Freshman Reading Round-Up 2006
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. Click on the call number to check availability. | |
 | The Ancient Engineers by L. Sprague de Camp TA 16 D4 1974 PCL Stacks / 620.9 D355A PCL Stacks, Engineering Library The Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon of Greece, the Great Wall of China, the Colosseum of Rome... Today, we stand in awe before these wonders of the ancient world. They hold our history and the deepest secrets of our past in their hidden recesses. In The Ancient Engineers, L. Sprague de Camp delves into the heart of the mystery. He introduces us to the master builders who had the vision, the power and the passion to reach for the clouds and touch the heavens. We share in some of the greatest technological triumphs of all time - triumphs of the human mind, imagination and spirit. |
 | The Bacchae by Euripides, Trans. Paul Woodruff PA 3975 B2 W66 1998 PCL Stacks, Classics Library [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. |
 | Blindness by José Saramago PQ 9281 A66 E6813 1998 PCL Stacks, Benson Latin American Collection 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 - Management Science and Information Systems |
 | Coincidences, Chaos, and All that Math Jazz: Making Light of Weighty Ideas by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird QA 99 B87 2005 Physics-Math-Astronomy Library This book is a light-hearted romp through some great mathematical ideas, from coincidences and chaos to the fourth dimension and infinity. It is intended to be read and enjoyed by math-o-phobes and math-o-philes alike. This is the book for people who thought they would never read about math for fun. |
 | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon PZ 7 H1165 CU 2003 PCL Stacks 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. |
 | The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown PS 3552 R685434 D3 2003 PCL Stacks Breaking the mold of traditional suspense novels, The Da Vinci Code is lightning-paced, intelligent, and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail. Brown's hero and heroine embark on a lofty and intriguing exploration of some of Western culture's greatest mysteries—from the nature of the Mona Lisa's smile to the secret of the Holy Grail. Though some will quibble with the veracity of Brown's conjectures, therein lies the fun and we'll look closely at the kind of evidence that is available from ancient times. |
 | The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen 823 B674D 1939R1 PCL Stacks In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London.There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal--and sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature. |
 | Dracula by Bram Stoker PR 6037 T617 D7 1897 PCL Stacks 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 |
 | Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor PS 3565 C57 E9 1965 PCL Stacks The fiction of Flannery O'Connor has been called beautifully grotesque, darkly comic, disturbingly powerful. What most readers don't know is that she was profoundly Christian. Her belief in original sin and grace guides her through most every story. But why would a Christian writer tell us that the audience she has in mind when she writes is solely secular? And why is one of her greatest influences an entrenched atheist? The psychological and theological tension present in her stories creates an aesthetic vision unique and provocative in American letters. |
 | Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by E.A. Abbott QA 699 A13 1991 PCL Stacks E. A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by a Square (1884) has retained its appeal throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. When in the 1995 Halloween episode of The Simpsons Homer crossed into the third dimension, he was demonstrating for thousands of viewers one of the key points Abbott had made in 1884: the advantages gained by accessing a higher spatial dimension. Abbott's allegorical tale is set in a two-dimensional plane world that denies the existence of more dimensions than its own. A response to the popular fascination with a possible fourth dimension of space in this period, Flatland continues to offer lessons for us in the era of string theory in physics with its suggestion of a ten-dimensional universe. |
 | Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner HB 74 P8 L479 2005 PCL Stacks, PCL New Books Collection, Public Affairs Library Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. |
 | The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls HV 5132 W35 2005 PCL Stacks Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly....Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover. |
 | The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper From the dawn of our species, every culture has maintained a belief in some form of a spiritual reality. Wouldn't this imply that human spirituality must represent an inherent characteristic of our species, that is, a genetically inherited trait? Are Humans "wired" to believe in the universal concepts of a god, a soul, and an afterlife? Are what we call spiritual/religious experiences strictly physiological in nature, the effects of our brain's chemistry? Does God really exist "out there," beyond and independent of us? Or is God merely the product of an inherited human perception, the manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation - a coping mechanism - one that emerged in our species to enable us to survive our unique and otherwise debilitating awareness of death? |
 | The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (films) by Francis Ford Coppola Audiovisual Library, Fine Arts Library "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather Part II" (1974), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, are two of the most honored films of all time. For example, in 2002 they were included among the top ten films ever made in a survey of international critics and directors conducted by Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute. If at all possible, please watch them on DVD (as opposed to VHS) to see the best possible image and appreciate the widescreen version of the films as they were projected in theaters when originally released. Finally, please avoid a different TV video version, re-edited in chronological order, called "The Godfather Saga." |
