Freshman Reading Roundup 2012
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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. |
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A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir The lyrical and moving memoir of a young girl growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. It is an extraordinary document, by turns revealing—of the Soviet reality of the time—ardent, and funny. Gorokhova's English is smart, limpid, and beguiling: she is a splendid writer. Her book is a very good read and a remarkable portrait of a place and time now all but faded from view.
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A Technique for Producing Ideas Join the legions of poets, scientists, politicians, and others who have learned to think at the invitation of James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas. This brief but powerful book guides you through the process of innovation and learning in a way that makes creativity accessible to anyone willing to work for it. While the author's background is in advertising, his ideas apply in every facet of life and are increasingly relevant in the world's knowledge-based economy. Young's tiny text represents an ideal start to university education with its tactics for viewing life through a new lens and its encouragement to look inside for a more creative version of ourselves. |
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A Thousand Splendid Suns An engrossing story of the fate and friendship of two women in modern Afghanistan. I chose this book because in our global society, it gives a personal face to a country that is now part of U.S. history. While reading about the hardships in the lives of men and women in Afghanistan, I learned about how important creating meaning in life is to people everywhere. This book starts as a slow read, but hang in there: it quickly becomes a page turner. |
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Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology & Less from Each Other As you enter college, your mobile phone will come with you. You will use social media to remain connected to your friends and to learn about the latest meetings and parties on campus. Your devices will enter our classrooms and some of you will Google content to contribute productively to a class discussion. But our constant connection to technology can also create problems as we learn to manage our time and create new relationships. Alone Together explores the benefits and challenges created by technology. Professor Turkle invites us to examine our communication and rediscover the humans around us. Her book provides a justification for why students in my communication technology classes are asked to try to live 24 hours with no communication technologies and share their experiences with the class. Check out her Ted Talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html |
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Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error This humorous and eloquent study of the values of making mistakes is essential for you to read now, at the beginning of college, because Schulz tells us that mistakes are the beginning of wisdom. Error is both a given and a gift—one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships and, most profoundly, ourselves. Yet most of us go through life tacitly assuming (and sometimes noisily insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at imagining that our beliefs could be mistaken? |
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Change Your Life Through Travel Travel can and will have an impact on your life in a variety of ways. This nonfiction book sets the backdrop for making travel more meaningful; our discussion of this book will spark your journeys. Professor James Patton - Education
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Chasing the High: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Substance Abuse Chasing the High is a fascinating, true story about a young person with a substance abuse problem coupled with the best, cutting edge scientific information on substance abuse, treatment, and recovery. It is a fast read, in straightforward language, drawing on a real experience as well as the expertise of a psychiatrist. It is both intriguing and educational, especially for those that know someone with addiction issues or wonder about their own use. |
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Dracula In 1887, sitting in a library in London, Bram Stoker created Count Dracula, a villain, who continues to frighten and intrigue us. Drawing on Transylvanian legends, Stoker invented a dangerous, bloody and exciting vampire who combined the intensity of a gothic novel with the terrible reality of the Jack the Ripper murders. From films to novels to computer games, few novels have inspired so many imitators, and few themes have resonated so strongly across generations of readers. |
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DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, & the Coming Transformation of Higher Education Nine out of ten American high school seniors aspire to go to college, yet the US has fallen from world leader to only tenth-most-educated nation... In the age of information immersion and constant connectedness, it's time for the centuries old, ivy-covered walls to undergo a phase change into something lighter, more permeable, and fluid. Our choice is clear: radically change the way higher education is delivered or resign ourselves to never having enough of it. |
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Embassytown Embassytown is set in the far future on a planet that humans share with the resident Ariekei. The Ariekei hosts tolerate the humans, but they speak a language that only a few genetically engineered human Ambassadors can understand. The arrival of a new Ambassador brings chaos to the carefully balanced society. This is a great science fiction story that, at its heart, is an exploration of the nature and power of language. Professor Shelley Payne - Molecular Genetics and Microbiology |
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Emma 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. |
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Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions Flatland 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, Flatlandcontinues to offer lessons for us in the era of string theory in physics with its suggestion of a ten-dimensional universe. |
