The Freshman Reading Round-Up offers incoming freshmen the opportunity to read a book recommended by a distinguished faculty member and participate in a discussion about the book with the faculty member and other incoming freshmen. Incoming freshman can sign up for a book by visiting the Freshman Reading Roundup Book List page. Click on the call number to check availability. Reading Roundup Book List Printable Version.

An Artist of the Floating World
by Kazuo Ishiguro
PR 6059 S5 A89 1986M PCL Stacks

Do we really appreciate the implications of the choices we make in life? Do sons and daughters inevitably pay for the past sins of their parents? These are two of the themes that define this sparse and beautifully written novel. The Booker Prize-winning Ishiguro's subtle prose not only evokes the long-forgotten "floating world" of post-war Japan but also provides the reader with surprising insights into issues impacting today's society.

Professor Keith Brown - Finance

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
by Al Gore
QC 981.8 G56 G67 2006 PCL Stacks, Geology Library

"In the eyes of hurricanes and in the tears of refugees—the world is witnessing mounting and undeniable evidence that nature's cycles are profoundly changing." So begins the companion book to Al Gore's Academy Award winning film, An Inconvenient Truth.  This insightful yet controversial book details planetary evidence of climate change, and makes a personal connection to events from the life of the former vice president. "We have everything we need to begin solving this crisis, with the possible exception of the will to act.  But in America, our will to take action is itself a renewable resource."  How big is our carbon footprint, and what actions will contribute most in taming this warming trend?  Join in the discussion!

Professor Kara Kockelman - Civil Engineering

Seen the movie? The novel is much more subtle and complex. This summer, read Ian McEwan's intriguing, beautifully written and deceptive novel about a cross class passion doomed by the power of a child's imagination. Set in England on the eve of and during the Second Worl War, Atonement shows how Briony's development as a writer feeds on her destruction of her sister Cecilia's romance.

Professor Elizabeth Cullingford - English

Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder
by Max German
E 838.5 J6735 2007 PCL Stacks
E 838.5 J6735 2007 DVD Electronic Information Center PCL 2.200

Barbara Jordan's distinguished public service career began in 1966 with her election as the first African American woman to serve in the Texas Legislature.Throughout her career as a Texas senator, U.S. congresswoman, and distinguishe professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at UT, Barbara Jordan lived by a simple creed: "Ethical behavior means being honest, telling the truth, and doing what you said you were going to do." This book brings together several major political speeches that articulate Barbara Jordan's most deeply held values, some of which may also be viewed on an enclosed DVD. One of Barbara Jordan's UT students reflected on her continuing influence: "I've never met a person who believed so strongly that we can actually change the world. That gives me confidence that we really can." If you read this book and watch the DVD, you'll know why we at Texas say, "What Starts Here Changes the World!"

Professor Mary Steinhardt - Kinesiology and Health Education

A white journalist from the South, John Howard Griffin wants to understand "race issues." Griffin darkens his skin and travels through the Deep South documenting with riveting detail his life as a black man. First published in 1961, Black Like Me is still compelling reading. Black Like Me reads like a novel and offered many Americans a deeper understanding of "the black experience." The book was controversial. Griffin received death threats. The narrative not only conveys something about life in America at the dawn of the Civil Rights Era, it also invites us to think about how we understand the other. How can we know experiences outside of our own? What are the limits of understanding? Can any one person's life capture the experience of a community? Why do narratives exert such power over us?

Professor Linda Ferreira-Buckley - English

How would people react if everyone went blind almost simultaneously? What would these reactions tell us about the human spirit? About our strengths and weaknesses of character? A Nobel Prize winning author, Portugal's José Saramago explores these issues in Blindness.

Professor Robert Prentice - Information, Risk & Operations Management

These thirty three speeches by one of the great statesmen, orators, and writers of the 20th Century capture significant figues and moments in our history and do so in language at once masterful and memorable.

