Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger and Climate Change • Use the following checklist as a guide for writing critical book reviews. 1. What does the book cover? (i.e., this i

Use the Microsoft Word document template found on BlackBoard to write your book review.

Failure to do so will result in a D .

Draft 1 ( 900 words) due on Friday, March 16, by email .

Final paper due on Friday, May 4, 4PM, in Science II room 114 . Late papers will receive heavy penalties (see syllabus for details).

I strongly advise that you submit both the draft and the nal pape r to the Writing Center on campus ( http://www.fresnostate.edu/artshum/writingcenter/ ).

You could also use ETS CriterionorGrammarly ; both application give feedback on possible spelling, grammatical and mechanical errors in your writing.

Keep in mind that Criterion, or Grammarly, do NOT nd some errors an d nd “errors” that might not be errors.

Thus, you must think critically when editing your papers and not just blindly do as Criterion or Grammarly say.

Class ID for Criterion: EES-Spring2018 Class access code for Criterion: FKQW - DB48 2 How to write your book review? The ability to write e ectively is one of the most important skills that yo u will learn in college. Although I plan to do my best to help you learn more, teaching you how to write is beyond the scope of this class. Writing competence comes with pra ctice, supported by a serious commitment of time and energy, and the development of self –assessment and critical thinking abilities. There is no other way!

As a model, read a book review written for a professional news orga nization such as the Fresno Bee, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, etc. Th en follow that style.

A book review is one of the most commonly misunderstood assignment s in college. All too often students simply summarize the contents of a book. Please note that a term paper-style (this person said this and that, and this again, and that again) is 1 not enough. An insightful evaluation of the content is required!Indeed, a good book review should provide a critical commentary on the strengths and weaknesses of the book: the thesis and ma jor arguments, the organization and style , the scholarly apparatus, the author’s values and assumptions.

Use the following checklist as a guide for writing critical book reviews.

1. What does the book cover? (i.e., this is the summary part.) 2. Who is the author, what are his or her potential biases, and who is the intended audience (i.e., this is the background part.) 3. What are the ma jor points that the author makes in the book? Ple ase understand that an author did not spend sometimes years to write a book, research a topic extensively, gather opinions and stories, etc. just to hear himself or herself ta lk. She or he uses arguments to persuade you, the reader, of something. In other words, it is unlikely to be meaningless writing.

4. Do you think that the arguments and ideas presented in the book are correct? Do you accept them? Why or why not? Speci cally, does the author substa ntiate his or her points satisfactorily with information, logic, examples, etc.?

5. Do the author’s ideas agree with your experience and knowledge?

6. If you have read material from other resources (news articles for the current event assignment, for instance) on the same general topic, how does th is book compare? It is important to realize that knowledge evolves and thus, a book might b e outdated; hence, you must keep a critical mind while reading.

7. Are there special features about this book which interest or dis turb you, such as unusual information or new ways of looking at an issue?

8. Are there questions raised for you in this book which the author d oes not answer?

9. Are there additional comments you should include in order to make the essence of this book understood by someone reading your review?

10. Does the thesis of the book make you reconsider what you knew ? One can argue that if an argument does not persuade you to change in some way, then it is pointless. Typically, reviewers will structure this kind of review by expressing 3-5 remar kable ways in which the book a ected them. Note that there is a di erence between a b ook that a ects you and a book that teaches you. Sometimes, the di erence is subtle, b ut it is worthwhile to distinguish these two qualities.

The questions above may be answered in any order, but all of them s hould be addressed, however brie y. Remember, also, that a book review, like any other piece of writing, should observe the basic requirements of literary discourse: there shou ld be an introduction that includes the author’s thesis, a middle section in which you give a brief sy nopsis of the book, and a brief conclusion.

I strongly urge you to read the book with a pencil in hand, to mark pa ragraphs that you like, or do not like, so you may go back to those sections when you writ e your paper.

Feel free to use direct quotes from the book to discuss how certa in passages a ected you.

Be aware that you must enclose the quotes in quotation marks, or f or extended quotes, the paragraph must be indented on both the left and right side.

Do not plagiarize chunks of text!

2 Make sure you proof read your paper before submission; If on t he one hand my oral skills in English are ridiculous, on the other hand my wr itten skills are good!

Thus, I will bust you like a cheap plate if your spelling and gr ammar are bad.

Last but not least, the grading rubric is made available on the last pag e of this document.

Read it carefully to see where the points are allocated.

3 Book list 3.1 Historical Geology Assembling California by John McPhee, 224 pages, Farrar, Straus a nd Giroux, February 1994. Albeit an interesting book, this is a though one to summarize . You need to have a good grasp of the English language to be able to do a book review.

Basin and Range by John McPhee, 240 pages, Farrar, Straus and G iroux, April 1, 1982.

Another interesting book but, just like the other McPhee’s b ook above, this is a though one to summarize.

Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Mo st Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found by Steve Fi er, 272 pages, W. H. Freeman, May 2001 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Win chester, 464 pages, Harper Perennial, July 2005 Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Hu man Body by Neil Shubin, 256 pages, Vintage, January 2009 3.2 Climate Change Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Ni˜no and the Fate of Civilization s by Brian Fagan, 368 pages, Basic Books, February 2009 Snowball Earth: The Story of the Great Global Catastrophe That Spawned Life as We Know It by Gabrielle Walker, 288 pages, Crown, March 2003 The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate by David Archer, 196 pages, Princeton University Press, October, 2 008 Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Clima te Change by Seamus McGraw , 192 pages, University of Texas Press, April 2015 3.3 Ocean and Land Explorations Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Liv ing Undersea with Ocean Experts by Ellen Prager, 178 pages, University Of Chicago Press, S eptember 2008 The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party b y Kelly Tyler-Lewis, 384 pages, Viking, April 2006 The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocea n by Susan Casey, 312 pages, Doubleday Publishing, September 2010 Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greates t Scienti c Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel, 208 pages, Walker & Company, October 2007 3 The Death and Life of Monterey Bay, a Story of Revival by Stephen Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka, 224 pages, Island Press, August 15, 2012 Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg, 284 pages, The Penguin Press, July 2010 American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood Paperback by Pa ul Greenberg, 320 pages, The Penguin Press, June 2015 The Eternal Darkness by Robert Ballard, 408 pages, Princeton Un iversity Press, February 2000 The California Current: A Paci c Ecosystem and Its Fliers, Divers, a nd Swimmers by Stan Ulanski, 256 pages, The University of North Carolina Press, April 20 16 The Extreme Life of the Sea by Stephen Palumbi and Anthony Palumb i, 240 pages, Princeton University Press, September 2015 3.4 Physics & Mathematics The Atom and the Apple: Twelve Tales from Contemporary Physics by S´ebastien Balibar, 200 pages, Princeton University Press, October 2008 Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, 352 pages , W.W. Norton & Co., April 1997 The Un nished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Cent ury Letter that Made the World Modern by Keith Devlin, 208 pages, Basic Books; September 20 08 From Dust to Life: The Origin and Evolution of Our Solar System by Joh n Chambers and Jacqueline Mitton, 320 pages, Princeton University Press, Novemb er 2013 Near-Earth Ob jects: Finding Them Before They Find Us by Donald Ye omans, 192 pages, Princeton University Press, November 2012 How to Find a Habitable Planet by James Kasting, 352 pages, Princeto n University Press, August 2012 3.5 Freshwater issues Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Ma rc Reisner, 608 pages, Penguin, January 1993 Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping And The Fate Of America’s Fresh Waters by Robert Glennon, 328 pages, Island Press, January 2004 The Big Thirst, the secret life and turbulent future of water by Cha rlies Fishman, 400 pages, Free Press, April 2011 West without Water : What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climat ic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow by Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam, 273 pages, University of California Press, August 2013, available as an e-book through the Henry Madden Library 4 3.6 Miscellaneous The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, 336 pages, Thomas Dunne Book s, July 2007 The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Po llan, 464 pages, Penguin, August 2007 Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman, 448 pages, Farrar, Straus and Girou x, September 2008 Surf, Sand, and Stone: How Waves, Earthquakes, and Other For ces Shape the Southern California Coast by Keith Heyer Meldahl, 240 pages, University of Calif ornia Press, October 2015 Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable by Paul Falkowski, 224 pages, Princeton University Press, April 2015 Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger a nd Climate Change by John Mandyck and Eric Schultz, 198 pages, Carrier Corp., July 20 15 Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History by Donald Can eld, 216 pages, Prin ceton University Press, December 2015 James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin, 2 72 pages, Princeton University Press, April 2009 On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth by Toby Tyrrell, 320 pages, Princeton University Press, July 2013. Albeit an interesting book, this is a though one to summarize. You need to have a good grasp of scie nce (chemistry and biology in particular) to be able to do a book review.

5 Points Background (10%) Summary (30%) Review (30%) Mechanical (30%) 4 Gives relevant information about author(s) and intended audience. Clearly describes thesis, argu- ments and conclusions of the book. Shows good understand- ing of relevant main points and avoids extraneous detail.

Thoughtful evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of text, pointing to other texts that seem to support or weaken argument (at least 3 appropriate references).

Well organized and coherent book review, smooth transi- tions between paragraphs and ideas, no or few grammatical er- rors, and meets the assignment’s length requirement. 3 Gives some information about author(s) and intended audience Clearly describes thesis, argu- ment and conclusions of text, but sometimes gets bogged down in detail.

Thoughtful evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of text, with some reference to other material (at least 2 appropriate references).

A “3” paper may be an “4” pa- per content-wise, but it has mi- nor grammatical errors or minor organizational problems. A “3” paper meets the length require- ment. 2 Some mention of background in- formation. Describes some elements of thesis and argument, but misses or mis- understands some parts of the text.

Shows some understanding of strengths and weaknesses of text, gives limited or no reference to other material. A “2” paper may have organiza- tion, coherence, or grammatical problems that hinder a smooth reading of the paper, but not to the extent that the paper is incomprehensible. A “2” paper meets the assignment length re- quirement. 1 Missing.

Misses or misunderstands ma jor parts of text.

Mostly ignores evaluation and fo- cuses on summary. A “1” paper has severe organiza- tional, coherence, or grammati- cal problems so that the reader has trouble comprehending what is being communicated. A “1” paper may signi cantly deviate from the length requirement. Table 1: Book Review Rubrics 6