Recognize a high school junior who has demonstrated extraordinary service to the common good and an unusual passion for inquiry, discovery, and innovative thinking.
We’re proud to be one of many colleges and universities partnering with high schools to honor exceptional high school students—usually juniors—with a college book award. The criteria for book awards varies from one institution to the next. While some schools may recognize excellence and achievement in areas like the arts or a specific academic discipline, at Bowdoin it centers on a deep commitment to the common good.
We have reached our allotment of books to give to schools, but would welcome your school to participate in the Bowdoin Book Award program if you are able to purchase a book independently. We provide a bookmark and a book plate to each coordinator, but are no longer able to provide a book.
The 2025 Book Award Choices
The Bowdoin Book Award has long celebrated Bowdoin’s values, and this year, we present these values in connection to the “Offer of the College,” written by Bowdoin’s seventh president in 1906.
To be at home in all lands and all ages:
An Elegant Woman, by Martha McPhee '87.
Note: Due to high demand, this offering is no longer available. We would welcome your school to participate in the Bowdoin Book Award program if you are able to purchase a book independently.
The fifth novel from National Book Award finalist Martha McPhee, An Elegant Woman considers ideas of self-invention, legacy, memory, and truth. Told through a moving saga that tracks four generations of women over the course of the twentieth century, from a farm in Montana to a place in Maine, with many spots in between, the novel—drawn from McPhee’s own family history—is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves, as well as the ones we don't.
To carry the keys of the world’s library in your pocket:
Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr ’95, H’17.
Note: Due to high demand, this offering is no longer available. We would welcome your school to participate in the Bowdoin Book Award program if you are able to purchase a book independently.
The newest novel by the Pultizer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, this novel features the stories of five young protagonists—in fifteenth-century Constantinople, in small-town Idaho in the present, and on a spaceship of the future—all in peril, all connected through the same book. Libraries serve as sanctuaries both physical and spiritual in this novel, which Doerr dedicated to “the librarians then, now, and in the years to come.”
Cooperate with others for common ends:
On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, by DeRay Mckesson ’07.
Note: Due to high demand, this offering is no longer available. We would welcome your school to participate in the Bowdoin Book Award program if you are able to purchase a book independently.
A combination memoir and practical handbook from Bowdoin alumnus DeRay Mckesson, civil rights activist, community organizer, and host of award-winning podcast Pod Save the People, this book is an intimate portrait of the Black Lives Matter movement from the frontlines.
To gain a standard for the appreciation of others' work and the criticism of your own:
I Never Thought of it That Way, by Mónica Guzmán ’05.
Note: Due to high demand, this offering is no longer available. We are also no longer able to provide a bookplate for this offering anymore.
In I Never Thought of it That Way Journalist Mónica Guzmán draws from cross-partisan conversations she’s had or witnessed to show how to overcome fear and begin to understand and even learn from others with a very different worldview than your own. Avoiding others with different political perspectives is hurting relationships and damaging society. Mónica offers tools and insights to engage with others who have very different viewpoints. Learn how to cross boundaries and find common ground with people who have very different perspectives than yours.
Bowdoin and the Common Good
Bowdoin President Joseph McKeen wrote in 1802 that “institutions are founded and endowed for the common good, and not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education.” The common good is not something that Bowdoin owns, but it is something that we seek in every discipline, from finance to theater. The importance of putting one's education to work for the betterment of society is exemplified by the large number of students who volunteer in the local community and in the serious commitment of the College to the study of the environment and to civil discourse. To that end, students at Bowdoin do not see college as a time to compete with their fellow students but as a time to collaborate to solve the world’s biggest challenges. Situated in a coastal town in Maine, Bowdoin provides a rigorous liberal arts education, supports students with generous financial aid, and encourages innovative thinking.