Students should choose TWO books from the lists below.  Books should be from more than one list (one book from Science & Nature and one book from Biography, for example).  Students should also make an effort to read the news weekly, in order to be prepared for discussion of contemporary topics and rhetoric.

 

Science & Nature:

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner Freakonomics
Malcolm Gladwell Blink                     
Stephen Johnson Everything Bad Is Good for You   
Oliver Sacks Musicophiliaor The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat  
Michael Pollan In Defense of Food or The Omnivore’s Dilemma or The Botany of Desire
Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything (really, anything by Bill Bryson will work)
Barbara Kingsolver Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
           

Biography/Autobiography/Memoir:

Barack Obama The Audacity of Hope
John McCain Character Is Destiny
Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle
Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atul Gawande Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science

 

History:

Tom Brokaw BOOM!
Jack Weatherford Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Eric Larson Devil in the White City
Mark Kurlansky Salt: A World History
Alan Weisman The World Without Us
Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies   
Thomas L. Friedman The World Is Flat
Barbara Tuchman The Guns of August
David McCullough 1776