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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid This is one of those books that I realize I think back on often when explaining everything from artificial intelligence to consciousness to the way everything is interconnected, though it has been around awhile and I read it a long time ago. Students who like to think and go, "ah" about the world should read this book if they haven't already. Professor David Laude - Chemistry & Biochemistry
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Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero Part cultural history, part literary legacy, part memoir, this absorbing account has been called the best celebration of swimming ever written. In the author's own words, "The peculiar psychology of the swimmer, and his 'feel for water,' form the basic themes of this book." (Dr. MacKay confesses that she is a daily swimmer in Barton Springs six months out of the year.) |
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Jane Fairfax—The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma Fans of Jane Austen's Emma will truly enjoy Jane Fairfax. Before "fan fiction" became a widespread cyber genre, novels that re-imagined classics were called by the misleading term "sequels." Jane Fairfax retells the story of Emma from the perspective of the "rival" female protagonist, delving into the characterization of Emma from the original novel's first impressions of Emma as spoiled, complacently self-centered, and somewhat unpleasant. On the surface, Jane Fairfax is a paragon of virtue, but plot twists create interesting contradictions about this character, and hint that the untold whole story of Jane Fairfax is one worth knowing. As it turns out, just as with Emma Woodhouse in Austen's novel, Jane Fairfax in Joan Aiken's retelling is not who we thought she was from first impressions, either. |
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Jayber Crow An orphan, a barber, a bachelor, Jayber Crow enjoys the company of women, as well as that of the farmers and tradesmen who frequent his shop (sometimes for haircuts), and moonlights as a church custodian and grave digger. An elegant celebration of the redemptive power of love and community, Jayber's hard-won acceptance of loss offers a compelling and—by contemporary standards—quite unusual climax. A precise and moving evocation both of a vanishing lifestyle and of the liberating power of faith. |
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Leaves of Grass Whitman can be good company for people looking for a way of life (and love) in troubled times. The poet's America, like ours, was a bewildering place, divided, proud but fearful. As a man who loved men and who cared little for the business of making money, Whitman stood apart from some sacred American conventions, but not from the land or its people. For voices and visions from all sides he made ample room in his songs. In their insistent music we hear about strange possibilities: community made stronger by differences, selfhood both naked and modest, love outgrowing fear. Note: Any larger edition (rather than the 1855 original) will give us both early and later poems to talk about. |
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Life is Yours to Win: Lessons Forged from the Purpose, Passion, and Magic of Baseball What can you learn about life from someone who has built a national reputation training college students to succeed, during and after their years at the University of Texas? This book, by famed coach Augie Garrido, leads its readers through a series of helpful lessons about competition, ambition, desire, and self control. You will like reading this book, for it is only superficially about sports. Life is Yours to Win summarizes a lifetime of insights into human achievement, and its wisdom will help you in every endeavor you take up. |
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Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter 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, Architectural and Environmental Engineering |
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Man's Search for Meaning A profound and passionate interpretation of survival and death in Nazi concentration and extermination camps during World War II. Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it. He believes that the quest for meaning is an essential feature of the human condition, and offers insights and ideas about how to achieve and preserve meaning in our lives in spite of suffering and loss. |
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Marcovaldo: or the Seasons in the City This is a collection of twenty short stories written by one of the most influential Italian authors of the XX century, Italo Calvino. It's a fascinating reading that will introduce students to an interesting and peculiar depiction of Italian society; students can read a few stories or all of them. |
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Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade & How We Can Fight It Did you think that slavery was eradicated in the US and across the globe? There is ample evidence that this crime still exists—it has been estimated that 27 million people around the world are bought and sold into modern day slavery every year. Author Batstone summarizes what is happening and how we can get involved to end it. |
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Oedipus Rex 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. |
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On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Charles Darwin's Origin of Species has fueled debate about our own origins for nearly 200 years, though the author took pains to avoid discussing human evolution. Dig into his confident, elegantly simple arguments this summer to form your own view of this perennially controversial subject. Read for free at http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/pdf/Origin_of_Species.pdf, among other sources. |
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Packing for Mars
