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Random House,
Inc. publishes a broad selection of fiction and non-fiction books
appropriate for first-year and Freshman Reading programs. The
books suggested here should help initiate reflection and discussion
among your incoming first-year students, who will begin their
academic lives with a shared experience. They’ll be prepared
to discuss the stories of others and, thus, ready to share their
own.
Many authors featured below are available to visit college campuses
as part of a first-year program. Please email
us for further information.
To order examination copies of any of these titles, please follow
the instructions on our Examination
Copy page.
Suggested
Freshman-Year Reading Titles
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New
THE LITTLE BOOK OF PLAGIARISM
by Richard A. Posner
Provocative, insightful, and extraordinary
for its clarity and forthrightness, The Little Book
of Plagiarism is an analytical tour de force in small,
the work of “one of the top twenty legal thinkers
in America” (Legal Affairs), a distinguished
jurist renowned for his adventuresome intellect and daring
iconoclasm.
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1491
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
by Charles C. Mann
In this groundbreaking work
of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically
alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival
of Columbus in 1492.
“When does American
history begin? The old answer used to be 1492, with the
European arrival in the Americas. That answer is no longer
politically or historically correct. For the last thirty
years or so historians, geographers and archaeologists have
built up an arsenal of evidence about the residents of North
America after the ice receded and before the Europeans arrived.
Mann has mastered that scholarship and written the most
elegant synthesis of the way we were before the European
invasion.” —Joseph J. Ellis, author of His
Excellency: George Washington
Discussion
Guide available
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New
in paperback
STUMBLING
ON HAPPINESS
by Daniel Gilbert
Smart and witty, Stumbling on Happiness
brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about
the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how
likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.
“This is a psychological detective
story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If
you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition,
you ought to read it. Trust me.” —Malcolm Gladwell,
Amazon.com
Teacher's
Guide available
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New
THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
Thoughts
on Reclaiming the American Dream
by Barack Obama
In his follow-up to the bestseller Dreams
from My Father, the rising Democratic draws on his
experience as a senator and lawyer, a professor and father,
a Christian and a skeptic, to illuminate the greatness of
America’s original ideals—and to remind us how
vital it is to keep them before us.
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THE
WISDOM OF CROWDS
by James Surowiecki
In this fascinating book, New Yorker
business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively
simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an
elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving
problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions,
even predicting the future.
“This book is not just revolutionary
but essential reading for everyone.” —Christian
Science Monitor
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DARK
AGE AHEAD
by Jane Jacobs
In this indispensable book, urban
visionary Jane Jacobs—renowned author of The
Death and Life of Great American Cities and The
Economy of Cities—convincingly argues that
as agrarianism gives way to a technology-based future, we
stand on the brink of a new dark age, a period of cultural
collapse.
But this is a hopeful book as well as a
warning. Drawing on her vast frame of reference—from
fifteenth-century Chinese shipbuilding to Ireland’s
cultural rebirth—Jacobs suggests how the cycles of
decay can be arrested and our way of life renewed. Invigorating
and accessible, Dark Age Ahead is not only the
crowning achievement of Jane Jacobs’ career, but one
of the most important works of our time.
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BLOOD
DONE SIGN MY NAME
A True Story
by Timothy B. Tyson
Selected by Villanova University; University
of North Carolina—Chapel Hill; and University of Wisconsin
Winner, Grawemeyer Award for Religion 2007
A 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Public Library Book to Remember
In the tradition of To
Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name
is a classic work of conscience. Tim Tyson’s riveting
narrative of a fiery summer of racial conflict and one family’s
struggle to build bridges in a time of destruction is a
complex rendering of a true story, in which violence and
faith, courage and evil, despair and hope all mingle to
powerful effect.
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WHEN
THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE
by Julie Otsuka
Booklist Editor's Choice for Young Adults
A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age
ALA Alex Award
Julie Otsuka’s commanding
debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment
camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity
and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the
deracination—both physical and emotional—of
a generation of Japanese Americans.
