Thursday, October 11: The Weather Makers: How man is changing the climate and what it means for life on Earth by Tim Flannery. A scientist offers a readable and comprehensive account of the history, science, and politics of climate change.The author will be giving a talk on campus October 18 as the Claritis Distinguished Science Speaker. Kathy Straub of our Earth and Environmental Sciences Department is organizing his visit and will be our facilitator for our Seminar. We will meet at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 11, at the home of Raven and Marvin Rudnitsky, 108 Susquehanna Avenue here in town.

Wednesday, November 14: The Founding Fish by John McPhee. The story of the American shad, told in a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history. Carlos Iudica of our Biology Department will facilitate. We will meet at the new home of Susan Schurer, 604 Front Street on the Ile of Que, at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, February 5: 1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. European explorers never saw the full glory of many native civilizations, since European diseases raced ahead of them and reduced nations to scattered remnants.
Host: Paul and Linda Klingensmith, 422 North Eighth Street, Selinsgrove.
Facilitator: John Bodinger, Anthropology Dept.

Wednesday, April 9: The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. The untold story of those who stayed and survived the Great American Dustbowl of the 1930's.
Host: Raven Rudnitsy, 108 Susquehanna Avenue, Selinsgrove.

The Faculty Seminar is currently run by Ken Brakke. We do need volunteer hosts, so anyone willing should contact me. We also take book suggestions; there is a meeting of all interested parties in May to plan the next year's Seminar.

An announcement of the time and place and an order form will precede each seminar by about a month.

If paying by check ($5 per book), please make it out to Susquehanna University.

Previous years' books

• The Grace That Keeps This World by Tom Bailey. A novel by one of our very own faculty members.
• The World Is Flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century by Thomas L. Friedman. Bestseller by New York Times journalist on the globalization of modern economics and politics.
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. One of America’s leading writers tries to make sense of a tragic period in the life of her family.
• American Theocracy: The peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century by Kevin Phillips. A well-known political commentator traces "the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority’s rise to power: an inept and weakly led coalition, dominated by religious zealotry, that is losing America the world’s respect and endangering her future."

• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. A novel set in Afghanistan, telling the story of a family in Kabul set against the backdrop of the political turmoil and violence of its revolution and invasion by Russian forces and then Taliban rule. Host: Raven Rudnitsky, 108 Susquehanna Avenue, Selinsgrove.
• The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Epidemic in History by John Barry. The great flu epidemic of 1918 actually began in Kansas, and killed tens of millions worldwide, just when science was beginning to understand such plagues. It can easily happen again. The leading science journal Nature devoted its May 26, 2005 issue to the possibility, and has made its commentaries and articles freely available at http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/avianflu/index.html. Host: Joe and Kathleen Herb, 2 South Front Street, Selinsgrove. Facilitator: Tammy Tobin-Janzen.
• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by John Krakauer. There are 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practicing bigamy and defying both the civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City. Hosts: Raven Rudnitsky, 108 Susquehanna Avenue, Selinsgrove. Facilitator: Shari Jacobson.
• Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Temple Grandin is an autistic who believes that her condition gives her insight into how animals think. She has parlayed that into a business designing slaughterhouses so successfully that over one third of all animal slaughterings in the United States are in facilities she designed. Host: Raven Rudnitski, 108 Susquehanna Avenue, Selinsgrove. Facilitator: Tom Martin.

• The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein.
• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi.
• The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger.
• Belonging Together: Faith and Politics in a Relational World edited by Douglas Sturm.

• Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester.
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling.
• Straight Man by Richard Russo.

• The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester.
• A Beautiful Mind by Sylia Nasar.
• Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers by David Edmonds and John Eidinow.
• Building a Bridge to the 18th Century by Neil Postman.
• April 1865: The Month That Saved America by Jay Winik.

• In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson.
  
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman.
  
• The Truth about Dogs by Stephen Budianski.
  
• Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose.
  
• Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis.
  

• Strange Fruit by David Margolick.
  
• Ideology in America: Challenges to Faith by Alan F. Geyer.
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.
  
• Waiting by Ha Jin.
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.
• After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back by Nancy Venable Raine.
• The Culture of Disbelief by Stephen L. Carter.
• The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester.
• Consilience by Edward Wilson.
• No Contest: the Case Against Competition by Alfie Kohn.