Professor Larry Carver - English

Fae Ng's highly acclaimed novel Bone explores the tragedies experienced over two generations by the Leong Family in San Francisco. The novel's simple narration and unadorned prose belie the complex links that it draws between identity, history, and grief. A Leila, the narrator and oldest daughter, states at the start, "We were a family of three girls. By Chinese standards that wasn't lucky. In Chinatown, everyone knew our story." But did they? And how well will we as readers know it by the end?

Professor Julia Lee - English

In the past several centuries, scientific discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and of origins of the earth and of living species. Science is the New Kid on the Block, a bit threatening perhaps. Is the Universe consisting of matter and energy and natural processes, all that there is? What about God and the supernatural? Are the messages of science and of the Bible so different that they are incompatible?

Professor Leon Long - Geological Sciences

Professor, what was Winston Churchill, and what important books in British, American, and world history should I read before I graduate? "Reminds us that is still possible, at a time when irony and cynicism are so much the fashion, to pay tribute to greatness without being hagiographical." -New Republic

Professor Roger Louis - British Studies

This book is a good introduction to one of Latin America's most famous novelists of the twentieth century (and he's still writing). While some of his books are hard going, Death in the Andes is quite accessible and allows the author to write about Peru, his home country, at a time when things were going very badly indeed: the late 1980s, when a brutal insurgent movement called the Shining Path was creating havoc and great fear. But in addition to his take on this movement, Vargas Llosa also brings to light the country's extreme divisions (geographic, ethnic, linguistic, cultural). A fairly short read by his standards (200+ pages), it's a book that pays re-reading numerous times, but is highly rewarding after one time through.

Professor Henry Dietz - Government

A dreary castle, blood-thirsty vampires, open graves at midnight, and other gothic touches fill this chilling tale about a young Englishman’s confrontation with the evil Count Dracula. A horror romance as deathless as any vampire, the blood-curdling tale has spawned an endless variety of film and stage adaptations as well as a prime-time TV series. First published more than a century ago, it continues to hold readers spellbound..

Professor Elizabeth Richmond-Garza - English and Director, Comparative Literature

Published in 1816, this is a classic romantic comedy about a small English village where a local teenage matchmaker, Emma Woodhouse, keeps getting things wrong as she plays cupid to her reluctant single friends. Simultaneously charming and sharp-witted, this may be Jane Austen's most perfect novel. After you read it, enjoy two very different interpretations for the screen: Emma (1996), starring Gwyneth Paltrow, and Clueless (1995), starring Alicia Silverstone.

Professor Janine Barchas - English

Long viewed as a masterpiece of horror, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is now recognized as a progenitor of science fiction and a feminist critique of the creative process. Its series of frames make it a multi-genre novel as well, contributing to both the epistolary tradition and the travelogue. Although the novel has primarily entered popular culture via its many film incarnations, we will focus our discussion on the text itself and speculate about how and why it has served the mythic imagination that tries to come to terms with larger questions of life and death.

Professor Carol MacKay - English

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
HM 206 D48 1997 PCL Stacks, Life Science Library Reserves

Guns, Germs and Steel was initially subtitled 'The Fates of Human Societies.' Within a few months, this subtitle had evolved into 'A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years.' It was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, the Rhone Poulenc Science Book Prize, and three other international literary prizes. The central question addressed is: "Given that human societies were fairly equally advanced 13,000 years ago, what was it that allowed some—those from Asia and Europe—to dominate the ones from Africa, Australia, and the Americas?"

Professor Alan Cline - Computer Sciences

Just about every politician has a plan for the United States to be energy independent. But is energy independence a realistic prospect? The answer according to Robert Bryce, in Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, is a clear and resounding "no." Like it or not, today's economy is globally interconnected, and for as far as we can see into the future, oil tankers, pipelines and power lines are going to be crisscrossing international boundaries. Anyone, says Bryce, who thinks that ethanol, nuclear power, or coal is going to solve our problems in the near-term is simply tilting at our electricity generating wind mills. In reviewing Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, the New York Times says, "the hard-nosed Mr. Bryce reveals himself . . . as something of a visionary and perhaps even a revolutionary." Mr. Bryce has agreed to join this seminar to both defend and expound upon his controversial views.