“Her voice never falters, equally
adept at capturing horrific necessity and accidental beauty.
Her unsung prisoners of war contend with multiple front
lines, and enemies who wear the faces of neighbors and friends.
It only takes a few pages to join their cause, but by the
time you finish this exceptional debut, you will recognize
that their struggle has always been yours.” —Colson
Whitehead, author of John Henry Days
Teacher's
Guide available
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New
in paperback
THE
SHAME OF THE NATION
The
Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
by Mary Ann Glendon
“The nation needs to be confronted
with the crime that we’re committing and the promises
we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young,
who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended
to make readers comfortable.”
—from The Shame of the Nation
“The Shame of the Nation
is a national wake-up call.... It should be required reading.”—Marian
Wright Edelman, CEO and Founder, Children’s Defense
Fund
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SNOW
by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Maureen Freely
Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature
“Not only an engrossing
feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times.
[Pamuk is] narrating his country into being.” —Margaret
Atwood
“A great and almost irresistibly beguiling
. . . novelist. . . . [Snow is] enriched by . .
. mesmerizing mixes: cruelty and farce, poetry and violence,
and a voice whose timbres range from a storyteller's playfulness
to the dark torment of an explorer, lost.” —The
New York Times
Discussion
Guide available |
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New
in paperback
SOCIAL
INTELLIGENCE
The
New Science of Human Relationships
by Daniel Goleman
In Social Intelligence,
Daniel Goleman explores an emerging new science with startling
implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental
discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged
in a “neural ballet” that connects us brain
to brain with those around us.
“Passionately argued
... lucid.”—Publishers Weekly
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THE
SWALLOWS OF KABUL
by Yasmina Khadra
Translated by John Cullen
The Swallows of
Kabul is a dazzling novel written with compassion and
exquisite detail by one of the most lucid writers about
the mentality of Islamic fundamentalists and the complexities
of the Muslim world. Yasmina Khadra brings readers into
the hot, dusty streets of Kabul and offers them an unflinching
but compassionate insight into a society that violence and
hypocrisy have brought to the edge of despair.
“A surprisingly tender book. . .
. Amid the terror a classic story about love sneaks through:
love lost, love imagined, love morphed into madness.”
—The New York Times Book Review
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MY
FACE IS BLACK IS TRUE
Callie House and the Struggle for
Ex-Slave Reparations
by Mary Frances
Berry
In her groundbreaking new book, My Face
Is Black Is True, historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects
the forgotten life of Callie House (1861-1928), ex-slave,
widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five who, seventy
years before the civil rights movement, headed a demand
for ex-slave reparations.
“My Face
Is Black Is True reclaims Callie House as an authentic
American hero who over a century ago argued that America's
debt to its more than four million enslaved founders was
long overdue. Dr. Mary Frances Berry brilliantly brings
the issue of slave reparations to the forefront of American
history.” —Christopher Moore, author of Fighting
for America: Black Soldiers—The Unsung Heroes of WWII
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New—Coming
April 2007
AMERICAN YOUTH
A Novel
by Phil LaMarche
Click
here to listen to Phil LaMarche's talk from the 2007 First-Year
Experience Annual Conference in Addison, TX.
(please raise
your volume to maximum)
Set in a town
riven by social and ideological tensions—an old rural
culture in conflict with newcomers—this is a classic
portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity
and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself.
“The most compelling
and exciting debut novel in years. What an amazing, gratifying
book—we are lucky to have it. LaMarche proves that
there are still young geniuses among us, wringing new life
from the novel.” —George Saunders, author of
Pastoralia
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A
LESSON BEFORE DYING
A Novel
by Ernest J. Gaines
Winner of the National Book Critics
Circle Award for Fiction
Set in a small Cajun community
in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is about
the bond forged between two men—Jefferson, convicted
of murder and sentenced to die; and Grant Wiggins, a college
graduate returning to his hometown to teach. Through their
friendship and the wisdom they impart upon one another,
they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting—and
defying—the expected. Gaines brings to this novel
a rich sense of place and a deep understanding of the human
psyche.
