🐯 My Princeton reads, fall 2026
I use this page to track books and papers I’ve read that are used in Fall 2026 Princeton classes
I connected publicly available information from the online bookstore and course webpages
Computer Science
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach COS/EGR 126
- 🔗 Machine learning paradigms by Etienne Bernard
Intro. to Programming Systems COS 217
- 📕 The Practice of Programming by Kernighan & Pike
- 🔗 Unix tutorial • A guided tour of Emacs
Algorithms & Data Structures COS 226
- 📕 Algorithms by Sedgewick & Wayne
Mathematics for Numerical Computing & Machine Learning COS 302 / SML/ECE 305
- 📕 Mathematics for Machine Learning by Deisenroth et al.
- 🔗 Don’t invert that matrix by John D. Cook
Intro. to Machine Learning COS 324
- 📕 Mathematics for Machine Learning by Deisenroth, Faisal & Ong
- 🔗 Linear regression • Logistic regression • Cross validation • Train, test & validation sets • Machine learning paradigms • Linear regression • Bias variance tradeoff • Gradient descent methods • Federated learning • Adversarial examples • K-means clustering
- 📰 Power of deep learning • Bias in artificial intelligence
Functional Programming & Formal Methods COS 326
- 📕 OCaml Programming: Correct + Efficient + Beautiful by Michael R. Clarkson
Adv. Programming Techniques COS 333
- 📕 The Practice of Programming by Kernighan & Pike
Computer Architecture & Organization COS/ECE 375
- 📕 Computer Organization & Design: The Hardware Software Interface by Patterson & Hennessy (my highlights)
Distributed Systems COS 418
- 📄 Time, Clocks & the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie Lamport
Automated Reasoning about Software COS/ECE 516
- 📄 An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming by C.A.R. Hoare
Adv. Computer Networks COS 561
- 📄 WebRTC: Real-Time Communication for the Open Web Platform by Blum et al.
- 📄 How to Read a Paper by S. Keshav
- 📄 Architectural Considerations for a New Generation of Protocols by Clark & Tennenhouse
- 📄 The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols by David D. Clark
- 🔗 Supercomputer networking to accelerate large scale AI training
AI Agents COS 597C
- 🔗 Single-agent systems by Graham Neubig
Foundational Papers in Networks & Operating Systems COS 597L
- 📄 seL4: Formal Verification of an Operating-System Kernel by Klein et al.
- 📄 OpenFlow: Enabling Innovation in Campus Networks by McKeown et al.
- 📄 How to Read a Paper by S. Keshav
- 📄 The UNIX Time-Sharing System by Ritchie & Thompson
- 📄 The Structure of the THE Multiprogramming System by Edsger W. Dijkstra
Machine Learning for the Natural Sciences COS 597Y
- 📄 Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al.
Slavic Languages & Literatures
What Makes for a Meaningful Life? A Search FRS 121
- 📕 Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (my highlights)
- 📕 Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
- 🎞️ Forrest Gump • Casablanca
American & Russian Science Fiction: Story-Worlds in Dialogue FRS 189
- 📕 Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky & Strugatsky (my highlights)
- 📕 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
- 📕 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (my highlights)
- 📕 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- 📕 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky SLA/RES 219
- 📕 Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (my highlights)
Dostoevsky SLA/RES 416
- 📕 Notes from Underground (my highlights)
Psychology
Computational Models of Cognition PSY/COS 360
- 📄 Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al.
- 📄 Adapting Deep Network Features to Capture Psychological Representations by Peterson et al.
- 📄 Human-level Concept Learning through Probabilistic Program Induction by Lake et al.
- 📄 Deep Learning by LeCun et al.
- 📄 ImageNet Classification w/ Deep Convolutional Neural Networks by Krizhevsky et al.
- 📄 How to Grow a Mind: Statistics, Structure & Abstraction by Tenenbaum et al.
- 📄 The Discovery of Structural Form by Kemp & Tenenbaum
- 📄 Generalization, Similarity & Bayesian Inference by Tenenbaum & Griffiths
- 📄 Minimization of Boolean Complexity in Human Concept Learning by Jacob Feldman
General
- 📕 Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World by Maryanne Wolf (my highlights)
Exploring the Graphic Novel FRS 111
- 📔 American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
- 📔 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
- 📔 Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
- 📔 Watchmen by Moore & Gibbons
Gaslight! Control, Coercion, or Just Conflict?: The Cultural History of a TikTok Term FRS 153
- 📕 The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (my highlights)
- 📕 1984 by George Orwell
History
The Byzantine Empire HIS/MED 205 / HUM 204 / HLS 209
- 📕 Byzantium: A Very Short Intro. by Peter Sarris
Europe from Antiquity to 1700 HIS/MED 211
- 📕 The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (my highlights)
American Origins: The Colonization of North America HIS 371
- 📕 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (my highlights)
World After Empire HIS 411 / AAS 416
- 📕 The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
- 📕 Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois (my highlights)
The Age of Democratic Revolutions HIS 487
- 📕 The Birth of the Republic, 1763–89 by Edmund S. Morgan (my highlights)
Information Technology Policy
- 📄 Auditing LLMs for Race & Gender Disparities: Implications for AI-Based Hiring by Gaebler et al.
