__________________________________
William Maxwell
So Long, See You Tomorrow is a short and stunning novel. Its soul is empathy and humility
in the face of life’s challenges and injustices. Maxwell has achieved all that an ethnographer
could dream of. The work is a profound apology — born of social understanding and what’s more, an
account of rural Illinois.
Nancy Abelmann
Anthropology, Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures
__________________________________
Kent Haruf
This is a wonderful book that I shared with many of the important people in my life.
Aaron S. Benjamin
Psychology
__________________________________
Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun
Bob Ward
This is a fascinating book about a fascinating man. Wernher Von Braun is certainly among the
most brilliant and influential people ever lived, ‘a dreamer pursuing visions, and at the same time
a creative genius.’ Without his mind a man would have never walked on the Moon. The book of Bob
Ward is a fine historical read. Now when the interest to space exploration seems to diminish, this
book is very timely and might inspire new amazing achievements.
Alexey Bezryadin
Physics
__________________________________
Now I can Die in Peace
Bill Simmons
This is a book about the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 (first time in over 80
years). As a third generation Red Sox Fan, this is a book about hope and redemption. This book
should be read by all Assistant Professors around their 4th year.
Jeffrey Brawn
Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and Animal Biology
__________________________________
Selection in Cladocera on the Basis of a Physiological Character
Arthur Mangun Banta
This was the first book that I read about my topic in graduate school. Even though the book was
published in 1921, much of Banta’s work remains relevant to current questions.
Carla Caceres
Animal Biology
__________________________________
The Origins of Order
Stuart A. Kauffman
The origins and consequences of order are imprinted in our biological world. In his book, Stuart
Kauffmann recognizes that order not only stems from Darwinian evolution but from constraints
embedded in the biological system itself. Ideas and arguments are provocative and illuminating.
Gustavo Caetano-Anolles
Crop Sciences
__________________________________
The Theory of Corporate Finance
Jean Tirole
Because it is illuminating and insigtful for those willing to take their first steps in the
knowledge of finance as a science.
Murillo Campello
Finance
__________________________________
Molecular Genetics of Bacteria (2nd Edition)
Larry Snyder and Wendy Champness
This is a very well-written book, and it discusses many important topics that fascinated me as a
student. I would therefore like this book to be available to young students of Molecular and
Cellular Biology.
Isaac Cann
Animal Sciences/ Microbiology
__________________________________
Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If Kurt Vonnegut were a scientist, he would have made one break through after another. His
abundant creative juice is any scientist’s envy, and this is the main reason why I picked one of
his books. Like many of his novels, Cat’s Cradle has its cadre of bizarre but all-to-human
characters. The central figure is the weird scientist Dr. Felix Hoenikker, who inadvertently
created a material “ice-9” that’s more destructive than the atomic bomb. Ice-9 is water that
freezes at ambient temperatures. It was intended to save soldiers stuck in the mud; adding ice-9 to
the mud will freeze it at ambient temperature so the soldiers can pull themselves out. But the
freezing, once started was unstoppable because it spread to all organisms as they are full of
water. It is modern science gone awry – it promised human progress but only quickened the end of
life. Food for thought for all us science types.
Chi-Hing Christina Cheng
Animal Biology
__________________________________
Breeding for Quantitative Traits in Plants
Rex Bernardo
I conduct plant breeding research and I selected this book because it gives an excellent review
of modern plant breeding methods.
Brian Diers
Crop Sciences
__________________________________
Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (2nd Edition)
Raymond Williams
The book is a minor classic in the field of cultural studies by its once most prominant advocate
and petitioner (Williams died in 1989) and the book was critical to writing my doctorate. While
some entries are now dated, it remains useful. It is a gem.
Paul Duncum
School of Art & Design
__________________________________
Alfred Brendeal (in conversation with Martin Meyer)
Alfred Brendel, an exceptionally educated musician, interested in literature, art, architecture,
theater and film, has inspired my music-making for many years, through his ideas and performances.
In this conversation with Martin Meyer, Brendel reveals his thinking on a wide variety of musical
topics, from the practical to the philosophical.
