Supplemental Reading - List B

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 B:

These books are great, but I don’t have questions written for them yet… so, you can write the questions!

For each chapter of the book, write a 3-5 sentence summary of what happened in that chapter. Then…

For each chapter, write 1-3 questions that can be used for future students reading the book.

           The questions can not be answered with a single word and must be related to the BIOLOGY behind the book. Then…

For each question you wrote, provide the correct answer.

Your summaries, questions and answers must be TYPED and emailed to Ms. vB.

Complete the supplemental reading verification form

I recognize that this is more work than option A, so you will be rewarded with oogles and oodles of points (120 max)!

          Yes… that’s right. You can earn 120 points for selecting option B, that’s 20 extra credit points!

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)!!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot). From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible.

The Fever Trail (Mark Monigsbaum). A fascinating boat trip through the history of Malaria and those that have sought to cure it.

Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Tracy Kidder). This book will inspire feelings of humility, admiration, and disquietude; in some, it may sow the seeds of humanitarian activism.

Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic (Gina Kolata). A fascinating look at the 1918 epidemic that wiped out around 40 million people in less than a year and afflicted more than one of every four Americans.

Typhoid Mary (Judith Leavitt). Mary Mallon was detained in a cottage where she lived in isolation for the rest of her life. Her crime was that, although healthy herself, she was a carrier of the typhus bacillus and had innocently infected 22 people.

When Germs Travel (Howard Markel) Diseases that have plagued human beings since ancient times, new maladies make their way into the headlines, we are faced with vaccine shortages, and the threat of germ warfare has reemerged as a worldwide threat.

Bitten: True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings (Pamela Nagami). Presents case studies of infections contracted from ants, spiders, mosquitoes, ticks, and from such larger animals as snakes, rats, alligators, dogs, cats, horses, monkeys and humans.

Revenge Of The Microbes: How Bacterial Resistance Is Undermining The Antibiotic Miracle (Aligail Salyers). provides the scientific information readers will need to form opinions and make informed decisions regarding the use of antibiotics.

When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS (James Cross Giblin). The devastating spread of three epidemic diseases, and the many responses they have evoked, are insightfully covered in this book.

The Secret Family (David Bodanis). Looks microscopically at a family of four in their microorganism-ridden, poison-spewing, neurotransmitter-driven splendor.

Captain of Death: The Story of Tuberculosis (Daniel Thomas). Traces the history of TB from prehistory through today. It is both synoptic and chronologic in approach, and always logical and readable.

The Malaria Capers : More Tales of Parasites and People, Research and Reality (Robert Desowitz). Desowitz's accounts of unsung heroes in the battle against disease, coupled with his humanity and storyteller's skill, make for engrossing reading

Why Darwin Matters (Micheal Shermer). He staunchly advocates discriminating religion from science and in this book concisely defends evolutionary theory from the concept of intelligent design (ID), aka creationism.

The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (Sean Carroll). Natural selection eliminates harmful changes and embraces beneficial ones, and each change leaves its signature on a species' DNA codes.

Reason for Hope (Jane Goodall). The world's most famous female scientist relates much of her life's journey most notably her groundbreaking work with the chimpanzees of Africa. In this book, Goodall reveals her inner journey with clarity, great passion and purpose.

Teenagers: A Natural History (David Bainbridge). No longer society's scourge and scapegoat, the teenager emerges as an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon that evokes reverence and wonder.

The Greatest Show on Earth (Richard Dawkins). A richly illustrated, enormously readable explanation of the theory of evolution.

Life Ascending (Nick Lane) What were the great biological inventions that led to Earth as we know it? Lane argues that there are 10 such inventions and explores the evolution of each.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful (Sean Carroll). The new science of "evo devo"-- evolutionary developmental biology--examines the relationships between two processes, embryonic development and evolutionary changes.

Rosalind Franklin and DNA (Anne Syre). Franklin's research was central to the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure. Franklin never received the credit she was due during her lifetime. In this classic work Anne Sayre sets the record straight.

In Defense of Food (Michael Pollan). Pollan shows that convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals

The Botany of Desire (Michael Pollan). Focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (Stephen Jay Gould). The Burgess Shale "is the most precious and important of all fossil localities." These 600-million-year-old rocks preserve the soft parts of animals unlike any other.