Teacher's
Guide available |
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New
in paperback
TROPICAL
FISH
Tales
from Entebbe
by Doreen Baingana
Winner—Commonwealth Writers’
Prize for Best First Book in the Africa region; Association
of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Award Series in Short
Fiction; Washington Writing Prize for Short Fiction; Finalist
for the Caine Prize in African Writing
In her fiction
debut, Doreen Baingana follows a Ugandan girl as she navigates
the uncertain terrain of adolescence. Set mostly in pastoral
Entebbe with stops in the cities Kampala and Los Angeles,
Tropical Fish depicts the reality of life for Christine
Mugisha and her family after Idi Amin’s dictatorship.
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A
SENSE OF THE MYSTERIOUS
Science and the Human Spirit
by Alan Lightman
Unusually gifted as both a physicist and
a novelist, Alan Lightman has lived in the dual worlds of
science and art for much of his life. In these brilliant
essays, the two worlds meet. In A Sense of the Mysterious,
Lightman records his personal struggles to reconcile certainty
with uncertainty, logic with intuition, questions with answers
and questions without.
“Original. . . . Heartfelt. . . .
Illuminating. . . . Lightman writes with his characteristic,
unmannered leanness. His style takes something from the
scientists who ‘want to hear that call of certain
truth, that clear note of a struck bell.’” —St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
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ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY
A
Novel
by Adam Mansbach
Click
here to listen to Adam Mansbach's talk from the 2007 First-Year
Experience Conference in Addison, TX.
Adopted by Several Common Reading Programs
Including Moravian College
“. . .[A] revelation, a wise and funny
riff on hip hop and the racial divide that has always plagued
America. I found that [Angry White Black Boy] could
get a class talking, at the deepest level, about hardest
issues, with a common language of youth culture. Mansbach’s
writing is masterful, his references are erudite but accessible,
and his vision is unflinching.” —Rick Ayers,
Berkeley High School, co-author, Great Books for High
School Kids: A Teacher’s Guide to Books That Can Change
Teens’ Lives
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THINKING
IN PICTURES, EXPANDED EDITION
My
Life with Autism
by Temple
Grandin
The captivating subject of Oliver Sack’s
Anthropologist on Mars, here is Temple Grandin’s
personal account of living with autism and how the extraordinary
gift of animal empathy has transformed her world and ours.
“Temple
Grandin’s window onto the subjective experience of
autism is of value to all of us who hope to gain a deeper
understanding of the human mind by exploring the ways in
which it responds to the world’s
challenges.”
—Washington Times
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New
in paperback
THE GOOD GOOD PIG
The Extraordinary Life of Christopher
Hogwood
by Sy Montgomery
This delightful memoir chronicles naturalist
Sy Montgomery’s touching friendship with a generous
soul named Christopher Hogwood—who just so happened
to be a pig—and the valuable lessons she learned about
family, community, and the pleasures of the Earth.
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EXUBERANCE
The
Passion for Life
by Kay Redfield Jamison
“[Jamison is] that rare writer who
can offer a kind of unified field theory of science and
art. . . . The origins and mystery of creativity have long
been her holy grail, and she argues—with her usual
wit, ingenuity and panache—that exuberance is one
of its wellsprings.” —The Washington Post
Book World |
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New
EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE
How Darwin’s
Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives
by David Sloan Wilson
“In this age of mounting mistrust
between science and religion in American society—especially
in America’s classrooms—David Sloan Wilson’s
Evolution for Everyone comes as a breath of fresh
air. . . . Evolution for Everyone fills a gap
in understanding evolution, and will help in the much-needed
bridge building across the divide that has threatened
educational values in recent years.”
