2008 - "The Glass Castle", by Jeannette Walls
“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls has been selected for the 2008 Summer Reading Program at Appalachian State University, announced Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock.
In her memoir, Walls weaves an almost unbelievable account of her mother and father’s unorthodox approach to parenting, the family’s unconditional love for one another, and Walls’s and her siblings’ ability to prosper in spite of the obstacles, including homelessness and alcoholism, they faced growing up. [more]
2007 - “A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America”, by Paul Cuadros
“A Home on the Field” is published by HarperCollins. Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book was, “A worthy social commentary and biographical portrait. . . . the author’s description of (the team’s) victories is nicely balanced with a broad overview of Latinos’ relatively recent migration to the American South, with a conclusion infused with cautious optimism.” [more]
2006 - “Freakonomics”, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
The most brilliant young economist in America-the one so deemed, at least, by a jury of his elders-brakes to a stop at a traffic light on Chicago's south side. It is a sunny day in mid-June. He drives an aging green Chevy Cavalier with a dusty dashboard and a window that doesn't quite shut, producing a dull roar at highway speeds.
But the car is quiet for now, as are the noontime streets: gas stations, boundless concrete, brick buildings with plywood windows.
An elderly homeless man approaches. It says he is homeless right on his sign, which also asks for money. He wears a torn jacket, too heavy for the warm day, and a grimy red baseball cap.
The economist doesn't lock his doors or inch the car forward. Nor does he go scrounging for spare change. He just watches, as if through one-way glass. After a while, the homeless man moves along.
"He had nice headphones," says the economist, still watching in the rearview mirror. "Well, nicer than the ones I have. Otherwise, it doesn't look like he has many assets."
Steven Levitt tends to see things differently than the average person. Differently, too, than the average economist. This is either a wonderful trait or a troubling one, depending on how you feel about economists. [more]
2005- “Iron and Silk,” by Mark Salzman
Salzman captures post-cultural revolution China through his adventures as a young American English teacher in China and his shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship with China's foremost martial arts teacher.
Review from the School Library Journal:
This anecdotal record of a young man's encounter with the Chinese and their way of life offers unique insights to readers. Salzman had majored in Chinese literature at Yale, and his first job after graduation in 1982 was teaching English to students and teachers at Hunan Medical College in Changsha. He met this considerable challenge with sensitivity, humor, and imagination, and was quickly regarded with respect and affection. [more]
2004- A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League,” by Ron Suskind
At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it does.
The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside, a glimpse that turns into a face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school. [more]
2003 - Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet. Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --excerpt from Lesley Reed, Amazon.com's Best of 2001 [more]
2002 - The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
They carried pictures, love letters, malaria tablets, Bibles, dope, a rabbit's foot, and each other. And, if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a controversial war that history is only now beginning to absorb. The Things They Carried is the story of Alpha Company. It is the story of how men lived and died fighting in Vietnam, but it's also the story of how men survived the brutality to ultimately "carry on," to find sympathy and kindness in a world full of hurt and deception. This is more than a war novel; it is an exploration of what it means to be human. Since it was first published, it has become a classic work of American literature and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul. [more]