Timothy Ehlen
Music, Piano Performance
__________________________________
Kansas City, Missouri: An Architectural History, 1826-1990
George Ehrlich
This book was written by my father, who taught art history at the University of Missouri-Kansas
City and who earned three degrees from the U of I. If possible, I would like the copy of his book
on reserve in the architecture library to be bookplated, since he spent a great deal of time in
that building as a student.
Matthew C. Ehrlich
Journalism
__________________________________
Facilitating Learning Organizations: Making Learning Count
Victoria J. Marsick and Karen E. Watkins
Karen E. Watkins and Victoria J. Marsick have been very supportive of and influential in my
development as a scholar within the field of human resource development. Their earlier work on
learning organizations stimulated my own research agenda, which has become a lifelong passion
around the theme of better understanding how managers and leaders facilitate learning and create
contexts for learning. This book is very special to me because it further unites the three of us
and our research on the learning organization.
Andrea D. Ellinger
Human Resource Education
__________________________________
Noli Me Tangere
Jose Rizal
This sequel, affectionately called
The Noli in the Philippines, along with its sequel,
El Filibusterismo (Subversion), are among my favorite books. It is the quintessential
story of the colonial exile who returns home to one’s native land after a sojourn in the “Mother
Country” only to find disappointment and tragedy. But in spite of this, the underlying message is
that of hope and courage. It is still the story of so many Filipinos around the world, and perhaps
a good many other people as well, exiles hovering like ghosts — searching for home. Herein are all
the passions and the dangerousness of these specters.
Augusto Espiritu
History
__________________________________
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
Catherine Clinton
This inspirational biography serves as a reminder of what is true courage for those of us lucky
enough to have “arrived.” It means helping others even at the risk of losing everything we have
fought to attain.
Margareth Etienne
Law
__________________________________
Micromotives and Macrobehavior
Thomas C. Shelling
Schelling uses examples drawn from everyday life to illustrate the dynamics of interdependent
choices. This book prompted me to think in new ways about how rules and institutions structure
human decisionmaking.
Lee Fennell
College of Law
__________________________________
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner
My own research is far removed in subject and quality from Faulkner’s majestic work.
Nevertheless I greatly admire his appreciation of the elusive nature of truth and our struggle to
reconstruct some part of it through the scant evidence available to us.
Brian Fields
Astronomy
__________________________________
Developing Cross-Cultural Competence: A guide for working with children and their families
(3rd edition)
Eleanor Lynch and Marci Hanson (Editors)
This book has greatly influenced my work around the topic of understanding the influence of
culture on the services designed and provided for young children with disabilities and their
families. Every time I am asked to recommend a main source on the topic of cultural and linguistic
diversity in early childhood special education, this is the first one that come to mind. This book
reminds us that as much as we are different from each other, we are very similar in many ways.
Rosa Milagros Santos Gilbertz
Special Education
__________________________________
Under the Frog
Tibor Fischer
This is the most subtle, most humane and yet most humorous fictional account of lived experience
under communism. It really brings home to the reader what it meant to live with the contradictions
of the state socialist regime in Hungary, provides rich and empathetic portraits of everyday
people. It is the story of a young man in 1950s Hungary, including the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
You will laugh out loud most of the time, and there will be one time when you weep. The linguistic
innovation is also amazing; does justice to Hungarian (though it was written in English) even in
its title: Under the Frog.
Zsuzsa Gille
Sociology
__________________________________
¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings
by Emilie Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith
This book was published during my first year as a Ph.D. student in Spanish, and I was utterly
mesmerized by it. Despite its size (and concomitant weight), I carried it around with me for weeks,
reading and re-reading sections any time I had a moment of free time. In its pages, I found
thoughtful and provocative discussions of the issues that were at the center of my intellectual
concerns and–above all–examples of the type of scholarship I wanted to produce.
