Book Reviewer Project

Requirements:

1. Adhere to the Policy of Academic Integrity in Integrative Biology 102.

2. Contact Beth Morgan via e-mail to indicate your interest in the project and she will create a Moodle forum for your posts.  Your first post must be by the twelfth week of the semester.

3. This project involves reviewing at least one chapter of a book and two reaction reply entries to classmates' extra credit posts in Moodle. You may earn up to 1% extra credit for each review and posts.

• select a book that deals with a topic in plant biology or environmental science. I have listed a few that are in the bookstore now. There are lots of other books that are appropriate. Let me know if you find another and I'll add it to the list at the bottom of this page.
• write a review of the chapter you have read (at least 500 words). Post your review as a project entry in the Book Reviewer Forum in Moodle.
  
  • A complete bibliographical reference to the book you are reviewing.
  • You may include a working link to a publisher's or book seller's web page that lists your book as a substitute for your bibliographical reference.
    
  • You should concentrate on explaining the biological concepts and issues as well as recounting the story.
  • If the author presents an opinion concerning an issue do you agree or disagree - why?
  • Describe the chapters' relevance to concepts or issues presented in class. If we have not addressed a topic in class, read ahead in the text book.
  • Post your review to Moodle in the discussion set up for your book in the Book Reviewer Forum in Moodle.
• reaction reply entries:
• Entries are written as "REPLY" messages that you write to others concerning their extra credit project entries in Moodle, or "REPLIES" that others write to you concerning your project entries.
• For each 1% extra credit, include 2 substantial entries.

Suggested Books

• Blessed Unrest:  how the largest movement in the world came into being and why no one saw it coming by Paul Hawkin.
  
• Uncertain Peril:  Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds by Claire Hope Cummings
  
• Food and Fuel: Solutions for the Future by Andrew Heintzman and Evan Solomon
  
• Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma : a natural history of four meals by Michael Pollan
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman 
• The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan 
• An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming by Al Gore
• Into the Jungle:  Great Adventures in the Search for Evolution by Sean B. Carroll
  
• Liberation Ecologies by Richard Pee
• Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment (Ecology and Justice Series) by Mary Evelyn Tucker
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
• Eating the Sun by Oliver Morton
• Nature's Services: Societal Dependence On Natural Ecosystems by John Peterson Myers (Foreword), Joshua Reichert (Foreword), Sandra Postel (Contributor), Kamaljit Bawa (Contributor), Les Kaufman (Contributor), Charles H. Peterson (Contributor), Stephen Carpenter (Contributor), David Tillman (Contributor), Paul Dayton (Contributor), Susan Alexander (Contributor), Kalen Lagerquist (Contributor), Larry Goulder (Contributor), Pamela Matson (Contributor), Harold Mooney (Contributor), Rosamond Naylor (Contributor), Peter Vitousek (Contributor), John Harte (Contributor), Gretchen Daily (Editor)
  
• A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
• Lessons of the Rainforest by Suzanne Head and Robert Heinzman
• Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pamela C. Ronald and R. W. Adamchak
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver
• Win-Win Ecology:  How the Earth's Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise

Or if you have an idea, just ask Beth.

Credit: Extra credit is added at the end of the semester as percentage points on top of the course grade you have earned. Maximum extra credit is 6%.