Browse or jump to the faculty member’s last name:
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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So Long, See You Tomorrow
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
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This is a wonderful book that I shared with many of the important people in my life.
Aaron S. Benjamin
Psychology
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Me of all People
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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¿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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The Biology of Cancer
Robert A. Weinberg
This is a forward-looking book that summarizes the latest in cancer biology.
Paul J. Hergenrother
Chemistry
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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
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Die neue Fränkische Brauereikarte
Stefan Mack
Life is too short to drink bad beer.
Dirk Hundertmark
Mathematics
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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
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Faces of Africa: Thirty Years of Photography
Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher
Robin Jarrett
Human & Community Development and African American Studies and Resources
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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
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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
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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
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The Logic of Scientific Discovery
Karl Popper
It lays out the foundation of scientific thinking.
Praveen Kumar
Civil & Environmental Engineering
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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
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Ontogeny and Phylogeny
Stephen Jay Gould
“This book is a beautiful example of scholarship, covering wide areas of knowledge with grace and precision.”
Steven R. Leigh
Anthropology
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
“I like it.”
Brent Roberts
Psychology
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Fundamentals of Wireless Communication
David Tse and Pramod Viswanath
Pramod Viswanath
Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Inventing Black on Black Violence: Discourse, Space and Representation
David Wilson
David Wilson
Geography
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Canaan
Geoffrey Hill
Hill writes strong, resistant, visionary poetry. Canaan is one of my favorites.
Gerard Wong
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
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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
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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