Dara E. Goldman
Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
__________________________________
Downcast Eyes: the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought
Martin Jay
This book served as a fundamental bibliography on the field of visual studies as I wrote my
dissertation and first book on optics in French literature. I think I consulted it weekly, each
time finding new references to follow up on or new reflections on the visual metaphorics that
undergird Western thought.
Andrea Goulet
French
__________________________________
The Road to Serfdom
Friedrich August von Hayek
Mr. Hayek’s book remains the clearest articulation of why intelligent people who think seriously
about economics and the human condition don’t fall for socialism. I hope students continue to find
solace in his frank and civil arguments for liberal capitalism against the distorted and often
angry cynicism of their professors.
Eric C. Graf
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
__________________________________
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Daniel Boorstin
When I first thought about working in media I need a 50,000 view of media’s effect on our
society. This book stood out from all the others I studied. Boorstin, a historian, set out to
understand the effect of media on the American way of life. In this wide ranging book he probes how
the image created in media affects newspaper, expectation of travel, and news. The savvy insights
throughout the book still resonate today. Over four decades ago he described pertinent features of
today’s American culture: The rise of advertising, the replacement of Celebrity that now dominates
our culture, and the pseudo-event – a term he coined – that forms the basis of our political
discourse. I found, and still find, this book instructive to thinking deeply about media.
William S. Hammack
Chemical Engineering
__________________________________
The Glass Bead Game
Hermann Hesse
The author writes: “At other times you seemed to me either pitiable or contemptible, eunuchs,
artificially confined to an eternal childhood, childlike and childish in your cool, tightly fenced,
neatly tidied playground and kindergarten, where every nose is carefully wiped and every
troublesome emotion is soothed, every dangerous thought repressed, where everyone plays nice, safe,
bloodless games for a lifetime and every jagged stirring of life, every strong feeling, every
genuine passion, every rapture is promptly checked, deflected and neutralized by meditation
therapy.”
Fortunately, this is about the life of the players of the glass bead game and not on
university life. Still, this book provides some interesting discussion on the ultimate question of
“life, the universe and everything else.” You might find it useful.
Sariel Har-Peled
Computer Science
__________________________________
The Ultimate Klezmer
Joshua Horowitz
This book of Klezmer tunes reflects my ‘other’ life, music, which nourishes my intellectual
life. Josh Horowitz, one of my excellent mentors from KlezKamp, reissued and reinvigorated this
extensive collection from the standard East European Jewish repertoire as it existed in the first
two decades of the 20th Century.
Frances Jacobson Harris
University Library
__________________________________
Pranks!
V. Vale
Pranks! embodies the spirit of grassroots resistance through art. It uses interviews with
countercultural icons to illustrate the theory behind pranks, which if properly executed
temporarily challenge and reveal the status quo. True pranks are harmless, unless their victims
consider the experience of seeing things from a new perspective to be harmful. I found the
creativity and spirit captured in this book exhilarating. It is subversive in all the right
ways.
Kristen Harrison
Speech Communication
__________________________________
Solid Shape
Jan Koenderink
I’ve been trying to buy the book for a while now, but it is currently out of print, even though
the published (MIT Press) still lists it as available. If the library has an extra copy, I won’t
feel so guilty keeping it continually renewed while I continue to try to understand what it
describes. Perhaps we could convince the author to make it available for free online (similar to
Steve LaValle’s
Planning Agorithms or Allen Hatcher’s
Algebraic Topology) or at least make it available as an e-book.
John C. Hart
Computer Science
__________________________________
Close Reading: The Reader
Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois, eds
.
Close reading is the foundation of literary studies in the broadest sense and an indispensable
skill for any reflective, independent reader. This volume demonstrates the wide range of critical
approaches to literature that have relied on close reading over the course of the twentieth century
and beyond.
Waïl S. Hassan
Comparative and World Literature
__________________________________
Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown vs. Board of
Education
Danielle Allen
Danielle Allen’s
Talking to Strangers is my ‘go-to’ book because it makes a powerful argument for the
usefulness of rhetoric as a flexible, responsive tool for creating productive habits of
citizenship. I admire Allen’s rigorous interdisciplinary approach as much as I agree with her
unflinching insistence that universities must become model citizens.
