American studies involves a lot of independent learning, so expect hefty reading lists and regular essay assignments.
School-leavers fresh to an English degree have to brace themselves for a hefty reading list, and evidence of extensive reading in your personal statement will convince tutors you can handle it.
Above all, they respond to the work of other authors, living and dead - this is something that all those hefty reading lists at the end of recent historical novels like House of Meetings, The Night Watch and The Plot Against America are also keen to remind us.
Q&As (and a photo of him carrying a pile of hefty holiday reading) indicate a strong bias towards political non-fiction, including biographies of Robert Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson's The Spirit Level, Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation and the essay collection Varieties of Capitalism.
Many will buy Mao on the strength of Wild Swans, even if they wouldn't normally read a hefty political biography.
Most in the audience at this tiny storefront theater in a snowy shopping center on the shore of Lake Tahoe had not ventured to buy, let alone read, the hefty hardback.
A couple years ago, I read a hefty genre-bender by David Mitchell, a literary sci-fi author I love.
Girl Reading in the Vinnie's Pizza Window You were reading a hefty hardcover, looked up and we locked eyes as I passed.
One reads Simmons's hefty volume longing for a bit more historical context or counterpoint; Cohen came of age against the backdrop of World War II, the growing sexual revolution, the advent of LSD, and so forth.
