The Freshman Reading Program steering committee announced this week that all incoming freshmen in the Class of 2012 will read Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.”
The book, which expands on a series from the New York Times, reports on the rise in average global temperature and takes on U.S. policy on climate change, including the decision to back out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001.
The Freshman Reading Program (FRP) began in 2003; while this is not the first time that its steering committee has selected a politically centered text, it differs from this year’s book, “Einstein’s Dreams” in that regard.
The book is 240 pages long, a similar length to most of the books that have been assigned in the past.