Go Big Read and A Sand County Almanac?
Yesterday, I nominated Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, first published in 1949, to be the book for next year's Go Big Read, UW's version of the all-campus/community/common book read. In the first year, 2009, the book was Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and this fall it was Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

the Leopold "shack," north of Baraboo, WI, along the Wisconsin River 

[This stereophoto reveals some of the problems with using my cheap camera. One is that the mirrors sometimes create a reflection in the picture--in this case, on the birdhouse in the left image and a little bit on the top center of both images.]

I have some mixed feelings about my nomination. It's a cliche to associate the university and the state with  A Sand County Almanac because he was a UW professor and the "almanac" section focuses on what can happen during a calendar year at "the shack," just north of Baraboo and along the Wisconsin River. Another thing is that many here have probably already read the book. However, Go Big Read seems tailored to undergrads, particularly freshmen, most of whom haven't read it.

The biggest reasons in favor of this selection are that this could be the last chance to enable many people to hear first-hand from the author's surviving children--Nina Leopold Bradley (b. 1917) and Estella Leopold (b. 1927)--about their lives at the shack, their father, and his ideas.
The content cuts across many fields--environment, conservation, soil and tree sciences, ethics, animals and humans, hunting, the history of the state, etc. What's more, many in-the-field activities could be held in conjunction with book discussions. Most obvious would be tours organized by UW to "the shack" and Aldo Leopold Legacy Center together with a stop at the nearby International Crane Foundation. In my nomination, I also suggested that the program include canoe trips, bird watching classes, and oral history projects.

When I attended the grand opening of the Leopold Center in spring 2007, the then-living children seemed in relatively good health. But Carl Leopold, who had a photo exhibit in the Center, passed away last year. At the time, the Center was awarded the most points of any building in the US when it attained Platinum LEED certification.

Other nominated books cover topics that I think make sense, such as Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nick Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn or Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, for they focus on females and outside of the US. A local twist to the latter book is that the initial funding came from kids at a River Falls, WI, elementary school where Mortenson's mom was a principal. It would be neat if some of them could share their experience.

This site lists books selected for similar programs at other colleges throughout the US: http://homepages.gac.edu/~fister/onebook.html