“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” President John Adams

Reading is foundational for all learning. By helping students foster a love for reading, we are helping them acquire language, critical thinking skills and healthy imaginations. These foundational skills are some of the major components needed to be an accomplished reader, writer and orator later in life 

Yet, reading just any book doesn’t always offer great value. You are what you read. There are great benefits from reading biographies of heroes with high standards of character and a perspective at least relatively consistent with Christian thinking. If one wishes to excel in life, there is no better place to find inspiration than in the lives of those who have changed our world for the better. Every life has a beginning, middle and end, and how one has lived it should be of great interest to those who are still at the beginning.

To encourage students along this path, I listed significant historical figures for students to choose from in order to read a biography and complete a book report. While no one person on this list was a perfect individual, they still strove for goodness and fought for God-honoring causes.

Important Mandatory Guidelines

Serving Together,
Christopher P. DeSanctis