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DUE:
Once a semester, any time before
the final exam. You can turn in
completed supplemental reading assignments at
any time, just be sure you have one turned in by
the last day of the semester!
Worth:
100 class work points (usually turns out to
being about 2 percent of your overall grade, but
this can vary).
Assignment:
1. Choose a book from
the options below. Some are easy, some are
hard. All are great!
2. Acquire the book
(libraries have multiple copies of these
books or you can get copies of some of them
from the classroom collection).
You can also link through to
Amazon from this site and order the books
direct.
3. For books in
list A:
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Get the question
sets linked from the book
titles.
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Read the book,
love it, and answer the
questions in your own writing.
ANSWERS MAY NOT BE TYPED.
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Complete the
supplemental reading
verification form
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Turn in your
question packets and be rewarded
with oogles and oodles of points
(100 max)!
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4. If you bought a book
and want nothing more to do with it, then
PLEASE donate your book to the classroom
collection! What good karma
you will have.
But, wait… there’s more!
You can read more than one book a
semester for extra credit (list A or list B, 50
points each, no limit)!!
LIST A
(jump to difficulty:
easy,
medium or
hard) |
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Easy
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The Woman with a Worm in
her Head
(Pamela Nagami). A
collection of infectious
disease essays,
including AIDS,
chickenpox and
flesh-eating bacteria.
|
 Jurassic
Park
(Michael
Crichton). Crichton
interweaves details of
genetic engineering,
computer wizardry and
current scientific
controversy over
dinosaurs to fashion a
scary, creepy,
mesmerizing thriller. |
 The
Andromeda Strain
(Michael Crichton) A
returning space capsule
releases an alien virus
on the earth. |
 My
Sisters Keeper
(Jodi
Picoult). Anna was
genetically engineered
to be a perfect match
for her cancer-ridden
older sister.
|
 The
Hot Zone
(Richard
Preston). The tale of
an actual Ebola virus
outbreak in a suburban
Washington, D.C.
laboratory. |
 Complications:
A Surgeon's Note on an
Imperfect Science
(Atul
Gawande). Edgy accounts
of medical traumas and
sobering analyses of
doctors' anxieties and
burnout. |
 The
Demon in the Freezer
(Richard Preston). A
thriller that focuses on
smallpox and the threat
it plays as a
bioterrorism agent.
|
 Ryan
White, My Own Story
(Ryan White).
Although Ryan White was
born with hemophilia,
the boy and his family
were determined that he
live as normal a life as
possible. But, given
contaminated blood in a
transfusion, Ryan
contracted AIDS. |
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Medium |
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 Microbe
Hunters
(Paul de Kruif).
In this classic bestseller, Paul de
Kruif dramatizes the pioneering bacteriological work
of such scientists as Leeuwenhoek, Spallanzani,
Koch, Pasteur, Reed, and Ehrlich.
|
 Silent
Spring
(Rachel Carson). The book focuses on the poisons
from insecticides, weed killers, and other common
products as well as the use of sprays in
agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous
chemicals to the food source. |
 Journey
to the Ants
(Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson). Offer a
fascinating glimpse into the world of ants as well
as their own personal adventures in the study of
these insects. |
 Through
a Window: My Thirty Year with the Chimpanzees of
Gombe
(Jane
Goodall). A saga of chimpanzee families with an
engrossing account of animal behavior.
|
 The
Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery
of the Structure of DNA
(James Watson). Describes the many minds involved
in the ultimate understanding of what DNA looks like
and how it multiplies. |
 The
Lives of a Cell; Notes of a Biology Watcher
(Lewis Thomas). A beautifully
written collection of essays that bring one very
close to a belief that in some way, all life is
connected. |
 The
World Without Us
(Alan Weisman). If humans when
extinct overnight, how long before all trace of
humankind vanished?
|
 The
Journey of Man
(Spencer Wells). Tracking human
relatedness and migration by examining Y-chromosome
similarities and differences among current humans.
|
 A
Feeling for the Organism; The Life and Work of
Barbara McClintock
(Evelyn Fox Keller). An insightful
and thought-provoking book about women in science
and the role of dissent in the scientific community. |
 The
Secret Life of Germs
(Phillip Tierno). The story of
bacteria, viruses, and prions and their myriad
effects on human beings. From toxic shock syndrome
to Lyme disease to diarrheal infections of the Third
World.