—Niles Eldredge, Division of Paleontology, The American
Museum of Natural History (New York, NY)
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HOW
CAN I HELP?
by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
In this practical helper’s
companion, the authors provide support and inspiration for
us in our efforts as members of the helping professions,
as volunteers, as community activists, or simply as friends
and family trying to meet each other’s
needs. Here too are the deeply moving accounts of a housewife
who brings zoo animals to lift the spirits of nursing home
residents; a nun tending the wounded on the first night
of the Nicaraguan revolution; a police officer who talks
a desperate father out of leaping from a roof with his child;
and other unforgettable and emotional stories. |
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New
BUTCHER’S
CROSSING
by John Williams
In the 1870s, Will Andrews,
a young man from a proper eastern family drops out of
Harvard to go west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing,
a small Kansas town that is, as its name suggests, nothing
more than somewhere between here and there. In other words,
nowhere. John Williams’s fiercely intelligent, beautifully
written Western is a harrowing confrontation with the
American dream.
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THE
SUNFLOWER
On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness
by Simon Wiesenthal
In this important book, fifty-three
distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal’s
questions on forgiveness. They are theologians, political
leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights
activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted
genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their
responses, as varied as their experiences of the world,
remind us that Wiesenthal’s
questions are not limited to events of the past. Often
surprising and always thought provoking, The Sunflower
will challenge the reader to define beliefs about justice,
compassion, and human responsibility.
Reader's
Guide available
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A
BRIEFER HISTORY OF TIME
by Stephen Hawking with Leonard
Mlodinow
Selected as 2006 Common
Reading Title at University of California—Berkeley
A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age
Stephen Hawking’s worldwide
bestseller, A Brief History of Time, is a landmark
volume in scientific writing. But it is also true that,
in the years since its publication, readers have repeatedly
told Professor Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding
some of the book’s most important concepts.
Now, Hawking makes his masterpiece’s content even
more accessible to readers, and updates it with the latest
scientific observations and findings.
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THE
WAY OF THE WORLD
From
the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-First
Century
by David Fromkin
As the human race approaches the
21st century, questions of our past trouble us as much
as those that concern our future. David Fromkin, author
of A Peace to End All Peace and finalist for
both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic Circle
Award, provides an arrestingly cogent answer in The
Way of the World.
“Mr. Fromkin recounts ‘the
greatest story ever told’ exceedingly well, aided
by a deep knowledge and an elegant prose style.”
—The Wall Street Journal
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New
STRAPPED
Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't
Get Ahead
by Tamara Draut
Strapped offers a groundbreaking
look at the new obstacle course facing young adults. A
college degree is the new high school diploma—and
costs a fortune to obtain. Good jobs are scarcer thanks
to stagnant wages and disappearing benefits. Witty and
wise, Strapped brims with ideas for fashioning
a new kind of America in which every young person can
go to college, buy a home, and start a family. The future
starts here.
“It’s no time to be 21, and
we have Tamara Draut to thank for describing to us, in
precise details, the forces arrayed against young people—and
what can be done to alleviate the situation.” —Thomas
Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas
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SUCH
SWEET THUNDER
A Novel
by Vincent O. Carter
Set in Kansas City, Missouri, during the
Jazz Age of the 1920s and ‘30s, Such Sweet Thunder
is a majestic evocation of childhood and parental love
told through the eyes of a remarkable boy, Amerigo Jones.
“A rousing, inspired work, keenly
observed and soulful. . . . [A] rich addition to our literary
understanding of the 20th-century African-American experience.”
—The Boston Globe
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FORTY
MILLION DOLLAR SLAVES
The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black
Athlete
by William C. Rhoden
Click here to listen to William Rhoden's talk from the
2007 First-Year Experience Annual Conference in Addison,
TX.
“Few writers can match Bill Rhoden as a commentator
on the vexing subject of race and sports in America. While
others pretend that racism in sports never existed or
lived a short life, he reminds us, with hard, discomforting
honesty, that the truth is something else. Forty Million
Dollar Slaves gives us a series of invaluable and
irrefutable history lessons and contemporary cameos to
illustrate Rhoden’s thesis that even the best paid
of black American athletes live a double life—highly
compensated, but in a state not unlike bondage. Rhoden
scores heavily with this Muhammad Ali of a book, one that
blends autobiography with history, clarity of insight
with passion.”
—Arnold Rampersad, author of Jackie Robinson:
A Biography
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Examination
Copies are available
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