Professor Michael Granof and Robert Bryce - Accounting

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of beautifully written short stories portraying characters who are part of two cultures, Indian and American. Lahiri's characters are ordinary but unforgettable, and their feelings resonate with anyone who has ever left home or experienced the feeling of isolation. As Caleb Crain wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "The reader finishes each story...wishing he could spend a whole novel with its characters."

Professor Shelley Payne - Biological Sciences

A unique look at New York in the 1920's through the lens of Toni Morrison's fascinating perspective. Her rhythmic use of language and imagery pulse with life as she examines love, life, obsession and race in the "Jazz Age."

Professor Fran Dorn - Theater and Dance

Letters to a Young Poet
by Ranier Maria Rilke
PT 2635 I65 Z488 1984 PCL Stacks

Letters to a Young Poet is an amazing little book. A classic that will never go out of print, it is eloquent as well as personal. Rilke's meditations on the creative process, the nature of love, the wisdom of children, and the importance of solitude offer a wealth of spiritual and practical guidance for anyone. Written when the poet was a young man, they were addressed to a student who had sent Rilke some of his writing, asking for advice on becoming a writer. This collection reveals the thoughts and feelings of one of the greatest poets and most distinctive sensibilities of the twentieth century, and what it means to stand for something important.

Professor Jerry Junkin - School of Music

Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter
by Hal Urban

In this wise, wonderful book, award-winning teacher Hal Urban presents twenty principles that are as deeply rooted in common sense as they are in compassion. The topics, gathered from a lifetime of teaching both children and adults, span a wide range of readily understood concepts, including attitudes about money, success, and the importance of having fun. Classic in its simplicity and enduring in its appeal, Life's Greatest Lessons will help you find the best in others and in yourself.

Professor David W. Fowler - Civil Engineering

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
HM 1033 H43 2007 PCL Stacks

In their carefully crafted and easy reading style, the Heath brothers have written a classic about effective communication that is peppered with exceptional examples and solid research. They weave a compelling case for their six principles of sticky ideas. They use proverbs such as "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and stories about such contemporary cultural figures as Lance Armstrong and Jared Fogle, the Subway sandwich spokesperson, to illustrate their rock-solid communication wisdom.

Professor John Murphy - Advertising

Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles
PA 3404 S7 O7 1996 Classics Library

Oedipus was written in 5th Century b.c.e. Athens. Fulfilling a prophecy of the Oracle at Delphi, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, and then becomes King of Thebes. Later, he investigates the cause of a plague in Thebes, only to find that it is he and his sin. The play raises issues of free will, humanism, and the role of the gods.

President Bill Powers - Office of the President

"The most audacious of the ancient alchemists desired to transmute lead into gold. They never succeeded. Who would have known that they should have started not with a base metal, but with bullshit? Harry Frankfurt offers a philosophical analysis of bullshit that is golden. The prose by turns employs irony, broad humor, and tongue-in-cheek high seriousness while at the same time manages to have a rigorous logical coherence that is always impressive. One leaves the essay not merely thinking it was a delight. One leaves it realizing that one has engaged the accomplishment of a great analyst and thinker."-William Chester Jordan,
Professor of History, Princeton University

Professor Robert Duke - Music and Human Learning

Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
by Carl Zimmer
QL 757 Z56 2000 PCL Stacks

You will look at the world in a completely different light after reading this engaging book. Carl Zimmer, science writer for the New York Times, weaves together the stories of the most fascinating parasites and the people that study them. Your skin will crawl but you will not be able to put it down!

Professor Arturo DeLozanne - Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology

Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio
by Alec Foege
HE 8698 F64 2008 PCL Stacks

Clear Channel Communications began operations in San Antonio in 1972, and by 2001 had grown to an empire of more than 1,200 radio stations. Along the way it dramatically changed the business of radio and the role of radio in American Culture. As Alan Light (former editor-in-chief, Vibe and Spin magazines) says, "The Clear Channel Corporation has been one of the most successful, most controversial, and most reviled companies in the history of the music business. With Right of the Dial, Alec Foege takes a thorough, clear-eyed look inside this mythic beast, and reveals a uniquely American saga of commerce and culture gone mad."

