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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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Thorie analytique des probabilits
Pierre Simon Laplace
In this book, dedicated to Napolean, Laplace explains how to deal with uncertainty in a very intuitive way using probability as a degree of belief.
Ali Abbas
Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick
Curriculum & Instruction
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Functional Biochemistry in Health and Disease
E. A. Newsholme and A. R. Leech
This book integrates metabolism, nutrition, and physiology in a unifying perspective that was an essential component of my graduate training and is a resource I still value.
Joseph Beverly
Animal Sciences
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The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters has continued to speak directly to my desire, which emerged when I was still relatively young, to better understand the choices I make in life. In this allegorical tale, Lewis brilliantly exposes the subtle lies and veiled temptations that can tilt our decision-making, and ultimately, the way we live our lives. Now older, I still appreciate the wonderfully humorous and, at the same time, deadly serious manner in which Lewis exposes the spiritual warfare that lurks just below the surface for many of us.
Steven R. Blanke
Microbiology
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Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class
Herbert G. Gutman
Power and Culture focused on the daily lived experiences of working class people and Gutman’s “bottom up” perspective on American life transformed not only how I thought about my own class identity but also inspired me to a career in labor education.
Robert Bruno
School of Labor & Employment Relations
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The Wayfinders
Wade Davis
This is a remarkable book that highlights the intersection between culture and health. An anthropologist and gifted writer, Davis discusses the importance of keeping cultural knowledge alive, and holds us responsible for preserving and honoring all the cultures that have come before us to keep our planet from ultimate self-destruction.
Lydia Pearl Buki
Kinesiology & Community Health
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Les ivoires gothiques francais
Raymound Koechlin
Raymound Koechlin’s two-volume set is the seminal work on French Gothic carved ivories and point of departure for all scholarly work on these exquisite and intriguing objects, cataloguing almost 1500 items along with plates. This book not only inspired my research but having it here at the Library made my research possible.
Paula Mae Carns
University Library
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Math Made Visual: Creating Images for Understanding Mathematics
Claudi Alsina and Roger B. Nelson
Political Science research has become increasingly quantitative. My appreciation for mathematical beauty has likewise increased thanks to books like this and my inspiring and mathematical sons.
Wendy K. Tam Cho
Political Science
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Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics
Gaskell, Gareth editor
It’s a comprehensive review of basically all aspects of the field and valuable to scholars and students in many departments across campus. And we don’t have it in the library yet, as far as I know.
Kiel Christianson
Educational Psychology
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Cell-Based Biosensors
Ping Wang
Development of biosensors that can quantify how cells respond to surfaces, chemicals, and changes to their environment is resulting in new tools for life science research involving stem cells, cancer, wound healing, and many others.
Brian Cunningham
ECE & Bioengineering
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Dynamic Modeling
Bruce Hannon, D.H. Meadows, Matthias Ruth
Bruce Hannon has been an important part of my academic career. A great inspiration and mentor. This book is his first in his series on dynamic modeling books.
Brian Deal
Urban & Regional Planning
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Inconvenient Heritage: Erasure and Global Tourism in Luang Prabang
Lynne M. Dearborn & John C. Stallmeyer
This is the first book that I wrote and published. The experience from the beginning of the book’s research to the final publication was really fun but also brought a profound sense of accomplishment and inspiration. I am extremely proud of this accomplishment.
Lynne M. Dearborn
Architecture
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Still Failing at Fairness: How Gender Bias Cheats Girls and Boys in School and What We Can Do About It
David Sadker and Karen R. Zittleman
Elizabeth Delacruz
Art & Design
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Finite Element Analysis
Barna Szab and Ivo Babuka
Finite element methods are used today in virtually all branches of engineering and sciences. These methods are at the core of my research and the book by Barna Szabo and Ivo Babuska has taught me a great deal about this fascinating subject. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how and why these methods work, as well as their current limitations.
C. Armando Duarte
Civil & Environmental Engineering
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Sam and the Firefly
P. D. Eastman
This was the first book that I read to my mother as a young child. It inspired a lifelong love of reading and learning. I enjoy nothing more than reading this book with my young son now.