• The "Lower Sort" by Billy G. Smith.
• When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
• The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal.
• The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway.
• Paradise by Toni Morrison.
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

• Life Work by Donald Hall. Hosted by
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.
• The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt.
• The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington.
• Great Books by David Denby.
• Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.

• Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte.
• Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner.
• The U.S. History Guidelines
• Moo by Jane Smiley.
• The Haunted Land: facing Europe's ghosts after Communism by Tina Rosenberg.
• One World - the Interaction of Science and Theology by John Polkinghorne.

• State of The World 1995 ed. by Lester Brown of Worldwatch.
• Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx.
• To Know a Fly by Vincent Dethier.
• Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks.
• The Overworked American by Juliet B. Schor.

• Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop.
• Mystery Ride by Robert Boswell.
• Race Matters by Cornel West.
• Gender and the Musical Canon by Marcia J. Citron.

• Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.
• Real Presences by George Steiner.
• Native Roots by Jack Weatherford.
• Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills.
• The Stolen House by Bernard L. Herman.
• Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid.

• Let My People Live Gordon Spykmann et al.
• America - What Went Wrong Donald Barlett and James Steele.
• Backlash Susan Faludi.
• The Big Splash by Louis Frank.
• The Riddle of Amish Culture by Donald Kraybill.
• The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan (novel).

• The Politics of Liberal Education by Gless and Hernn-Smith (Partisan Review, Spring 1991)
• Soviet Women by Francine Du Plessix Gray
• Simone Weil by Robert Coles and supplementary Essay on Iliad and Poem of Force by Weil.
• Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis.
• Middle Passage by Charles Johnson. (novel)

• The Power of Myth by Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell.
• Chaos by James Gleick.
• Sophia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya.
• Women and War by Jean Elshtain.
• The Ages of Gaia by James Lovelock.
• For Adult Users Only by Susan Gubar and Joan Hoff.

• State of The World ed. by Lester Brown of Worldwatch.
• Coming of Age in New Jersy by Michael Moffat.
• Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists by E. Fuller Torrey.
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Marquez.
• Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels.
• Mind Children by Hans Moravec.

• Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch.
• The Great Depression of 1990 by Ravi Batra.
• Science and Unreason by Daisie and Michael Radnor.
• Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.
• Bonfire of the Vanities by Thomas Wolfe.
• The Meaning of Creation by Conrad Hyers.

• Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah.
• The Great Debate: Interpreting our Written Constitution by The Federalist Society.
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
• Report of the Advisory Committee on Issues Relating to Homosexuality by the Lutheran Church in America.
• For All the People (summary of Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy)
• Move Your Shadow by Joseph Lelyveld.

• Night by Elie Wiesel.
• The Age of Triage by Rubenstein.
• The Japanese Mind by Robert Christopher.
• The Second Self by Sherry Turkle.
• Semiotics and Interpretation by Robert Scholes.

• Promethean Fire by C. J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson.
• Cooperation by Robert Axelrod.
• God's Grace by Bernard Malamud.

• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
• Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon.
• The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and the Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes.
• Villages by R. Critchfield.

• The Panda's Thumb by Stephen J. Gould.
• When Bad Things Happen to Good People by H. S. Kushner.
• The Dean's December by S. Bellow.
• In a Different Voice by C. Gilligan.
• Salvador by J. Didion.

• The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier.
• The Fate of the Earth by Jonathan Schell.
• Power and Innocence by Rollo May.
• Theory Z by William Ouchi.
• Less Than Words Can Say by Richard Mitchell.

• The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe by Arthur Koestler.
• Murder in the White House by Margaret Truman.
• The Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins.
• Archbishop Romero, Martyr of Salvador by Placido Erdozain.

• In Search of History by Theodore White.
• The Authority of the Past by Sheila McDonough.
• The Culture of Narcissism by Christopher Lasch.
• Allegiances of Human Geneticists by ?.
• Report of the President's Commission on The Humanities in American Life.

• The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki.
• Business Civilization in Decline by Robert Heilbronner.
• The Identity Society by William Glasser.
• Tales of Power by Carlos Castenada.
• The New American Ideology by George C. Lodge.
• The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra.

• Measure for Measure by W. Shakespeare.
• The Last of the Just by Andre Schartz-Barth.
• Hinduism by K. M. Sen.
• The Poverty of Power by Barry Commoner.
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
• Stages and Patterns in Adult Development by Gal Sheehy.

Created and maintained by Ken Brakke.
Last updated: February 18, 2003