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (David Quammen). An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution.

Dead Men Do Tell Tales (William Maples and Michael Browning). A snapshot of the world of forensic scientists.

The Monk in the Garden (Robin Henig). The lost-and-found genius of "The Father of Genetics" is one of the great legends of science. Henig has built a fascinating tale of the strange twists and ironies of scientific progress.

Collapse (Jared Diamond). Diamond sounds the alarm on environmental practices undermining modern societies, including China, Russia, Australia and the United States.

Gorillas in the Mist (Dian Fossey). In 1967 Fossey set up a camp on the slopes of the Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda and studied four gorilla families there. She was immediately impressed by their peaceful nature and by their generous, guileless behavior.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe (Katrina Firlik). A carpenter with a nail in his frontal lobe; a boy develops bacterial meningitis because his New Age mother gave him herbs instead of antibiotics; and an infant looks cute despite the absence of brain matter.

Baby ER (Edward Humes). In this heart-stopping account of medical prowess, triumph and tragedy, Humes writes about 11 critically ill premature babies (seven of whom survive).

Chanda's Secrets (Allen Stratton). The details of sub-Saharan African life are convincing and smoothly woven into this moving story of poverty and courage, but the real insight for readers will be the appalling treatment of the AIDS victims.

Only a Theory (Ken Miller). Thoroughly enjoyable and informative, this new book dismantles the scientific basis of intelligent design piece by piece.

Saving Henry (Laurie Strongen). The story of Henry’s rare and fatal disease. Laurie and her husband were the pioneer PGD couple, unsupported by precedents, support groups, ethical guidelines, or regulations of any sort.

The Naked Ape (Desmond Morris). With knowledge gleaned from primate ethnology, zoologist Morris examines sex, child-rearing, exploratory habits, fighting, feeding, and much more to establish our surprising bonds to the animal kingdom.

Woman in the Mists (Farley Mowat). The murder of Dian Fossey focused world attention on her struggle to study and preserve the mountain gorilla. Provides insights into her personal life, difficulties in maintaining funding, and her work up to her death in 1985.

Virus Hunter (C.J. Peters). Peters has spent his professional life studying deadly pathogens in the lab and in the wild. He spins a drama- and adrenaline-filled true tale of virus hunters.

At the Water's Edge (Carl Zimmer). The journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is magnificent and bizarre; it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us.

Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea (Carl Zimmer). Zimmer explores evolutions history and future. The book, lavishly illustrated with photos, anatomical diagrams, and timelines, is as beautiful as it is enlightening.

The Demon Haunted World (Carl Sagan). Sagan refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and provides a "baloney detection kit" for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues.

The Mind's Eye (Oliver Sacks). Case histories of six individuals adjusting to major changes in their vision.

Lucy's Legacy (Donald Johansson). The author is the founder of "Lucy", the 4.2 million year old hominid that revolutionized the study of human evolution. This book tells again the story of his find, and of his extensive research and findings since that time.

Written in Stone (Brian Switek). Beginning with a recently discovered 47-million-year-old primate fossil, Switek effectively and eloquently demonstrates the exponential increase in fossils that have been found since Darwin first published On the Origin of Species.

The Fever (Sonia Shah). How does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them?

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA (Brenda Maddox). Franklin never received due credit for the crucial role she played in the discovery of DNA's structure. Franklin was a brilliant and uncompromising young scientist who was a warm and admired friend to many.

Tears of the Cheetah (Stephen O'Brien). Recounts how the pursuit of molecular biology led to some far-flung pursuits; collecting sperm from cheetahs; cuddling a baby giant panda; identifying a cat by DNA from a hair; and tracking orangutans to perform skin biopsies.

Remarkable Creatures: A Novel (Tracy Chevalier). When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, poor and uneducated Mary Anning sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight.

Genetic Twists of Fate (Stanley Fields). Stories and explanations of genetic disease, including a mother accused of poisoning her son when the true killer was a genetic disorder.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Siddhartha Mukherjee). An account of cancer's origins and treatments-- thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe.

The Species Seekers (Richard Conniff). From Linnaeus's creation of a species classification system in 1735, to Darwin's development of the theory of evolution to the present as new species continue to be discovered