INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR BOOK ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

            This assignment is a lot like a take-home exam.  That is, in this assignment you will not simply write and give a “book report.”  Your job is to draw as many parallels as you can in the space allotted between your book and any and all relevant course materials.

            Here’s your assignment in detail:

1. Prepare a one-page summary of your book.  You will turn this in Friday morning, September 21.  I will photocopy each of your summaries and distribute them to everyone in the class.  Be sure to put the title and author of your book on the top of this one-page summary.  Put your name at the bottom.  This summary should outline the main themes and messages of the book.   If your book has useful chapter titles, you may want to list them.

2. For Monday morning, September 24, turn in the following assignment:

In a minimum of nine pages of 250-300 words per page, describe all the connections you can make between political ideas and concepts and dynamics covered in your book and those covered in the course.  These connections do not need to hang together.  You may find as few as for our five connections that you describe in some detail, or you may find 20 or more and explain the connections more briefly.  Be sure you state/describe clearly BOTH what your BOOK says AND what specific piece of COURSE MATERIAL you connect to it.  For example, do not just mention Muir’s concept of “moral discretion” and move on.  Define moral discretion as Muir does and show SPECIFICALLY how material in your book illustrates Muir’s definition.

3. ALL course material is fair game for comparing with your chosen book.  All course readings, videos, NYT articles, lecture materials, handouts, police ride-along experiences, etc. are fair game for you to connect to your book.  Until the close of class on September 21, you may NOT have received all the information that might be critically related to your book.

4. As Matt suggested on our first Monday, I will coach you and help you on this project as much as you want.  If you want me to read a rough draft of your essay so that you can improve it and your grade, I will have to have your rough draft by 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, September 19.  That way I can return my suggestions on it to you Friday morning for you to incorporate in your final writing over the weekend.

5. HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR BOOK.  On the “assignments” web page you will see a list of possible books.  You DO NOT have to pick one of these books.  They are suggestions only.  They illustrate some books that can connect to this course. If you want to do a different book, just clear it with me.  Everyone will do a different book, so the sooner you choose, the more likely you are to get your first choice.  You will need to choose your book NO LATER THAN the second Friday of the Block, namely 9/14.  See me as soon as possible about this.  Some of you may decide to purchase a book, and you will need time to get it delivered.

PRELIMINARY BOOK LIST FOR YOUR WRITING ASSIGNMENT

            The basic instructions for this course assignment appear in the course syllabus.  Above all, you should pick a book on a topic that interests you personally.  The books I list below are just some examples of books I know (or know of) that I think contain rich material for comparing with the other readings and course materials.  If you know of a book you would rather do, you CAN negotiate that with me.  If you know of a topic area that you want to write about but don’t know a good book in that topic area, tell me the topic and I will try to dig up an interesting book for you.

The Prince and The Discourses, by Machiavelli.  Look for new translation of The Prince by Harvey Mansfield.  The first book about modern politics, written a long time ago.

Good Natured, by Frans de Waal.  Looks carefully at both the positive and negative side of chimpanzee social and political behavior, and Demonic Males, by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, posing a detailed theory to explain the evolutionary origins of human cruelty.

Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, by Frans de Waal.  Looks at “pigmy chimpanzee politics” and compares to regular chimps.  Bonobo’s are matriarchal and much less violent than chimps.

Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins.  Hilarious and profound fictional look at the controversy over Jerusalem (but will take some imaginative digging to fit with course materials).

Travels Through Crime and Place:  Community Building as Crime Control, by William DeLeon-Granados.  For someone who wants to stick with some of the issues of good police work raised by Muir.

Republic of Denial:  Press, Politics, and Public Life, by Michael Janeway.  Critical look at the media today.

Lord of the Flies, by William Goldman.  Famous political novel about boys abandoned on an island.

Taliban, by Ahmed Rashid, and The Taliban, by Peter Marsden, both describing the politics of the ultra-fundamentalist regime now in power in Afghanistan.

1984, by George Orwell, and Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.  Two classic political fantasy classics with plenty of relevance for today.  Should be done together as one assignment.  They are both quite short.

Democracy, Dialogue, and Environmental Disputes, by Williams and Matheny.  A book about the politics of “Not in my back yard!”  Difficult reading, but excellent “post-modern” analysis.

Making Democracy Work, by Robert Putnam.  Here Putnam contrasts the effective political life in a northern town in Italy to the failure of effective politics in a southern Italian town.  He develops the concept of “social capital.”

Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam.  Putnam’s new book asserting and attempting to demonstrate empirically the decline of social capital in the United States

Jackie Robinson: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad.  Describes the politics of changing racial attitudes in the context of the Robinson story.

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison.  Classic story of psychological effect of racial segregation, told by a victim.

Ronald Reagan, by Dinesh D’Souza.  Very sympathetic to Reagan.

The Vicar of Christ, by Walter Murphy.  Long and fascinating novel about a man who becomes Supreme Court Justice AND the Pope!

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver.  A terrific novel about religion and politics, set in very rural Congo during the political upheavals starting in 1960.  A mother and her four daughters, ranging in age (at the start) from 15 to about 5, each tell the story in interwoven chapters from their own very different perspectives.

The Evolution of Cooperation, and The Complexity of Cooperation, by Robert Axelrod.  Major work of formal political theory.  For people with some formal modeling background.

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, by Jeffrey Reiman.  Title says it all.

Checkbook Democracy, by Darrell West.  Has detailed case studies of the power of money in politics and shows how hard it is to achieve major reform.  See also The Sound of Money: How Political Interests Get What They Want, by Darrell West and Burdett Loomis, and The Corruption of American Politics by Elizabeth Drew.

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich.  This social critic and author goes “undercover” to see if she can survive financially holding a series of minimum wage jobs.  She can’t.

Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.  A new and best-selling look at corporate power and its consequences on every day life in the U.S.  It contains a number of illustrations from here in the Front Range of Colorado.

All the President’s Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic book about the Watergate cover-up.  

Nations Within, by Clifford Lytle and Vine Deloria, Jr.  American Indian struggles with U.S. government to carve out their own political systems of self-government.

The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam.  A long but classic book about the failure of the top political minds in the U.S. to avoid the disaster of Vietnam.

American Pharaoh, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor.  Recent look at one of the great mayor-bosses in the U.S., Chicago’s late Richard J. Daley.