W. Brooke Elliott
Accountancy
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Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
This landmark book linking human welfare to the environment provided foundational support for many of our environmental laws. On a personal level, this book crystallized the need for progressive thinking and advocacy on behalf of the environment and the need to critically assess the potential consequences of innovation.
Bryan Endres
Agricultural & Consumer Economics
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Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas
Robert Farris Thompson
Professor Thompson’s historical and material culture studies of particular African cultures and their diasporic movements and developments over time had a profound impact on the ways I conceptualize my research in African diaspora studies.
Christopher Fennell
Anthropology
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The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo
Irving Stone
This book is about the struggle of creation and the story of the Italian Renaissance in all its glory. Creativity is not an easy process. I was truly impressed.
Corina Roxana Girju
Linguistics
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Voices of World War II
Gene Scheer
I admire Mr. Scheer’s settings of the veterans’ accounts of World War II for its wide range of characters and motivations, and for their vivid musicality. I was honored to be able to arrange them for orchestra.
Julie Gunn
Music
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Driftless
David Rhodes
Driftless is a novel based on the idea that the totality of a person’s character is defined by each family member, friend and acquaintance. David Rhodes, my first cousin, has the ability to clearly articulate complex issues of individuality, while indirectly weaving many of our own family stories into his beautifully considered passages.
Gerald Guthrie
Art & Design
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The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
This collection of essays continues to be a revelation for me, providing an important social criticism of and for race and democracy in America. It is particularly rich for me personally as a statement of the significance of music in Black and American culture.
Dana Hall
Music
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The World As Design
Aicher, Otl
Otl Aicher ‘looks through the stupidities of fashion and vanity’ in architecture. As a founding member of the post-war BAUHAUS in Neu-Ulm, Germany, he took the priority of practical work in the education of architects at universities for granted and was heavily against uncritical faith in academic theory with its ‘inflated tendency to analysis and increasing impotence in terms of doing.’ (Wolfgang Jean Stock). This is a seminal work which ought to be the first book read in architecture education.
Ralph Hammann
Architecture
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History of Madness
Michel Foucault
The first book by one of the most influential historians of the last fifty years, and by an author the breadth of whose writing has had a major (perhaps the most) impact on my own research. I admire this book because it introduces questions that drove many of Foucault’s later projects, and for its clever account of the birth of liberalism.
James Hay
Media & Cinema Studies
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Village in the Vaucluse (3rd ed)
Laurence Wylie
I’ve been an ardent Francophile since 1970. This book has given me an insight into French culture and mores that I could not otherwise have obtained.
Dennis Helmrich
Music
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Principles of Anticancer Drug Development
Manuel Hidalgo (Editor), S. Gail Eckhardt (Editor), Neil J. Clendeninn (Editor), Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer (Editor)
This book will be an asset to all those interested in anticancer drug discovery. Its publication nicely coincides with the dawning age of personalized medicine.
Paul Hergenrother
Chemistry
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The Mind Has No Sex?: Women in the Origins of Modern Science
Londa Schiebinger
Londa Schiebinger’s work has been influential on my thinking about gender in eighteenth-century culture and literature. The Mind Has No Sex? in particular has allowed me to see the permeability between literary and medical discourses on gender. I not only refer to this book in my research but also assign it regularly in my classes.
Stephanie Hilger
Program in Comparative & World Literature, and Germanic Languages & Literatures
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Anne Sexton: A Biography
Diane Wood Middlebrook
I have been greatly inspired by the life and work of Anne Sexton. In 2005, shortly after the birth of my first daughter, I choreographed a piece entitled Game Point. This solo is performed to a recording of Anne Sexton reading three of her most iconic poems: Her Kind, Ambition Bird, and Music Swims Back to Me. Sexton’s poetry has taught me much about the details of rhythm and how to conjure strange beauty. And most importantly, she has deepened my appreciation for the power of art-making to revive.
Sara Hook
Dance
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All Points North
Simon Armitage
For all those people at the University of Illinois who think it is just me that is odd, I recommend this book. It is an amusing exploration of the customs and culture of the North of England, where I am from. Armitage is mostly a poet, so it is worth reading his poetry also if you like this. Growing up in this unusual place, I don’t think it is surprising that I turned out like I did.