|
 Abraham
Lincoln’s DNA
(Philip R. Reilly). An enjoyable
series of vignettes that explain the fundamental
tools of the modern genetic detective in the course
of fascinating historical tales. |
 When
a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish
(Lisa Seachrist Chiu). A remarkable collection of
stories about the discovery and elucidation of some
rare or not so rare genetic disorders. |
 The
Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
(Oliver Sacks) Clinical tales drawn from
fascinating and unusual cases introduces real people
who suffer from a variety of neurological syndromes
which include symptoms such as amnesia, uncontrolled
movements, and musical hallucinations. |
 A
Day in the Life of Your Body
(Jennifer Ackerman)
Starting
with a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call and working through to
the wee hours, this book explains the complex
details behind some of the body's most basic
functions. |
 Musicophilia
(Oliver Sacks) Explores the effects of music on the
human brain. Clinical studies from individuals
afflicted by an inability to connect with any melody
to Alzheimer's patients who find order and comfort
through music. |
 Riddled
with Life
(Marlene Zuk). Stories of human
parasites and how humans and our parasites have
co-evolved.
|
 The
Wild Trees
(Richard Preston).
Includes the history of old-growth forests, canopy
ecology, tells how gadgets and techniques to climb
were invented and introduces recreational
tree-climbing as a sport. |
 What
Patients Taught Me
(Audrey Young). A firsthand depiction of the
hardships and rewards of medical school, this
sensitive memoir may serve as a guide to help
readers who are considering traversing that same
path. |
 Panic
in Level 4
(Richard Preston). Essays that cover genome mapper
Craig Venter; a gene that leads people to
cannibalize themselves; and two Russian-Jewish
émigré scientists who built a monster computer in
their cramped apartment to puzzle out patterns in
the value of pi. |
 The
Immortal Cell
(Michael D. West). A chronology of the emerging
science of immortality and a personal journal of the
path from creationist to scientist. It was West who
announced that through somatic cell nuclear transfer
they could create embryonic stem cells. |
 Gone
Tomorrow (Heather
Rogers). Americans produce the most waste of
any people on Earth, but few of us ever think about
where all that trash goes. Rogers endeavors to show
the inner workings of the waste stream, from the
garbage truck to the landfill, incinerator or parts
unknown. |
 Parasite
Rex (Carl Zimmer). From
tapeworms to isopods to ichneumon wasps, "parasites
are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at
the heart of the story of life." |
 Survival
of the Sickest
(Sharon Moalem).
Addresses a number of provocative questions, such as
why debilitating hereditary diseases persist in
humans and why we suffer from the consequences of
aging. |
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| Hard |
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 Guns,
Germs and Steal
(Jared Diamond) Through the lens of an evolutionary
biologist, Diamond reviews human history on every
continent since the Ice Age at a rate that
emphasizes the movements of peoples and ideas.
|
 Head
Cases
(Michael Paul Mason). takes us into the dark side
of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories,
at once true and strange, from the world of brain
injury. |
 The
Ghost Map
(Steven Johnson). On August 28, 1854, working-class
Londoner Sarah Lewis tossed a bucket of soiled water
into the cesspool of her squalid apartment building
and triggered the deadliest outbreak of cholera in
the city's history. |
 Origin
of Species
(Charles Darwin). One of the most important and
influential books ever written, and it is one of the
very few groundbreaking works of science that is
truly readable.
|
 Plague
Time
(Paul Ewald). Argues that cancer,
heart disease, and arthritis are not necessarily
caused by a breakdown of the human body, but by the
action of infectious agents and by the immune
response to those agents. |
 Primal
Teen
(Barbara Strauch). The latest
research, including brain scans that show changes in
the brain's structure and function that could
explain the crazy behavior exhibited by teens. |
 The
Seven Daughters of Eve
(Bryan Sykes). Decoding
mitochondrial DNA and using this knowledge to trace
the path of human evolution. Sykes relates personal
and historical anecdotes, offering familiar ground
from which to consider the science. |
 The
Family that Couldn't Sleep
(T.D.
Max). The case of an Italian family whose members
succumb to a sleeping disorder that causes not only
insomnia but certain death. The cause of this
disease is determined to be prions—infectious agents
derived from proteins. |
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