Professor Ross Jennings - Accounting

Obama's book provides plenty of food for discussion. How audacious are his ideas? Is this book an inspiration or a superb piece of self-promotion, or both? Will his ideas have a lasting impact even if he doesn't become President? In our discussion contributions from all across the political spectrum are welcome.

Professor Karl Galinsky - Classics

[Woodruff's translation] is clear, fluent, and vigorous, well thought out, readable and forceful. The rhythms are right, ever present but not too insistent or obvious. it can be spoken instead of read and so is viable as an acting version: and it keeps the lines of the plot well focused. The Introduction offers a good survey of critical approaches. The notes at the foot of the page are suitably brief and non-intrusive and give basic information for the non-specialist.
- Charles Segal, Harvard University

Professor Paul Woodruff - Director, Plan II Honors

What do "The Lord of the Rings," Caribbean history, and the Chinese surname "Wao" have in common? At first glance, not much, but all three come together in surprising and hilarious ways in Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The title character is a Dominican American teenager who defies all sorts of stereotypes in his journey through adolescence. Oscar is a "supernerd" with a heart of gold, a hopeless misfit when compared to his svelte older sister and suave college roommate but an unexpected hero when appreciated for his sincerity and generosity. Moving back and forth between New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, Diaz weaves family and national histories with some of the smartest, most touching prose I've encountered in a long time.

Professor Jennifer Wilks - English

The Canon is a joyride through the scientific method, physics, chemistry, evolutionary and molecular biology, geology and astronomy. Along the way, we learn what's actually happening when our ice cream melts or our coffee gets cold, what our liver cells do when we eat a caramel, why the horse reveals evolution at work, and how we're all made of stardust. "Of course you should know about science," writes the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angier, "for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: these things are fun and fun is good."

Professor James Vick - Mathematics

Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel is a murder mystery of sorts—one told by a fifteen-year-old with autism. Christopher John Francis Boone is a mathematical genius and takes everything that he sees at face value. When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer. This quirkily illustrated, genuinely moving novel is told in Christopher's unique and compelling voice giving us a small glimpse into the world of children with autism.

Professor Judith Jellison - Music

Roberts presents a non-technical introduction to the factors that will determine where we go next in responding to the peak oil crisis, and surveys various alternative energy strategies in the process. For the most part the book reads as investigative journalism (which it is) and provides an educational framework as free from an agenda as one could hope. This should allow the reader to develop an informed, yet personal opinion on how to respond to an energy crisis certain to profoundly change how we live.

Professor David Laude - Chemistry

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant.  When sober, Jeanette Wall's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life with abandon. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and did not want the responsibility of raising a family.  The Walls children learn to take care of themselves, eventually left home and moved to New York, and were subsequently followed by their parents who chose to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is a powerful and astonishing memoir permeated by the intense love of a
peculiar, but loyal, family.

Professor David Springer - Social Work

The Inheritance of Loss centers on Kalimpong, a town in northeast India at the foot of the Himalayas. Set in the mid-1980s during a period of political unrest, the novel portrays love, loss, and longing in a post-colonial world through the lives of a British-trained judge, his orphaned daughter, his cook, and the cook's son, an undocumented worker in America. A beautifully written book, The Inheritance of Loss received the Man Booker Prize in 2006.

Professor Pauline Strong - Anthropology

The Mists of Avalon tells the tale of King Arthur from the point of view of Morgain (Morgana Le Fay). It gives a totally different perspective of the Arthurian Legends.

Professor Eric Anslyn - Chemistry & Biochemistry

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph is its hour of crisis." This book opens up your mind to why capitalism thrives in some parts of the world and struggles elsewhere. Although capitalism is undoubtedly the only way to prosperity, embracing Western capitalism is riddled with challenges in many parts of the world. This book eloquently argues the disconnection between promise and reality. De Soto connects the failure to embrace capitalism with the availability of credit and private property rights.