Debra Hawhee
English and Speech Communications
__________________________________
Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis
Emanuel A. Schegloff
Emanuel A. Schegloff is a founder and major architect of my field, Conversation Analysis. I have
learned (and am still learning) so much from not only his published work, but also from his
personal teaching. This book presents the essence of his groundbreaking work in the last 40
years.
Makoto Hayashi
East Asian Languages and Cultures
__________________________________
The Biology of Cancer
Robert A. Weinberg
This is a forward-looking book that summarizes the latest in cancer biology.
Paul J. Hergenrother
Chemistry
__________________________________
Psychology and Athletics: A General Survey for Athletes and Coaches
Coleman R. Griffith
This book represents the very beginnings of kinesiological psychology. Coleman Griffith was a
pioneer in both basic and applied aspects of sport and exercise psychology. In addition, he created
the first laboratory in the United States (and the second in the world) dedicated to this topic.
Importantly, the mission of his laboratory, which was located here at the University of Illinois in
Huff Hall, was to examine “problems in psychology and physiology of athletic activity quite
independent of any attempt to create bigger and better athletic teams.” Given Dr. Griffith’s impact
on the field of kinesiological psychology and the fact that he was professor, as well as a provost
at the University of Illinois, I felt that this book was a fitting selection. It represents the
history of the University and the field.
Charles H. Hillman
Kinesiology and Community Health
__________________________________
Die neue Fränkische Brauereikarte
Stefan Mack
Life is too short to drink bad beer.
Dirk Hundertmark
Mathematics
__________________________________
A Handbook on Low-Energy Buildings and District Energy Systems: Fundamentals, Techniques, and
Examples
L. D. Danny Harvey
This book is about the extraordinary opportunity to reduce our use of energy in buildings.
Buildings account for over one third of global fossil fuel use and associated greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions worldwide. It is important to recognize that unrestrained use of fossil fuels pose a
serious thread of eventual catastrophic climatic change. Reducing energy use by buildings is
therefore an essential part of any strategy to control the climate change and thereby minimize
future damage. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the potential to dramatically
reduce the energy use of new buildings compared to current conventional practice, and to
dramatically reduce the energy use of existing buildings through advanced renovations and
retrofits.
Atul Jain
Atmospheric Sciences
__________________________________
Faces of Africa: Thirty Years of Photography
Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher
Robin Jarrett
Human & Community Development and African American Studies and
Resources
__________________________________
Dynamic Fracture Mechanics
L. B. Freund
When I was an undergraduate student this book inspired me to pursue a Ph.D. in mechanics. It was
then my great fortune to have the author, a U of I alumnus, as my graduate advisor.
Harley Johnson
Mechanical Science & Engineering
__________________________________
The Open Society and It’s Enemies
Karl Popper
This book, first published in 1940s, provides a passionate defense of democracy that is
particularly relevant now, in the time when fear-mongering politics is riding high and the civil
liberties are under attack. The book greatly influenced my view of the world when I was a student
and I still admire this book today.
Ilya Kapovich
Mathematics
__________________________________
Perception and the Representative Design of Psychological Experiments
Egon Brunswik
This 1956 book reflects the life work of a brilliant cognitive psychologist who was many years
ahead of his time in proposing that psychology be grounded in Darwinian, biological and ecological
principles rather than the Newtonian, nomological principles that dominated the theory and method
of his day. As a result, Brunswik was highly marginalized, culminating in his suicide at the age of
52. My own recent book “Adaptive Perspectives on Human-Technology Interaction” (2006, Oxford U.
Press) resurrects Brunswik’s theory and method, using them to understand cognition in our largely
technological ecology. Reviewing my book, noted cognitive psychologist Robert Sternberg (Yale)
wrote that “Brunswik’s seminal ideas have not gotten the recognition they deserve, and this book
helps remind us all of how important they are” and HCI pioneer Stuart Card (Xerox PARC) wrote that
“Brunswik gets the last theoretical laugh in one of psychology’s oldest arguments.