Matthew Hudson
Crop Sciences
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Biodiversity and Sustainable Development
Edited by R.N. Pati and Atul K. Jain
This book covers different dimensions of climate change scientifically examined by renouned scientists of the world. This volume can be utilized as resource document on climate change and biodiversity conservation by policymakers, environmentalists, researchers and corporate actors.
Atul Jain
Atmospheric Sciences
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Philosophy and Social Hope
Richard Rorty
Rorty was a wonderful writer: compassionate, generous, witty. He always makes me feel less lonely, even when I disagree with him.
Eric Johnson
Law
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Wind, Sand and Stars
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
This book reminds me of my high school years – the craving and adventure of discovering ideas for the first time and of my English teacher, Dr. Graham who has been a role model and inspiration. ‘Here I possessed nothing in the world. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breathing. And yet, I discovered myself filled with dreams.’ – Antoine de Saint Exupry
Kyratso (Karrie) Karahalios
Computer Science
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De la Republique des Turcs
Postel, Guillaume
This early account of the Ottoman Empire and Islam is a scholarly achievement in its own right by Guillaume Postel, an erudite polygraph and France’s first professor of Arabic and Hebrew. When I discovered that our Library had one of the two copies of the original edition available in the U.S., I immediately began working on the Rpublique, a project that is growing into a book-long study and will be, among other things, a tribute to the treasures of our Library.
Marcus Keller
French
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Symplectic Invariants and Hamiltonian Dynamics
Helmut Hofer and Eduard Zehnder
I carried this book around with me for almost a decade and probably still should. It contains nearly every idea at work in modern day symplectic topology, and links these developments beautifully to the origins of the field in classical mechanics.
Ely Kerman
Mathematics
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Opera Poetica
Eminescu, Mihai
Poetry has been very influential during my formative years albeit I ended up a mathematician. After all the years of scientific training, the poems in this volume still resonate deeply with a part of me which Eminescu seems to understand better than I do
Eduard-Wilhelm Kirr
Mathematics
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Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45
Joe William Trotter, Jr.
This is one of the most influential works published in the field of African American urban history, and a formative work on black working-class history. I first encountered this book as a graduate student, and I used it as a model for my own work. For anyone studying twentieth-century African American history, there is no getting around this book.
Clarence Lang
African American Studies and History
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Ten Lectures on Wavelets
Ingrid Daubechies
These ten lectures became classics in the field of applied harmonic analysis, summarizing the state of knowledge and pointing to unsolved problems for future research.
Richard Laugesen
Mathematics
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Three-Dimensional Geometry and Topology
Thurston, William P.
Thurston’s work is the cornerstone of modern low-dimensional geometry and topology. I have studied this unconventional textbook since graduate school, and it is a constant source of inspiration for me in my research.
Christopher Leininger
Mathematics
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The Mathematical and Physical Basis of Numerical Weather Prediction
Qing-Cun Zeng
This classic book neatly applies meteorology, fluid dynamics, and mathematics in building a comprehensive view of the fundatmental theories underlying numerical weather prediction. As a graduate student of the author, I was fascinated, challenged, trained, and long-lastingly benefited by the book’s complexity of mathematical deductions and numerical solutions.
Xin-Zhong Liang
Atmospheric Sciences
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Inattentional Blindness
Arien Mack and Irvin Rock
This book revealed to me the frailty of our senses and the over-reliance we people have in our introspection that what we see is really what is there.
Alejandro Lleras
Psychology
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What Charlie Heard
Mordecai Gerstein
What Charlie Heard offers a vivid and imaginative portrait of the American composer Charles Ives, about whom I have written extensively. This book is aimed at younger readers, and I hope that they will find this introduction to Ives illuminating and fun.
Gayle Magee
Music
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The Earth’s Ionosphere, Volume 96, Second Edition:
Plasma Physics & Electrodynamics
Michael C. Kelley
This is the second edition of the book written by my Ph.D. advisor. The first edition was my first introduction to ionospheric physics. Some of the work I performed as a graduate student is reflected in the material presented in this revised version.
