The best reason for reading David W. Beckwith’s book about his year as a public school teacher in his native Mississippi is that he had no reason to write it.

In the spring of 1969, after Beckwith had graduated from Ole Miss with a business degree, he went home to Greenville to find a job. Because offers were scarce and because he was considering graduate school anyway, he applied at the school district office.

In “A New Day in the Delta: Inventing School Desegregation As You Go” (University of Alabama Press), Beckwith relates how happy he was that the superintendent welcomed him and, in the process, nudged him to become one of the first two white teachers assigned to an all-black school. Mixing faculties was a failed administrative attempt to pacify federal courts and stall racial mixing of students.

After his year in the classroom 40 years ago, Beckwith did go back to graduate school and a career in business followed in Florida.

His new book is on my suggested summer reading list for anyone who has any opinion about education in Mississippi because his perspective is from the trenches of that critical time. Beckwith acknowledges a white middle-class youth spent in the largest town in the Delta and with few, if any, serious thoughts about matters of race. He was aware there was a dual society; he just didn’t give it much thought. He took the job, he says, because the pay was enough for food, rent and to tide him over. But he also sincerely tried to be an effective educator in one room at one school while all around him courts and activists, who viewed forced segregation as an indefensible, imbalanced way of life, worked to end it.

So much written about education in that era and today is analytical — people trying to prove a point, often by cherry-picking statistics. What’s refreshing about the book is that Beckwith talks about what happened day-to-day as he experienced it, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions, if they wish. In his classroom ideals met realities. The goodness of people, black and white, was on display and the lesser angels of human nature, who also don’t play racial favorites, created havoc.

People who like to pontificate and theorize about “our schools today” really need to read this book. It provides context and shows none of us knows as much as we think we do.

Second on my list is “Vicksburg 1863” (Knopf) by Winston Groom.

Some may recognize Groom as the author of “Forrest Gump” and believe the author of such a quirky novel could not be a serious historian. That would be wrong, especially given that so much actual history is quirkier than a lot of fiction and that Groom has written more history than anything else.

Also, some may have details of the Civil War pretty low on their list of interests or expect the book to be a dry narrative of which brigade flanked what division where. Wrong. Groom combines his skills as a researcher and storyteller to relate what happened all over Mississippi and Louisiana. He makes the case that events culminating at Vicksburg determined whether the United States of America would have a future.

Books that decompress history and tell us about the people who made it — heroic, flawed or some of both — are illuminating. Groom can help any reader understand and appreciate that when North met South in combat the issues weren’t one-dimensional and the outcome wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

Third on my list would be “The Shack” (Windblown Media) by William P. Young.

That the book, about a child’s death, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, has been declared heretical by some and illuminating by others should be enticement enough.

It came out last summer, so millions — especially those who are predisposed to books about faith — have already read it. But it deserves a wider audience, and among religious skeptics, too.

Young attempts to relate his vision about how the Holy Trinity might relate to each other and how they regard their relationship and/or responsibilities to each other and to mortals. In the book, a father is invited to learn why it is that if there is a God, He (or She) allows bad things to happen to good people. Toss in a glimpse of how Young envisions eternal life, and there’s a lot in this small book to ponder.

Crafting a summer reading list is an old idea, I know. But I checked, and all three of these are available as Kindle downloads. (If you don’t know what that means, bless your heart.)