Book Choices for the Group Oral Presentation; First Assignment

Timing: The presentations will be during the 6 classes from Monday, January 30, through Friday, February 10.

Six Books for Six Teams:

  1. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

  2. GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History by Diane Coyle

  3. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

  4. Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

  5. The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt

  6. The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel

First Assignment, Due 11 PM Friday, January 19 (I pushed this back a day because of our snow day on Wednesday; I’ll give you a preview of each of the books on Friday. But I need it at 11 PM Friday so I can assign you to book groups over the weekend and you can get started reading.)

1. Write a few sentences about what drew you to this class and what you hope to learn and get out of it. 

2. List in order your 1st, 2d and 3d choices for the additional book you want to read and do a group presentation on. 

3. Write a few sentences on why you are particularly interested in reading your 1st choice. (Optional: you can write about your 2d and 3d choices, too if you want to.)

Note:

I tried to post this assignment on Canvas. You can submit your answers there. (If you can’t figure out how to submit it on Canvas, you can send it to me in the body of an email.)

Not this time:

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson (Related blog posts laid out here.)