Future Dean's Book Course Book Selections
Each year the Dean’s Readers review dozens of possible book selections before finally choosing two for the year ahead. The process is a long and careful one, as the Readers consider each selection in itself and in relation to previous Dean's Book Course choices.
No book alone can meet all the final selection criteria. But we can create over time a canon of books embodying particular principles and characteristics. We wish to present to the Commonwealth College community books that individually and collectively
• Appeal to an audience of differing academic and personal interests;
• Present a rich array of topics for research and discussion;
• Incorporate and illustrate varied approaches to research;
• Represent an expanse of social and cultural experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives in content & authorship;
• Represent contemporary and, when possible, local authors;
• Offer students an uncommon reading experience;
• Stand out in style and/or content;
• Promise to sustain a semester of exploration and discussion;
• Work well to complement other DBC selections; and
• Have the power to delight as well as instruct.
Your comments on the book possibilities listed below, as well as suggestions of other books fitting our criteria, are very much welcome. Please send them to Alex Phillips, Dean's Book Course Director, at deansbook@comcol.umass.edu.
Books Selected for 2009-2010
Ten Little Indians – Fall 2009
 Sherman Alexie
Grove Press; 2003; 243pp
From Publisher's website:
"Sherman Alexie is one of our most acclaimed and popular writers today. Now, with Ten Little Indians, he offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant new stories about Native Americans who, like all Americans, find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads, faced with heartrending, tragic, sometimes wondrous moments of being that test their loyalties, their capacities, and their notions of who they are and who they love ... Even as they often make us laugh, Sherman Alexie’s stories are driven by a haunting lyricism and naked candor that cut to the heart of the human experience. The result is a short-story collection that has been hailed as Alexie’s 'best in years' (Austin American-Statesman) and 'proves once again that he is a fearless writer'(Rocky Mountain News)."
In Persuasion Nation – Spring 2010
 George Saunders
Riverhead Books; 2006; 228pp
From publisher's website:
"Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest — and most consoling — cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most."
Initial List (Suggested by faculty, staff, and students)
Ama Ata Aidoo, The Girl Who Can
Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians
Tamim Ansary, West of New York, East of Kabul
Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name
Sarah Burd-Sharps et al, The Measure of America
Marie Curie Something Out of Nothing
Charles D’Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Jared Diamond, Collapse
Jim and Jamie Dutcher, Wolves at Our Door
Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel
Dave Eggers, What is the What
Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat
Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister’s Pox
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
Ron Hansen, Atticus
Mohja Kahf, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
Jamaica Kincaid, Among Flowers
Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side
Cammie McGovern, Eye Contact
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark
Toni Morrison, A Mercy
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise
Patrik Ourednik, Europeana
Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis, tr., Swann’s Way
George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us
Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life
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