- 📄 Amazing Things Come From Having Many Good Models by Rudin et al.
- 📄 Risk Scores, Label Bias & Everything but the Kitchen Sink by Zanger-Tishler et al.
- 📄 Tech Ethics: Speaking Ethics to Power, or Power Speaking Ethics? by Lily Hu
- 📄 One Label, One Billion Faces: Usage & Consistency of Racial Categories in Computer Vision by Khan & Fu
Humanistic Studies
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Western Culture I: Literature & the Arts HUM 216
- 📕 The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
- 📜 Apology by Plato
- 📜 The Odyssey by Homer
East Asian Humanities I: The Classical Foundations HUM/EAS/COM 233
- 📜 Analects by Confucius (my highlights)
Between Selves: Living Letters from Antiquity to the Present HUM 416 / CLA 415 / ENG 410
- 📕 The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (my highlights)
Classics
History of Freedom FRS 137
- ✉️ Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.
Classical Mythology CLA/HUM/GSS/HLS 212
- 📕 Jason & the Golden Fleece by Apollonius of Rhodes
- 📜 The Odyssey by Homer
The Trojan War: A Linguistic Intro. CLA 307 / TRA 306 / LIN 259
- 📕 The Trojan War: A Very Short Intro. by Eric H. Cline
Socrates CLG 105
- 📜 Apology by Plato
African American Studies
African American Studies & the Philosophy of Race AAS 201 / PHI 291
- 📕 Beloved by Toni Morrison (my highlights)
- 📕 The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (my highlights)
The Souls of Black Folk – Reading W.E.B. Du Bois AAS/URB 231 / ENG 245
- 📕 Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (my highlights)
Toni Morrison & Her Circle AAS/ENG 320
- 📕 Beloved (my highlights)
Art, Apartheid & South Africa AAS/AFS 411 / ART 471
- 📕 Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
Arts
Imagining Childhood WRI 118
- 📚 A Pocket for Corduroy • Corduroy • The Giving Tree • Where the Wild Things Are • Horton Hears a Who!
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Wisdom of Crowds FRS 169
- 📕 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- 📕 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (my highlights)
- 📕 Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (my highlights)
Art & Archaeology
19th-Century European Art: Painting & Literature in 19th C. France & England ART/ECS/COM 450 / HUM 451
- 📕 The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (my highlights)
Modern Art: Science & Its Fictions in the Long 19th Century ART/HUM 577
- 📕 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (my highlights)
- 📕 Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
- 📕 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
English
American Literature: 1930-Present ENG 368 / AMS 340
- 📕 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- 📔 Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
- 📕 Beloved by Toni Morrison (my highlights)
Junior Independent Work Seminar ENG 397
- 📕 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (my highlights)
Comparative Literature
Marx in the 21st Century FRS 167
- 📄 The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels
The Modern Period COM 318 / ECS 319 / LAS 308
- 📕 A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (my highlights)
Anarchism, Nihilism, Utopia: Art, Literature & Radical Politics COM 351
- 📕 Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (my highlights)
Religion
Religion & the Public Conversation REL 100
- 📕 Religion: A Very Short Intro. by Thomas A. Tweed
Religion, Race & Politics in the U.S. REL 372 / AAS 367
- 📕 The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (my highlights)
International & Regional Studies
Landmarks of European Identity EPS/ECS 302
- 📕 Neuromancer by William Gibson (my highlights)
Translation, Migration, Culture TRA/HUM 400 / COM 409
- 📕 Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions by Valeria Luiselli (my highlights)
Politics
The Just Society POL/CHV 307
- 📄 The Communist Manifesto by Marx & Engels
Causes of War POL/SPI 388
- 📕 The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I by Barbara W. Tuchman (my highlights)
Public & International Affairs
The Comparative Political Economy of Development SPI 561 / POL 523
- 📕 The State & Capitalism in China by Pearson et al.
Chemical & Biological Engineering
Technical Leadership in Engineering CBE/EGR 531
- 📕 Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Burnett & Evans (my highlights)
Study of America
Native American Literature NAI/AMS 322 / ENG 242
- 📕 Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
Anthropology
Violence ANT/HUM 264
- 📕 The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Music
Sound Design & the Moving Image: The Multi-Layered Language of Film FRS 135
- 🎞️ M by Fritz Lang