Here is a list of some books, both recent and hoary with age, about Yale before, during, and after our time there. They cover all aspects of the university. Since your corresponding secretary is not omniscient, suggestions for additions to this list are welcome.

No list of books about Yale is complete if it doesn’t contain the authoritative works of George Wilson Pierson, the long-time member of the history faculty (and Yale graduate) who taught many of us. Those works are The Founding of Yale: The Legend of the Forty Folios (Yale University Press, 1988); Yale College: An Educational History, 1871-1921 (Yale University Press, 1952); Yale: The University College, 1921-1937 (Yale University Press, 1955); The Yale Book of Numbers: Historical Statistics of the College and University, 1701-1976 (Office of the Secretary, Yale University. 1983); and Yale: A Short History (Office of the Secretary, Yale University, 1976; 2nd ed. 1979).

Another solid one-volume history of the university is Brooks M. Kelley, Yale: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

Geoffrey Kabaservice’s The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment (Henry Holt, 2004) is greatly compelling. It has much to say about the days preceding Brewster’sthose of Whit Griswold and our ownand about the modern, greater university Yale has become since then. Classmates Inky Clark and Sam Chauncey figure prominently in the tale.

A memoir by Bill Coffin, covering among other things his years as student and chaplain, is William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Once to Every Man: A Memoir (Atheneum, 1977). Those interested in the university during Coffin’s (and, again, Brewster’s) time will find much of interest in Warren Goldstein’s biography of Coffin, William Sloane Coffin, Jr.: A Holy Impatience (Yale University Press, 2004). While containing much about this extraordinary man himself, the work also throws light on the changes that overtook the university after we had left it.

If you wish to learn much about your admission to Yalewhy you got in in the 1950s and why many others, equally or more deserving, didn’tJerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin, 2005) presents a sobering and revealing tale. While there’s much in it you might prefer not to learn, it also makes a strong case for the necessity of the university’s transformation in the 1960s and later. Messrs. Clark and Chauncey play prominent parts here, too. A similarly sobering look at the class biases inherent in our admission to Yale and how these biases continue to operate is Joseph A. Soares, The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges (Stanford University Press, 2007).

A more specialized look at subjects covered and of admissions practices throughout the 20th century is Dan A. Oren, Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale (Yale University Press, 1985). When read in conjunction with other works as another part of the story of more prejudiced days by a Yale graduate, it gives grounds for satisfaction about the road traveled by alma mater since our days.

A rueful, perplexed look at the life of one of our classmates Denny Hansen (and by extension a look at our days at Yale) by another classmate is Calvin (Bud) Trillin’s Remembering Denny (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993).

To learn how some of our Yale teachers contributed to the nation’s World War and Cold War intelligence efforts, there’s Robin W. Winks’s Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961 (Yale University Press, 1987), a wise, revealing work by a late member of the faculty who knew many of his subjects.

The classic Yale novel is Owen John Johnson, Stover at Yale (orig. 1922; now Simon & Schuster, 1988).