Alex Kirlik
Human Factors and Beckman Institute
__________________________________
The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Karl Popper
It lays out the foundation of scientific thinking.
Praveen Kumar
Civil & Environmental Engineering
__________________________________
The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu
Maurice Joly
Written 142 years ago, the Maurice Joly’s masterpiece, with haunting precision, continues to
describe and explain political events of the modern times. Not for the weak-hearted.
Andrei Kuzminov
Microbiology
__________________________________
Stephen Jay Gould
“This book is a beautiful example of scholarship, covering wide areas of knowledge with grace
and precision.”
Steven R. Leigh
Anthropology
__________________________________
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson
Mitch Albom
This book is about youth and wisdom, life and death, having and giving, and holding on and
letting go. Morrie has led a simple yet meaningful life that inspires me to live mine to the
fullest. Morrie’s passion for human spirit surely will inspire many more generations to come.
Hong Li
School of Social Work
__________________________________
The Defense
Vladimir Nabokov
This book is by my famous contemporary writer from Russia, my native country. The book is about
a chess player, but I think many people who do other types of intellectual work — such as research
— will find themes in it that they can associate with.
Daniel Liberzon
Electrical and Computer Engineering
__________________________________
Essays: First Series
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was the first American author who opened up for me the linked intellectual problems of
writing and history. As a teenager, I carried a coverless copys of Emerson’s first series of
essays in my pocket for several years. As a professor, I teach those same essays to my students
almost every year and watch them make the same connections I once did. The lessons of Emerson’s
Self-Reliance (included in this volume) are well suited to the university: in it, Emerson
refuses to tell us what to think but instead encourages the reader to explore how to think. That
idea is at the core of both my teaching and my research.
Trish Loughran
English
__________________________________
An Invitation to 3D Vision: From Images to Geometric Models
Yi Ma, Stefano Soatto, Jana Kosecka, Shankar Sastry
This is a textbook that I finished writing during the first three years of my teaching here at
University of Illinois. This book is an embodiment of the excellent academic environment that the
university has to offer to foster the early career of a young faculty member. It is hard for me to
imagine that I would be able to accomplish the same at any other institute. For that, I will be
forever grateful.
Yi Ma
Electrical and Computer Engineering
__________________________________
Rights at Work : Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization
Michael W. McCann
Rights at Work has been inspiring and frustrating me ever since I read it in graduate school.
Inspiring because it’s theoretically innovative, empirically rich, and widely influential; it
changed the way scholars conceptualize the relationship between law and social movements.
Frustrating because every time I think I’ve come up with a penetrating new insight, I re-read this
book and find that McCann wrote about it first.
Anna-Maria Marshall
Sociology
__________________________________
Money and Power
Jacques Ellul
I selected this book for several reasons. First, Money and Power addresses a critical ethical
issue for many of us, namely how should we understand our money and the power it confers, at a time
when we enjoy unprecedented affluence and yet much of the world lives in or near poverty. Ellul
approaches the subject from his perspective as a Christian and a sociologist, and I find both his
analysis and his dialectical method challenging, satisfying, and frustrating all at the same time.
Second, this book represents an attempt to integrate scholarship and issues of faith, something
that is of interest to me. Third, Ellul was a prolific writer and our library contains many of his
books, yet the collection does not include Money and Power. This is a gap I would like to see
filled.
Paul E. McNamara
Agricultural and Consumer Economics
__________________________________
The Auotbiography of Bertrand Russell; 1872-1914
Bertrand Russell
The time period this book covers is a little old. Nevertheless, it had a big impact on me in my
high school years. The author describes a small gathering in Cambridge University called “the
Society”, where friends exchanged lively discussion on a wide range of topics like science, art,
philosophy and social issues. Unfortunately, I could not find such an opportunity as a college
student. Fortunately, after coming full circle, here I am, happily pursuing what inspired me when I
was a teenager.
