{"id":1728,"date":"2012-01-20T15:44:44","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T15:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.web.unc.edu\/?p=1728"},"modified":"2024-07-02T13:25:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T13:25:44","slug":"shallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=1728","title":{"rendered":"UNC chooses \u2018The Shallows\u2019 for summer reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Shallows\u201d by Nicholas Carr will be the 2012 summer reading book for incoming students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A nine-member selection committee of students, faculty and staff selected the book from six finalists. Students on the committee described “The Shallows” <\/a>as being able to bring the growing necessity of technology to attention.<\/p>\n

Kevin Stewart, associate professor in the department of geological sciences and chair of the committee, said that \u201cThe Shallows\u201d was relevant to the lives of many people today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book causes the reader to think critically about how and why technology, particularly the Internet, has shaped our lives and the way that we think,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

New students who will enroll next fall are expected and encouraged to read the book this summer and participate in small group discussions on the Monday before classes start in the fall. The program, now in its 14th year, aims to stimulate critical thinking outside the classroom and give new students intellectual common ground. An academic icebreaker, it encourages students to engage with the scholarly community and come to their own conclusions about the material.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Nicholas Carr (photo by Ian Churchill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Shallows\u201d (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010) describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by \u201ctools of the mind\u201d and how our brains, revealed through historical and scientific evidence, change in response to our experiences.<\/p>\n

The book was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and for the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for research nonfiction.<\/p>\n

The other five finalists were \u201cThe Big Sort\u201d by Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing; \u201cThe Boy Who Harnessed the Wind\u201d by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer; \u201cHalf the Sky\u201d by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; \u201cIt Happened on the Way to War\u201d by Rye Barcott; and \u201cGarbage Land\u201d by Elizabeth Royte. The committee considered fiction and nonfiction, although the finalists were all nonfiction<\/p>\n

Since it began in 1999, UNC\u2019s program has featured \u201cThere Are No Children Here\u201d by Alex Kotlowitz; \u201cConfederates in the Attic\u201d by Tony Horwitz; \u201cThe Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down\u201d by Anne Fadiman; \u201cApproaching the Qur\u2019an\u201d by Michael Sells; \u201cNickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America\u201d by Barbara Ehrenreich; \u201cAbsolutely American: Four Years at West Point\u201d by David Lipsky; \u201cBlood Done Sign My Name\u201d by Timothy B. Tyson; \u201cThe Namesake\u201d by Jhumpa Lahiri; \u201cThe Death of the Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions\u201d by Sister Helen Prejean; \u201cCovering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights\u201d by Kenji Yoshino; \u201cA Home on the Field\u201d by Paul Cuadros; \u201cPicking Cotton\u201d by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton; and \u201cEating Animals\u201d by Jonathan Safran Foer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Shallows\u201d by Nicholas Carr will be the 2012 summer reading book for incoming students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A nine-member selection committee of students, faculty and staff selected the book from six finalists. Students on the committee described “The Shallows” as being able to bring the growing necessity of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1728"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45027,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1728\/revisions\/45027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}