored Seymour. Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: On a small couch in the living room, feet up. Ed. Magazine Books: Summer 2014 Ed. Magazine The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Explore All Articles Related Articles News Essential Howard Gardner Two new books tell the story of the renowned psychologist's intellectual life Ed. Magazine Books: I Used to Think... And Now I Think... Ed. Magazine Why Do Kids Believe in God but Not Harry Potter?