Manabu Nakamura
Food Science and Human Nutrition
__________________________________
Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other
Contexts
Brenda Dixon-Gottschild
This is a groundbreaking book that has finally and explicitly articulated the influence of black
aesthetics upon American performance and its development. Gottshchild reads the physical language
of historical, and sometimes canonical dance pieces and identifies the Aftricanist elements often
hidden within the works. It is a very important text and will change the way one sees American
performance traditions.
M. Cynthia Oliver
Dance
__________________________________
Cases in Strategic-Systems Auditing: KPMG and University of Illinois at Urbana-Chanmpaign
Business Measurement Case Development and Research Program
Timothy B. Bell and I. Solomon
I selected this book because it represents arguably the best-ever collaborative instructional
effort by audit practitioners and audit scholars, and because Accountancy at UIUC provides much of
this book’s impetus and taproot.
Mark Peecher
Accountancy
__________________________________
Crónica de Una Muerte Anunciada
Gabriel García Márquez
This book has double significance for me: first, my wife, Minosca Alcántara, who introduce me to
this book and use it as reference of wisdom; and second, its elegant narration of the message that
certain events may be inevitable and usually the individuals affected by them are the last ones to
know.
Feniosky Pena-Mora
Civil and Environmental Engineering
__________________________________
The Phenomenology of Mind, 2 vols.
G.W.F. Hegel
This work represents to me the truest conceptualization of the structure of the mind and of
human reality in European philosophy. I read it sixteen years ago, and it transformed my thinking,
through its formulation of the mechanism of the human will and of the individual and collective
thought process through time. It is the most stimulating book I have ever read.
Janice T. Pilch
University Library
__________________________________
Mind Set. The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck
Because the mindsets that are the focus of the book have influenced both my research and my
life.
Eva Pomerantz
Psychology
__________________________________
Corn: Chemistry and Technology
Pamela J. White and L. A. Johnson
It represents an excellent collection of information on the corn kernel as related to processes
and products.
Kent Rausch
Agricultural and Biological Engineering
__________________________________
Homotopical Algebra
Daniel G. Quillen
This book has been important to much of my research in mathematics. I first studied it during my
second year of graduate school, and it was one of the things which led me to work in the area of
homotopy theory.
Charles Rezk
Mathematics
__________________________________
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
“I like it.”
Brent Roberts
Psychology
__________________________________
Nobody’s Business
Alan Berliner
Nobody’s Business is truly a ground-breaking documentary. It breaks down many of the conventions
of the traditional documentary, and has a visual richness and originality rarely seen in a personal
story such as this. This film can change the way one thinks about the possibilities of a
documentary.
Jay Rosenstein
Journalism
__________________________________
The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination
Jessica Benjamin
I came upon this book when I was a graduate student. It not only importantly shaped my thinking
about issues that matter to me as a historian of art, but also offered a powerful model of a
rigorous and passionate mind at work.
Lisa Rosenthal
Art History Program, School of Art and Design
__________________________________
Divided in Unity: The Reunification of the Berlin Police
Andreas Glaeser
This is a brilliant empirical investigation of the difficulties Germany encountered during
reunification, using the reunification of the German police as an illustration.
Jacqueline Ross
College of Law
__________________________________
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Feynman, Leighton and Sands
This three part series has influenced my understanding of the physical world in a profound way.
Every time I return to any page of the series, I find a piece of the world a little clearer than
before. It has served as a never ending source of pleasure.
Taher Saif
Mechanical Science and Engineering
__________________________________
Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior
Chris Elphick
“This guide merges my first research area, animal behavior, and my current interest, identifying
field guides. For someone who’s a librarian and a birdwatcher rather than a birder the Sibley guide
forms the perfect blend of enlightenment and entertainment.”
Diane Schmidt
Biology Library
__________________________________
Changes in the Land
William Cronon
As a graduate student in ecology I found Cronon’s history of the environment as influenced by
different forms of society and property to be incredibly exciting. It helped get me doing
interdisciplinary work on ecology and history.
Daniel Schneider
Urban and Regional Planning
__________________________________
Critique of Dialectical Reason
Jean-Paul Sartre
This book is often overlooked, but a major contribution to Social Theory–Sartre is my favorite
philosopher.
