Summer reading 2015-2016
If you are entering AP Literature and Composition, please refer to the AP list.
If you are entering 12th grade REGULAR LEVEL English, we expect you to have read Americana by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Take notes on characterization, point of view, setting, and thematic development as you read and be prepared for assessments in the first week of school. This text will be used in conjunction with another text for research in the fall.
ENGLISH 12 HONORS
English 12 Honors students will read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (fiction), as well as ONE non-fiction book from this list. Students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding of their reading in an essay the first week of school.
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
Huxley presents his vision of the future in the astonishing 1931 novel Brave New World -- a world of tomorrow in which capitalist civilization has been reconstituted through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, where the people are genetically designed to be passive, consistently useful to the ruling class. Aldous Huxley, a poet, novelist and philosopher, is rightly considered a prophetic genius and one of the most important literary and philosophical voices of the 20th Century, and Brave New World is his masterpiece.
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Michael Pollan The Omnivore’s Dilemma
A New York Times bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us—whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.
Rebecca Skloot The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poorblack tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more.Henrietta's cellshave been bought and sold by the billions, yetshe remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Alan Weismann Starting Over
In this non-fiction eco-thriller Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species — ourselves — were suddenly and completely wiped out. Writers from Rachel Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent re-wilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one.
John McPhee The Control of Nature
In a period belatedly eager to befriend Mother Nature, America's most distinguished nature writer has chosen to write about those who defy her. "Atchafalaya," the first of his book's three long essays, all originally published in The New Yorker, deals with the attempt of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to control the channel of the Mississippi River. "Cooling the Lava," the second essay, tells how Iceland's National Emergency Operation Center saved a fishing village from an erupting volcano. "Los Angeles Against the Mountains," the third, pits the Los Angeles Flood Control District against "debris flows" in the San Gabriel Mountains. Each of the three puts a different subset of John McPhee's formidable gifts on display.
Erik Larsen Devil in the White City
The bestselling author of Isaac's Storm returns with a gripping tale about two men -- one a creative genius, the other a mass murderer -- who turned the 1893 Chicago World's Fair into their playground. Set against the dazzle of a dream city whose technological marvels presaged the coming century, this real-life drama of good and evil unfolds with all the narrative tension of a fictional thriller.
John Berendt Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981.Was it murder or self-defense?For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares.John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction.Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
William Langewiesche American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center
A comprehensive look at the inner workings of the World Trade Center cleanup effort. In contrast to many journalists' depictions of the cleanup as essentially a mournful and tragic task, in Langewiesche's telling it also represents a shining moment for America—an example of American ingenuity at work, as engineers, city workers, construction workers, doctors, firefighters, police, and others threw themselves into the chaotic but productive effort of helping their country recover from a serious blow.
C. J. Chivers The Gun
In a searing examination of modern conflict and official folly, C. J. Chivers mixes meticulous historical research, investigative reporting, and battlefield reportage to illuminate the origins of the world’s most abundant firearm and the consequences of its spread. The result, a tour de force of history and storytelling, sweeps through the miniaturization and distribution of automatic firepower, and puts an iconic object in fuller context than ever before. “The Gun” is in many ways a history of modern warfare told through the story of how automatic arms, which at first were large, complex and expensive, were reduced in size and complexity and made available to most any man.