Nonfiction for College Freshmen

The major project I assign in my Freshman Comp II course is a research project that begins with the students having to read a work of non-fiction each chooses from a list I give them. I try to keep things on the list that will shake them up a bit, make them question their basic assumptions (I live in a very conservative area and thus my students have come from conservative backgrounds), and that offer an argument based on evidence and reason rather than "values."

For many (most) students, this will be the first entire book they've read. (Yes, it's very upsetting.)

I update my list over Christmas break and am about to begin that process, so if anyone has read any stimulating, solid non-fiction in this last year and would like to make recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Oh, and thanks for starting this group meagansue. You beat me to it!

It's been a couple years since I read it, so consider this a hesitant recommendation-- Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. It's got an environmental theme at its core, but it's also a memoir of the author's childhood in rural Georgia (hence, the "cracker"). I remember really enjoying it when i read it.

Ok, these don't exactly fall into the category of consciousness raising, but I've used chapters from the list of books that follows with students and they have reacted in interesting ways to them. One thing they all have in common is that they all present research in interesting ways. I have a MLS - right now I'm a comp-rhet dissertator - so finding ways to talk about how writers integrate research into interesting writing is important to my teaching. So here they are:

Other People's Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy by Victoria Purcell-Gates - this is a case study of an urban Appalachian mother and her son who are completely illiterate and their path towards literacy. It does shed light on part of the population that doesn't always get much attention.

CandyFreak: A journey through the chocolate underbelly of America by Steve Almond. An obsessive look at regional candy companies across the country, along with commentary about the impact of large corporations (i.e. Hershey, Nestle) on the diverse array of candy options (and on the owners of the small companies). It also contains moments of rhapsodization that borders on candy erotica.

Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach - just what does happen to bodies donated to science....

Bloodland: A Family Story of Oil, Greed and Murder on the Osage Reservation by Dennis McAuliffee Jr. - really, worth it for the smack-down on Little House on the Praire.

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford - of course, the danger here is that they will watch the movie instead....

Rats: observations... by Robert Sullivan - yeah, it's about setting up camp in an ally and watching the rats, but it is also about the socio-economic factors of when rats are a problem (when the newspapers announce that a baby on Park Avenue was bitten). Sullivan talks to the homeless - one in particular seems to know the rats' habits quite well. Also, 9/11 happened during his "observation period", so the effects of the event are incorporated towards the end of the book.

Hmmm, there is more social commentary in there than I thought. Of course, you can probably imagine what my students think about me when they see selections from these texts.

I'm a big fan of Steven Johnson's work:

• Mind Wide Open is great in the way that it challenges the primacy of consciousness. It is a reminder that we are all somewhat biologically conflicted.


• Everything Bad is Good for You is also very good and really readable. It would work well if you were doing an argumentative paper on the "value" of popular culture.

I've also had some success working from Rebekah Nathan's My Freshman Year. This could work well if your were having them "study" university culture.

How about Freakonomics? That shook up a lot of preconceived notions.