 | The Life of Pi by Yann Martel PR 9199.3 M3855 L54 2001 PCL Stacks Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker... Professor Joy Hinson Penticuff - Nursing |
 | Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande Edited by Don Graham, Foreward by Larry McMurtry PS 558 T4 L66 2003 PCL Stacks A vast land combining the West, the South, and the Border, small dusty towns and gleaming modern cities, Texas has a history and identity all its own, and a mythology bigger than the Lone Star State itself. In this anthology, Don Graham has rounded up a comprehensive collection of writings that provides an overview of the diversity and excellence of Texas literature and reveals its vital contribution to America's literary landscape: from early accounts of life on the wild frontier told by the likes of Andy Adams and J. Frank Dobie to contemporary fiction by such well-known Texan authors as Larry McMurtry and Sandra Cisneros, as well as recent nonfiction by Molly Ivins, Mary Karr, Robert Caro, and Kinky Friedman. The result is a sometimes rowdy, always artful panorama of fable and truth, humor and pathos—all growing out of the state that continues to stimulate the collective imagination like no other. |
 | The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley PS 3552 R228 M5 1982 PCL Stacks 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. |
 | Old School by Tobias Wolff PS 3573 O558 O43 2003 PCL Stacks Tobias Wolff's Old School is at once a celebration of literature and delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art. Set in a New England prep school in the early 1960s, the novel imagines a final, pastoral moment before the explosion of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the suicide of Ernest Hemingway. |
 | On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt BJ 1421 F73 2005 PCL Stacks "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, |
 | The Richest Man in Babylon This bestseller offers an understanding of-and a solution to-your personal financial problems that will guide you through a lifetime. This is the book that holds the secrets to acquiring money, keeping money, and making money earn more money. |
 | The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question — in all its shades of meaning — can unlock the most intractable riddles of business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that's exactly what Google has been doing. Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dot-com crash, and pulled off the largest and most talked-about initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley. But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google's triumph. It's also a big-picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology and the enormous impact it's starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest. |
 | The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People What are the habits all successful people share? With penetrating insights and anecdotes as frequently from family situations as from business challenges, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity. This is a comprehensive program based on developing an awareness of how perceptions and assumptions hinder success-in business as well as personal relationships. Here's an approach that will help broaden your way of thinking and lead to greater opportunities and effective problem solving. Professor Mary Steinhardt - Kinesiology and Health Education |
 | The Stranger Written in 1942, the Stranger remains one of the most important and widely read novels of the 20th century. This compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time-alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt-and it is taken as a profound expression of "existentialist" philosophy. |
 | Trail of Feathers When a reporter disappears in Huichol Indian territory in 1998 in Mexico's forbidding Sierra Madre while on a backcountry trek, Rivard, the reporter's editor, goes on his own long journey to discover what happened and why. |
 | The Trial of Socrates In unraveling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller." Professor Philip Varghese- Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics |
 | Tuesdays with Morrie Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final class: lessons in how to live. |
 | Warped Passages: Revealing the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions Warped Passages provides an exhilarating overview that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of today's particle physics and string theory, unweaving the current debates about relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity. In a highly readable style sure to entertain and elucidate, Lisa Randall demystifies the science and beguilingly unravels the mysteries of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond the one we are only now beginning to know. |
 | We 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 2006! |
 | Year of Wonders Year of Wonders describes the spread of plague from London to a small Derbyshire village during the 17th-century epidemic that was the last major epidemic of plague in England. As villagers begin to die, one by one, the survivors face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of escaping the plague or do they stay and quarantine themselves to prevent further spread of the disease. This book is based on the true story of Eyam, a lead-mining village in the rugged hill country of England whose inhabitants voluntarily quarantined themselves for a year when stricken with bubonic plague in 1665-1666. Professor Shelley Payne - Molecular Genetics and Microbiology |
Each book image is credited in the alt text and linked to its source. Image sources are: alibris, amazon.com, powells.com.
