FACULT COMMENTS SOUGHT ON FRESHMAN TEXT FOR FALL 2002

(With apologies for the short notice… the contact for your comments and responses,
or for further information, is [log in to unmask])

For the past two years, part of the Baruch College Freshman Year Experience has
included the reading of a freshman text with the author invited to serve as keynote
speaker at the fall Convocation.  This year's selection committee has come up with a
short list of the following 5 texts for your consideration.

We welcome comments on these selections in our effort to pick the book for Fall
2002.  Please send us your feedback before  noon on Tuesday March 12.

Please keep in mind that the book chosen will be integrated into the curriculum of as
many classes as possible: therefore, we have sought texts that are not only
dynamic, interesting, and seemingly relevant, but also that lend themselves to the
widest possible range of discussion.  Note also that there are two novels on the list.
We have not in the prior two years assigned a novel, but that does not eliminate
novels from consideration.

Suggested Freshman Text Titles (summaries "borrowed" from www.bn.com):

A Beautiful Mind

In this biography, Sylvia Nasar recreates the life of a mathematical genius whose
brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of
devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel
Prize. A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his
lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he
encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and a host of other mathematical
luminaries. At 21, the handsome, ambitious, eccentric graduate student invented
what would become the most influential theory of rational human behavior in
modern social science. Nash's contribution to game theory would ultimately
revolutionize the field of economics. At 30, Nash was poised to take his dreamed-of
place in the pantheon of history's greatest mathematicians. Then Nash suffered a
catastrophic mental breakdown. Nasar details Nash's harrowing descent into
insanity - his bizarre delusions that he was the Prince of Peace; his resignation from
MIT, flight to Europe, and attempt to renounce his American citizenship; his
repeated hospitalizations, from the storied McLean, where he came to know the
poet Robert Lowell, to the crowded wards of a state hospital; his "enforced
interludes of rationality" during which he was able to return briefly to mathematical
research. At age 66, twin miracles - a spontaneous remission of his illness and the
sudden decision of the Nobel Prize committee to honor his contributions to game
theory - restored the world to him. Nasar recounts the bitter behind-the-scenes
battle in Stockholm over whether to grant the ultimate honor in science to a man
thought to be "mad." She describes Nash's current ambition to pursue new
mathematical breakthroughs and his efforts to be a loving father to his adult son.

Black, White, and Jewish

Hailed as "compelling" by The Washington Post and "stunningly honest" by The San
Francisco Chronicle, this memoir has hit bestseller lists and earned critical praise
from coast to coast.

Rebecca Walker was born in 1969 to author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal,
who met and married in the heyday of the Civil Rights movement. But after their
divorce, Rebecca was a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds-and trying to
figure out where she fit in.

Author Biography: Rebecca Walker was educated at Yale and has appeared in
numerous anthologies and periodicals including The New York Times Magazine,
Vibe, and Spin. She is the founder of the national nonprofit organization, Third Wave
Direct Action Corporation.

Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence

Beneath the histories of religious traditions—from biblical wars to crusading ventures
and great acts of martyrdom—violence has lurked as a shadowy presence. Images
of death have never been far from the heart of religion's power to stir the
imagination. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Mark Juergensmeyer asks one
of the most important and perplexing questions of our age: Why do religious people
commit violent acts in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and
terrorizing entire populations?

This, the first comparative study of religious terrorism, explores incidents such as
the World Trade Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway
nerve gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United States.
Incorporating personal interviews with World Trade Center bomber Mahmud
Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and
Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others,
Juergensmeyer takes us into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support
violent acts. In the process, he helps us understand why these acts are often
associated with religious causes and why they occur with such frequency at this
moment in history.

Terror in the Mind of God places these acts of violence in the context of global
political and social changes, and posits them as attempts to empower the cultures of
violence that support them. Juergensmeyer analyzes the economic, ideological, and
gender-related dimensions of cultures that embrace a central sacred
concept—cosmic war—and that employ religion to demonize their enemies.
Juergensmeyer's narrative is engaging, incisive, and sweeping in scope. He
convincingly shows that while, in many cases, religion supplies not only the ideology
but also the motivation and organizational structure for the perpetrators of violent
acts, it also carries with it the possibilities for
peace.

John Henry Days

"In John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead transforms the simple ballad into a
contrapuntal masterpiece. The narrative revolves around the story of J. Sutter, a
young black journalist. Sutter is a "junketeer," a freeloading hack who roams from
one publicity event to another, abusing his expense account and mooching as much
as possible. It is 1996, and an assignment for a travel Web site takes Sutter to West
Virginia for the first annual "John Henry Days" festival, a celebration of a new U.S.
postal stamp honoring John Henry. And there the real story of John Henry emerges
in graceful counterpoint to Sutter's thoroughly modern adventure." "As he explores
the parallels between the lives of these two black men, and between the Industrial
Age, which literally killed John Henry, and the Digital Age, which is destroying J.
Sutter's soul, Whitehead adds multiple dimensions to the myth of the steel-driving
man. And he traces the evolution of the famous ballad over the past
century."--BOOK JACKET.

Native Speaker

This novel "deals with the imprint the immigrant experience in America makes on a
person's psyche. Lee tells the story in the voice of Henry Park, a second-generation
Korean who works as a privately employed spy and at home deals with a shaky
marriage and the death of his young son. Assigned to get close to an
up-and-coming Korean American politician, Park suddenly discovers he must do
things he has tried to avoid all his life--face up to his roots, evaluate his loyalties, find
his voice, and understand the pain he carries deep within." (Booklist)