Professor Prabhudev Konana - Information, Risk, and Operations Management, McCombs School of Business

The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In
by Paisley Rekdal
PS 3568 E54 Z476 2000 PCL Stacks

Paisley Rekdal's enlightening and humorously insightful personal stories of growing up as a Norwegian/Chinese resident of Seattle take us to Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the American South. Her running commentary on the significance of being mixed-racein today's global culture, which includes prominent mixed-race presidential candidate Barack Obama, reveals insightful and thought-provoking observations delivered in a light-hearted style. She suggests that especially for the mixed-race, race is a pass? concept for one's identity, that race is a social construct based on the way we look.

Professor Chiu-Mi Lai - Asian Studies

Parable of the Sower is a hopeful tale set in a dystopian Los Angeles of walled cities, homelessness, disease, fires, and madness. Lauren Olamina is an 18-year-old with hyper-empathy syndrome: if she sees another in pain, she feels their pain as acutely as if it were real. When her relatively safe neighborhood enclave is destroyed, along with her family and dreams for the future, Lauren grabs a backpack full of supplies and begins a journey north.

Professor Bob Jensen - Journalism

A shipwreck brings together old enemies and young lovers on an enchanted island. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, has spent twelve years here teaching the liberal arts to his daughter, Miranda. What good is such an education when Miranda confronts the castaways and their problems? These problems confront students even now: recognizing true love, reconciling young hopes with the crimes of an older generation, facing down inhumanity without becoming inhuman. Shakespeare wraps the disenchantments of adult life in the enchantment of words at their most musical.

Dr.Paul Sullivan -Liberal Arts Honors Programs

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that 1 in every 150 children is affected by autism. So, what does it mean to have autism? Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism is a fascinating autobiography by an autistic animal behavior researcher. Temple paints a vivid picture of her experiences as a person living with autism.

Professor Rebecca Neal - Psychology

American climbing bum Greg Mortenson might have been described as a failure. Intermittently employed, sleeping in a car or in the hallway of a run-down flat, he also failed to achieve the peak of K2 in Pakistan's Karakoram Range. Wandering and lost on the return trip in 1993, he was taken in and cared for by the people of the isolated village, Korphe. When Mortenson learned that the Balti children had no school, he promised to return one day to build a village school. Mortenson came to understand another culture from the inside, faced the Taliban, overcame huge obstacles, and learned to drink "three cups of tea" in the tradition of his hosts: the first as stranger, the second as guest, and the third as friend. We'll have lots to talk about in terms of leaving a footprint on the earth.

Professor Nancy Roser - Curriculum and Instruction

Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Alborn
LD 571 B418 S383 1997 PCL Stacks

If you've ever had a teacher that touched your life in a very positive way, this book is for you.  Short, very readable, and yet, quite profound in its reflection, Mitch Albom's Tuesday's with Morrie describes rediscovery of that mentor and a rekindled relationship that goes beyond the classroom and brings us to lessons on how to live.

Professor Patrick Davis - Pharmacy

We
by Yevgeny (Eugene) Zamyatin
PG 3476 Z34 W3 PCL Stacks

Before Brave New World...before 1984...there was We. A page-turning futuristic adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel. It is also an enjoyable bit of 1920s-era science fiction. Fun... and strangely apt in 2005!

Professor Thomas Garza - Slavic Languages and Literature

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
by Stephen Greenblatt
PR 2894 G74 2004 PCL Stacks

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If you haven't already read at least some of Shakespeare's plays this book will leave you wanting to read them. There is a lot of interesting detail about Elizabethan life, and fascinating speculation on how Shakespeare's life affected his work. This book was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction.

Professor Philip Varghese - Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

28 Stories of AIDS in Africa
by Stephanie Nolan
RA 643.86 A357 N65 2007 PCL Stacks

For the past six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through riveting, anecdotal stories, she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every AIDS arena, making them familiar to us in a way nobody else has. In the process, she explores the effects of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why we must care about what happens.

Professor James Wilson - History