Jonathan J. Makela
Electrical & Computer Engineering
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The Road Back to Paris
A. J. Liebling
Liebling is such a terrific, thoughtful writer that if he wrote a book about a brown shoe I’d buy it. Here he writes as a New Yorker correspondent about a part of WWII – the surrender of France, North Africa – that always gets short shrift in histories. It’s one those books that few people have heard of that is just remarkably good; as someone who appreciates solid writing, I keep it nearby and turn to it often.
Travis McDade
University Library
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Charles Darwin: A Biography
Volume 1: Voyaging; Volume 2: The Power of Place
Janet Browne
This is the finest biography of a scientist I know of in any language and a superb example of the narrative art of the historian.
Mark Micale
History
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Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce
Richard E. Caves
In this book, Professor Caves theorized and pioneered a new subfield-the economics of creative industries. This work adds to his amazing contributions to economics previously in industrial organization, international economics, and business strategy. With this choice, I honor my advisor, Richard Caves, a great scholar and a great man.
Steven C. Michael
Business Administration
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Academics work in an environment that is constantly undergoing change, and our ultimate success depends on our ability to communicate and work as a team. Because we all bring different talents to the table, we must develop an understanding of how to best use each of our specific skill sets to ensure we meet our stated mission(s).
Mark Mitchell
Veterinary Clinical Medicine
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Chromatin
Kensal E. van Holde
Research on chromatin structure and function now addresses topics not even considered in this book. However, this text remains a classic in the field because of the authoritative summary it offers of the progress and the outstanding problems in the field at that time, many of which have yet to be resolved.
Craig Mizzen
Cell & Developmental Biology
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Pieces de clavecin. Facsimile of the 1689 Paris Edition
Jean Henry d’Anglebert
Jean Henry’s DAngleberts Pices de clavecin is one of the most important publications of keyboard music in the seventeenth century. This is a beautiful manuscript, with lavish ornaments that create a lushness of sound in performance. As a harpsichordist, I cherish these pieces for their elegance, grandeur and nobility.
Charlotte Mattax Moersch
Music
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The Second Scroll
A. M. Klein
This was the first edition to which I had ever made anything resembling a scholarly contribution, and that hard-won, I felt at the time, by toil in the National Archives of Canada. It is also, and infinitely more importantly, a really good Canadian novel that deserves to be widely read.
Feisal Mohamed
English
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Skill and Poise
Raymond A. Dart
The work of Raymond Dart, especially as reflected in the Dart Procedures, developed by my Alexander Technique teachers Joan and Alex Murray, has been significant in the development of my own work. My teaching, research, and resultant book have centered on applying the Alexander Technique principles through the lens of the Dart Procedures in the training of dancers.
Rebecca Nettl-Fiol
Dance
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Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice, 2nd Edition
K. Terzaghi and R.B. Peck
This book was my first exposure to the art and science of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering, a field that quickly became my passion. A must read for all civil engineers.
Scott Olson
Civil & Environmental Engineering
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One, None and One Hundred Thousand
Luigi Pirandello
No name. No memory today of yesterdays name; of todays name, tomorrow. [Carving a name] is fitting for those who have concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life knows nothing of names I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow book or wind.
Daniela Puzzello
Economics
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The Rebel’s Silhouette: Selected Poems
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
This translation of Faiz’s poetry was my first foray into the political world of the subcontinent, and continues to be a source of comfort and inspiration.
Junaid Rana
Asian American Studies Program
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Conceptual Drawing Freehand Drawing & design Visualization for Design Professions
J. Koncelik and K.Reeder
This book was selected because of it plethera of contributers. Each person submitted work that fit the chapter as well as the outline for the book. The other reqson is that I am proud of how the book is repeated by its veiwers.
Kevin Reeder
Art & Design
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Cultures of the World Uruguay
Leslie Jermyn, Winnie Wong
I selected this book because it would showcase Uruguay to the readers in Illinois.