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Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business Steel shares his experience and wisdom in crafting winning ad agency presentations. Steel, an irreverent Brit who has worked in the U.S. for 20 years, draws insights for a diverse range of persuasive experts including Johnnie Cochran vs. prosecutor Marsha Clark in the O.J. Simpson trial, Bill Clinton and a London hooker. The applications extend to any situation where an audience is the focus of a persuasive pitch. This is a lively, fun, and most revealing read. |
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Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Marjane Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah's regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran's last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and the bewildering contradictions between home and public life. Marjane's child's-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. Professor Alexandra Wettlaufer - French and Italian, Plan II |
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Seven Pleasures—Essays on Ordinary Happiness At a time when people stressfully complain of how busy they are and feel detached from what they are busy with, Seven Pleasures is a reminder of simple pursuits that can dial us down and help to restore balance, sanity, and satisfaction. In separate meditations on reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming, and writing, Spiegelman celebrates living, essentially, for the fun of it—the sheer delight of experience. |
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Slaughterhouse-Five The New York Times described this cheerfully irreverent (and sometimes mildly coarse and scatological) novel as "tough and funny, sad and delightful." Slaughterhouse-Five (or, The Children's Crusade) tracks the life of nebbishy Billy Pilgrim from his experience as a captured American prisoner in WWII Germany, where he witnesses the savage Allied firebombing of Dresden, to his postwar life as an optometrist in the Midwest, with periodic digressions for space travel, sex, and philosophy. |
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Straight Man Is this really the way universities are run? Why is there so much in-fighting amongst the faculty when the stakes seem to be so low? Do all my professors want to strangle a goose on live television? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo addresses these questions and many more in this hilarious satire of modern campus life. Russo writes with his customary compassion and insight in what has been called "the funniest serious novel" of recent memory. |
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Suits: A Woman on Wall Street New York City, Wall Street, Investment Banking, oh my!! Follow the tale of this UT graduate as she learns the successes and failures that come with careers in Finance. From her first day lost in the Big Apple, follow Nina as she fights to establish herself in ways that will make you laugh and cry. |
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Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air This book is a superb example of common sense, quantitative, and non-partisan reasoning applied to one of the most important problems of our age. The core chapters are readily accessible to readers with no math or physical science training, yet are widely respected and favorably reviewed by experts in energy science. Supplementary "technical chapters" at the end are aimed at mathematically inclined readers. Above all, this book is a beacon of reason amidst the storm of rhetoric that surrounds our discussion of energy, and will provide readers of any background with a foundation for understanding the real energy issues behind partisan rhetoric. The author directs his discussion at a UK audience, but is clearly aware of his American audience as well. The author has made a free, downloadable .pdf version available at www.withouthotair.com. |
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The Ajax Dilemma I liked the book so much that I bought additional copies for both my children so they would have an opportunity to think about the issues discussed in the book, and return to them from time to time in the future. There are no facile answers to hard questions, but a thoughtful consideration of personal character traits needed to face difficult decisions. It's very entertainingly written and full of wisdom. I've been recommending it to everyone. Professor Philip Varghese - Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics |
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon's bitterly funny debut novel is a murder mystery of sorts 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. |
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The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Stephen Hawking says it best: "A wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives. With insight he shows how the hallmarks of chance are apparent in the course of events all around us. The understanding of randomness has brought about profound changes in the way we view our surroundings, and our universe. I am pleased that Leonard has skillfully explained this important branch of mathematics." |
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The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? A recent play by America's greatest absurdist playwright, about an architect who falls in love (and has an epiphanic experience) on a visit to a farm. Needless to say, this event is troubling to his wife and teenage son, who is also looking for love in unusual places. How can you explain true love to those who cannot believe it possible? |
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The Grizzly Years Most people do not respond to a stressful situation by putting themselves in further danger, but that is exactly what Doug Peacock did on his return from the Vietnam war. He wanted to escape human culture, and in the Yellowstone National Park wilderness that he escaped to, he found grizzly bears. His encounters with these large and potentially dangerous animals allowed him to come to grips with his wartime experiences. In his book, "the Grizzly Years", Doug Peacock interweaves tales from his days in the Vietnam war and his time exploring and interacting with grizzly bears to make a compelling story about humans, nature, and our interdependence on each other. |
