Dr. Reichler's Fall 2008 Bio 325-uex Bonus #2

This assignment is optional and can be worth a maximum of 1.5 points added to your final grade.

Please choose a book from the list below.  Read the book.  After reading the book, write a four page or less essay about your impressions of the book.  DO NOT SUMMARIZE THE BOOK.  Tell me what you thought.  Some themes you might consider could be:  Was it good or bad?  Did you agree or disagree with it?  What did you feel when reading the book?  These are only some suggestions, and you can write whatever you like about the book as long as your essay is NOT SIMPLY A SUMMARY OF THE BOOK.  This is a fairly free-form assignment... make it what you want it to be.  I am looking for commentary, opinion or analysis; but support your ideas with information from the book or other sources.  The only real limit is that your report should be no longer than 4 typed/word-processed pages.  Based on your paper, you can receive up to 1.5 points added to your final grade.  The typed/word-processed paper is due November 25, 2008 at the beginning of class.  If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to ask.
(The most common error students make on this assignment is writing a paper that is a summary of the book.  Don't do that.)

Book Title	Author
Any book by Edward Abbey	Abbey, Edward
A natural history of the senses	Ackerman, Diane
An alchemy of mind: the marvel and mystery of the brain	Ackerman, Diane
Cultivating delight: a natural history of my garden	Ackerman, Diane
The moon by whale light: and other adventures among bats, penguins, crocodilians, and whales	Ackerman, Diane
The rarest of the rare: vanishing animals, timeless worlds	Ackerman, Diane
A natural history of love	Ackerman, Diane,
Last chance to see	Adams, Douglas
The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think	Aunger, Robert
The Myth of Monogamy	Barash and Lipton
The Meme Machine	Blackmore, Susan
The biology of civilisation: understanding human culture as a force in nature	Boyden, Stephen V.
Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme	Brodie, Richard
Outgrowing the earth: the food security challenge in the age of falling water tables and rising temperatures	Brown, Lester R.
A brain for all seasons: human evolution and abrupt climate change	Calvin, William H.
Diet for a dead planet: how the food industry is killing us	Cook, Christopher D.
Andromeda strain	Crichton, Michael
Climbing mount improbable	Dawkins, Richard
River out of eden: a Darwinian view of life	Dawkins, Richard
The blind watchmaker: why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design	Dawkins, Richard
The extended phenotype: the long reach of the gene	Dawkins, Richard
The selfish gene	Dawkins, Richard
Why we do it: rethinking sex and the selfish gene	Eldredge, Niles
Middlesex	Eugenides, Jeffery
Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love	Fisher, Helen E
Confessions of an eco-warrior	Foreman, Dave
Race, racism, and science: social impact and interaction	Jackson, John P
Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software	Johnson, Steven
Mind wide open: your brain and the neuroscience of everyday life	Johnson, Steven
Everything bad is good for you: how today's popular culture is actually making us smarter	Johnson, Steven
Apprentice to genius: the making of a scientific dynasty	Kanigel, Robert
A feeling for the organism: the life and work of Barbara McClintock	Keller, Evelyn Fox
The cave bear story: life and death of a vanished animal	Kurtén, Björn
The origin of minds: evolution, uniqueness, and the new science of the self	La Cerra, Peggy
Dinner at the new gene cafe: how genetic engineering is changing what we eat, how we live, and the global politics of food	Lambrecht, Bill
The periodic table	Levi, Primo
Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA	Maddox, Brenda
Microcosmos: four billion years of evolution from our microbial ancestors	Margulis, Lynn
What it means to be 98% chimpanzee: apes, people, and their genes	Marks, Jonathan
Mendel's dwarf	Mawer, Simon
Pandora's picnic basket: the potential and hazards of genetically modified foods	McHughen, Alan
Survival of the sickest	Moalem, Sharon
The Polymerase chain reaction	Mullis, Kary
Dancing naked in the mind field	Mullis, Kary
Eat your genes: how genetically modified food is entering our diet	Nottingham, Stephen
Genescapes: the ecology of genetic engineering	Nottingham, Stephen
Grizzly years	Peacock, Doug
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance	Pirsig, Robert
The Wild Trees	Preston, Richard
Food, inc.: Mendel to Monsanto-the promises and perils of the biotech harvest	Pringle, Peter
Ishmael	Quinn, Daniel
Making PCR : a story of biotechnology	Rabinow, Paul
Not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution	Richerson, Peter J.
Genome: autobiography of a species in 23 chapters	Ridley, Matt
Nature via nurture: genes, experience, and what makes us human	Ridley, Matt
Origin of virtue	Ridley, Matt
Red queen	Ridley, Matt
Hominids	Sawyer, J.
Sex, time, and power: how women's sexuality shaped human evolution	Shlain, Leonard
Adam's curse: a future without men	Sykes, Bryan
The seven daughters of eve	Sykes, Bryan
The double helix	Watson, James
Nature wars: people vs. pests	Winston, Mark L
Travels in the genetically modified zone	Winston, Mark L.
Rattling the cage: toward legal rights for animals	Wise, Steven M.
The moral animal: evolutionary psychology and everyday life	Wright, Robert

(If you would like to use a book not listed, check with Stuart)

Most of these titles are available from the UT library.