Bill Schroeder
Philosophy
__________________________________
The Harried Leisure Class
Steffan Burenstam Linder
This book examines one of the most pressing issues of our time. Economic growth has not resulted
in an abundance of free time, but in fact has produced a scarcity of time and more hectic
lifestyles. Linder wrote this book over 35 years ago, yet his arguments remain relevant today.
Kimberly J. Shinew
Recreation, Sport and Tourism
__________________________________
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
This now-classic book launched a revolutionary view of biology that focuses on the gene (and not
the organism or group of organisms) as the key level of natural selection. Whether you commend or
condemn the explicitly reductionist arguments of Dawkins’ book, its influence on modern biological
thought is undeniable.
Scott K. Silverman
Chemistry
__________________________________
Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology
Ulric Neisser
This book captured my imagination during graduate school and influenced my approach to
experimental psychology
Daniel Simons
Psychology
__________________________________
The Double Helix
James D. Watson
I chose this book because it had some influence on the choices I made after I had read it in my
second year in high school.
Slawomir Solecki
Mathematics
__________________________________
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century AD
Iravatham Mahadevan
I am fascinated by writing systems and I have a particular interest in the writing systems of
India.
Richard Sproat
Linguistics/ECE
__________________________________
The Power Elite
C. Wright Mills
I first read
The Power Elite while in graduate school and its staying power continues to amaze me. The
book was published half a century ago but its messge might ring even truer today.
Inger L. Stole
Institute for Communcations Research
__________________________________
Guns, Germs and Steele: The Fates of Human Society
Jared Diamond
Extracting important trends and featrues from history and data that span thousands of years and
essentially the entire globe, and then presenting it in the most lucid form that makes one think,
“how come I did not come up with this?”
Rizwan Uddin
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
__________________________________
Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
M. K. “Mahatma” Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi is among the most important thinkers in recent history. This autobiography also
has the potential to influence generations to come.
Nitin Vaidya
Electrical and Computer Engineering
__________________________________
La Placa del Diamant
Merce Rodoreda
It captures my catalan background and how women have to fight to preserve their values and
advance in society.
Ruth Aguilera Vaques
Business Administration (College of Business) & Institute of Labor and Industrial
Relations
__________________________________
Fundamentals of Wireless Communication
David Tse and Pramod Viswanath
Pramod Viswanath
Electrical and Computer Engineering
__________________________________
Inventing Black on Black Violence: Discourse, Space and Representation
David Wilson
David Wilson
Geography
__________________________________
Canaan
Geoffrey Hill
Hill writes strong, resistant, visionary poetry. Canaan is one of my favorites.
Gerard Wong
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
__________________________________
Fictional Realism in 20th-Centry China
David Der-Wei Wang
This book is by my teacher at Columbia University. The first book I read in graduate school, it
changed the way I think of China and Chinese literature.
Gary G. Xu
East Asian Languages and Cultures
__________________________________
Henriette Renié, Harpe Vivante (Henriette Renié, Living Harp)
Françoise des Varennes
The summer before I came here, two of my teachers visited the author in France. Upon return,
they presented me with an autographed book from the author wishing me success at Illinois as a
proponent of the Renié method. It’s been my honor to preserve and promote the Renié legacy
here.
Ann Yeung
Music
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Matrix Computations
Gene H. Golub and Charles F. Van Loan
Algorithms for matrix computations are indispensable tools for many problems in computer
graphics and vision.
Yizhou Yu
Computer Science
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This book changed my life by helping me set my priorities correctly and balance my career and my
family.
Yuanyuan Zhou
Computer Science
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Nanochemistry
Geoff Ozin and A. Arsenault
Progress in technology requires the development of new materials. The information age that we
live in would not be possible without the single crystal silicon. What is next? The book by Ozin
and Arsenault is an excellent introduction to the principle of chemical self-assembly, which has
the potential to bring us the next material for energy and environment.
Jian-Min Zuo
Materials Science and Engineering