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The Help Three extraordinary women forever change a sleepy Southern town during the nascent civil rights movement in this deeply funny, poignant, and hopeful novel. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter returns home after graduating from Ole Miss, but her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Aibileen is a black maid and wise woman raising her seventeenth white child, and Minny is short, fat, and the sassiest woman in Mississippi. The three are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their time. Together, they work on a project that will put them all at risk and change the way they view one another. Professor Mary Steinhardt - Kinesiology and Health Education |
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The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai PS 3554 E82 I54 2006 PCL Stacks 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. |
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The Mists of Avalon 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. |
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The Power of Habit We are told we should develop good habits and get rid of bad ones. What are habits anyway? What do they make us do or not do, and why are they so hard to change? Find out answers to these and other questions in this entertaining book from the New York Times best sellers list. |
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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was the most famous poem in the English-speaking world at the end of the 19th century. Greatly influencing T.S. Eliot, FitzGerald's poem presaged modern(ist) ideas so important in the 20th century, while the poem itself offers readers a memorable (and enjoyable) experience of its individualistic speaker. The text is available online at a dozen websites, e.g., http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/FitRuba.html |
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The Sense of an Ending A new novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication. A middle-aged man contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself: by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But a mysterious legacy obliges him to reconsider things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world. Professor Timothy Loving - Human Development & Family Sciences |
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The Social Animal: the Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement Harold and Erica were not born geniuses: they did okay on the SAT, are fine looking but not beautiful, play tennis and hike, but are not gifted athletes. Everyone who meets them senses, however, that they live blessed lives. Why? For New York Times columnist David Brooks, the answer lies in how genetics, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology play out in real life. Harold and Erica possess "what economists call non-cognitive skills—a catchall category for hidden qualities that can't be easily counted or measured..." Brooks argues that for a new understanding of human nature that stresses "the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self." |
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The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger Harold and Erica were not born geniuses: they did okay on the SAT, are fine looking but not beautiful, play tennis and hike, but are not gifted athletes. Everyone who meets them senses, however, that they live blessed lives. Why? For New York Times columnist David Brooks, the answer lies in how genetics, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology play out in real life. Harold and Erica possess "what economists call non-cognitive skills—a catchall category for hidden qualities that can't be easily counted or measured." Brooks argues that for a new understanding of human nature that stresses "the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ, emergent, organic systems over linear, mechanistic ones, and the idea that we have multiple selves over the idea that we have a single self." |
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The Unlikely Disciple: a Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University What happens when a student at one of the country's most liberal Ivy League universities goes undercover at one of the most conservative evangelical schools? This is his story of that adventure at Liberty University, and what he learned—about the students he met as a participant ethnographer, and about himself. |
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Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman BF 441 K238 2011 PCL New Books Collection Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book. In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. |
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Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson 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 Tuesdays 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." |
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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 2011! |
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Wealth What would life be like if God made it so that wealth always followed those who were just, and abandoned those who were unjust? Would everyone, or at least the vast majority, become just? Or would it mean no one would really be just any more? Would people become more pious; or would they abandon worship of everything except wealth itself? Would most people work anymore? What would happen to the economy? Is poverty a divine blessing in disguise? In this play, the greatest comic dramatist of all time explores these and other issues in a hilarious thought experiment?written during the depression that took over democratic Athens in the wake of its loss of the Peloponnesian War, its empire, and its great power status. |
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Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows It's just the way things are. Take a moment to consider this statement. Really think about it. We send one species to the butcher and give our love and kindness to another apparently for no reason other than because it's the way things are. What could cause an entire society of people to check their thinking caps at the door—and to not even realize they're doing so? |
Each book image is credited in the alt text and linked to its source. Image sources are: powells.com.