Sandra Rodriguez-Zas
Animal Sciences
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Deep Survival
Laurence Gonzales
It’s an accessible and engaging collection of research on the relationship between cognition and emotion. Its central lesson of bold humility is a deceptively complex notion that can be applied to any expedition intended to challenge boundaries in the lab, in the studio or in other remote and harsh landscapes.
Joel Ross
Art & Design
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Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth
M. K. Gandhi
In this book, Mahatma Gandhi presents his views, experiments, and struggle in his quest for Truth – not only to the truthfulness in word and deed, but also in thought. Even though I may not agree with all his methods of experimentation or conclusions he drew from them, his great resolve for the truth and his constant introspection of his thoughts, I find, very inspirational.
Srinivasa Salapaka
Mechanical Science & Engineering
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Middlemarch
George Eliot
Gratitude
Alex Shakar
English
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Equine Behavior: A Guide for Veterinarians and Equine Scientists
Edited by: Paul McGreevy, BVSc PhD MRCVS
From the first moment I touched a horse, at the ripe old age of four, there’s been nothing more beloved or magical in my world.
Wendy Allen Shelburne
University Library
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Ender’s game
Orson Scott Card
This book is one of the best science fiction stories ever told. Upon close reading, the story also offers lessons relevant to real-world dilemmas that have little relationship to science.
Scott K. Silverman
Chemistry
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Bones and Cartilage
Brian K Hall
My entire research ‘career’ has focused on the cell and molecular biology of cartilage and bone. Brian Hall’s book presents the subject of cartilage and bone biology in an entertaining evolutionary developmental context that bridges conventional ‘species’ and ‘pathology’ boundaries.
Matthew Stewart
Veterinary Clinical Medicine
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Differential Equations with Discontinuous Righthand Sides
A. F. Filippov
This is the book that inspired my PhD thesis work and since then continues to be a valuable reference for my most important work.
Dusan Stipanovic
Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering
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Mother Nature
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
S. B. Hrdy provides a richer understanding of female reproductive decisions from an evolutionary perspective and her work has enormously influenced my research. By selecting Mother Nature, I hope to honor diversity in female reproductive decisions and Hrdy for placing studies of women’s behavior and biology in evolutionary context.
Rebecca Stumpf
Anthropology
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The Feynman Lectures
Richard Feynman
A different way of looking at physical phenomena and a book that you can never finish reading! Every time you read it, you’ll find new subtleties and get inspired.
Emad Tajkhorshid
Pharmacology
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Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry
Louis Untermeyer
When I was small, my father read to me from this book of poetry. I loved the stories and characters in his favorite poems, as well as the intricate patterns of sound and imagery that revealed them. They showed me language as both meaningful and musical: the very foundation of literary artistry.
Renée R. Trilling
English
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Developing Sociological Knowledge
Bernard P. Cohen
Dr. Cohen is my mentor. This book, his most well-known, is a must-read for any serious scientist, not just sociologists. It reflects his commitment to rigorous theorizing in the social and behavioral sciences — a commitment he imparted to me and many of his other students. We are grateful.
Lisa Troyer
Office of the President
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Frederic Chopin Esquisses Pour Une Methode de Piano
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger
This is a uniquely enlightening book on Chopin’s original and progressive ideas on piano technique. His extraordinary vision and parallelism of the way the hand relates to the keyboard with the way the feet function in relation to the human body has revolutionized my way of thinking about technique. It also inspired my own ‘Symmetrical Warm-ups’ a collection of short exercises I devised within the last two years, soon to be published by Hal Leonard Corporation.
Christos Tsitsaros
Music
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The Nature of Explanation
Kenneth Craik
This is a little-known, but highly insightful look at the nature of explanation. In it, Craik proposes what is now an increasingly important analogy between scale models and the mental representations involved in the possession of explanations.
Jonathan Waskan
Philosophy
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Transmission Electron Microscopy: Physics of Image Formation
Ludwig Reimer and Helmut Kohl
I benefited from reading this book as a student and I want engineering students at university of Illinois to have the same opportunity as I had.
Jian-Min Zuo
Materials Science & Engineering
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