English 1108 with Richard Jewell - Inver Hills Community College

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Note 1, AMAZON.COM & ABEBOOKS.COM: If you have a credit card, you sometimes can order more cheaply at www.Amazon.com or www.AbeBooks.com, especially if you have to order a larger paperbound (a "trade" book) or a hardbound.  Amazon's used books seem always to be in very good condition, and credit card transactions on Amazon are very secure and safe.   Remember, however, to allow for an extra $4 for postage shipping. Go to www.Amazon.com or www.AbeBooks.com, type in the book and author in the blank text box at the top beside "Go," and hit your "Enter" key (or click on "Go").   

Note 2, CHOOSING SEVERAL:  Instead of choosing just one of the selections below,  you may mix and match.  That is, you may read from two or three different sources below for the several required weeks.  

Note 3, A BOOK OF YOUR OWN:  Instead of reading a selection below, you may ask me for permission to use a book that you have found.  However, you must show me the book itself--or a review or description of it from the Web--so I can determine whether it is sufficiently related to our class topics.  Ask me in plenty of time for you to find something else if your first choice doesn't work.

Note 4, EXTRA CREDIT:  In addition to reading something below as required, you may read something additional from this list for one-for-one extra credit.  (For extra-credit options, see "Make-up and Extra Credit" in the ATTENDANCE page of this Web site.)

Note 5, USING A LIBRARY: You might want to use Google or Yahoo's "Find in a Library" function to get your choice of book(s) in a nearby library.  See "Find in a Library" on the "Textbooks & Other Resources" page.

Choose one or more of the following books.  All are nonfiction. 

Book by Concentration Camp Teenager: Night by Elie Wiesel ("vee-zel'") 

        The small paperback size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: Most people will read this as their first book in Eng 1108; 3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: a commonly found book; IH Library  has a long-term checkout copy.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

      This is a classic Jewish Holocaust autobiography.  Wiesel ("vee-zel") was just a young teenager when he and his family were sent to the concentration camps, where he lived with his father.   Both were laborers in the camps.  Night is a detailed, moving, and sometimes depressing account of how Wiesel came of age in the camps.  Wiesel also is a Nobel Peace Prizewinner, in part because of his celebrated writings and in part because of his lifelong efforts to make people understand more about the Holocaust. 

        Reading Assignment: Note -  if you read this as your first required book in 1108, you cannot read it again.  If choosing it as a second book is the first time you are reading it, then read it as follows:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Divide it into four readings: v-20, 21-50, 50-80, and 81-111.

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Book by College-Educated Concentration Camp Laborer: Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi.  Publisher: several.

        Find whatever is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.   3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: a commonly found book.  Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

      This is yet another classic Jewish Holocaust autobiography.  Levi, a 25-year-old Italian chemist, was arrested in Italy and shipped to Germany.  It is, according to the back back of the book, a "classic account of his ten months in theGerman death camp, a harrowing story of systematic cruelty and miraculous endurance."  It is at once more intellectual yet just as basic in its own way as Wiesel's account.  Some people consider Levi one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.  He tells this story in  narrative form, step by step.

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the picture on p. 1, the two maps just before it, and the picture on p. 71.  Then read as follows, depending on your course.  (There are seventeen chapters—you don’t have to read them all.)

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Wk. 1: Chap. 1, "The Journey,” through Chap. 2, “On the Bottom.”  Wk. 2: Chap. 3, “Initiation,” through Chap. 5, “Our Nights.”  Wk. 3: Chap. 6, “The Work,” through Chap. 8, "This Side of Good and Evil."  Wk. 4: Ch. 9, "The Drowned and the Saved," through Chap. 11, “The Canto.” 
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Book by Concentration Camp Inmate-Doctor: Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.  Note: you may NOT use this book again if you read it as your first required book of the semester.

        The small paperback size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  (Fall '08 only: find this book on the Eng 1108-15/Jewell bookstore shelf).   3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 2 copies.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: a commonly found book; IH Library  has a long-term checkout copy.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies are cheap, but add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

       This book, like Wiesel's and Levi's, is a powerful, classic autobiography by a Jew about the Jewish Holocaust.   The book details Frankl's different true stories from his stay in concentration camps.  Unlike Wiesel and Levi, Frankl had already established a very successful career in his mid-adult years--as a Vienna psychiatrist.  In addition, he generally worked as a doctor rather than a laborer, under conditions that were nevertheless horrible.  His story is more incidental--a collection of different events, with each section focusing on a feeling or attitude--and is not only more intellectual, like Levi's, but also offers more of an overall psychological theory about survival in the camps.  Frankl also has a stronger message of hope. 

Reading Assignment:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Divide it into four readings: 1st and 2nd half of "Part I," and the 1st and 2nd half of "Part II."

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Book by Prison Worker in Nazi Gas Chambers: Eyewitness Auschwitz by Filip Muller.  Publisher: Ivan R. Dee.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  (Fall '08 only: find this book on the Eng 1108-15/Jewell bookstore shelf).   3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

          This book is what the front cover says is “a very detailed description of day-to-day life…in Hell’s inmost circle” by a Eastern European Jewish camp inmate who worked in the actual gassing chambers and cremation area for three years at the most famous Nazi concentration camp.  He was 20 years old when he arrived and, after liberation, was unable to return to normal work for eight years. 

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the five maps and the “Glossary” in the very back.  Then read as follows, depending on your course:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): any 25 pp. per week for four weeks.

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Book by Young Upper-Middle Class Wife Interned in Concentration Camps: Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel.  Publisher: Academy Chicago.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: one or two copies.    3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

          Lengyel’s book, subtitled “A Woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz,” is about how she, a young, beautiful wife of a hospital director, survived after her family was killed and she was interned in Birchenau and Auschwitz, two of the most famous Nazi concentration camps.  The New Yorker calls it a surprisingly dispassionate account of life in the Nazi murder camps…and the mentality of the persons who administered it.”  Other reviewers on the cover call the book “a stark account…vividly articulated,” “a picture of utter hell,” and “passionate, tormenting.”

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the “Glossary” in the very back.  Then read as follows, depending on your course:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Wk. 1: Chapters I-II.  Wk. 2: Chapters III-VI.  Wk. 3: Chapters VII-X.  Wk. 4: Chapters XI-XV. 

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Book about Nazi Doctor Running “Experiments” in Concentration Camps: Children of the Flames by Lucette Matalon Lagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel.  Publisher: Penguin.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

          This book is about infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who ran horrible experiments on Jewish inmates in the concentration camp Auschwitz, such as making them stand in freezing water,cutting out their body organs to see how long it took them to die, and tortures even worse.  The book is a nonfiction recounting in story form of Mengele and his experiments with twins by a journalist who interviewed countless subjects and by the wife of one such subject.  It exposes the so-called “scientific” research by Nazis on concentration camp inmates not only as inhumane but also ineffective and poorly done. 

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the eight pp. of pictures in the middle and glance at the “Dramatis Personae”—list of people in the book—on pp. 19-22.  Then see the “Contents” on p. 17 and read as follows, depending on your course:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Don’t read the “Preface” (unless it’s on your own time).  Wk. 1: “Prologue”-Chap. 1.  Wk. 2: Chap. 2.  Wk. 3: Chap. 3.  Wk. 4: Chap. 4. 

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Book by Young Seamstress about Nazi Work Camps: The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival by Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein.  Publisher: Berkley.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size  is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: one copy.   3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may or may not be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks.  Note: you may NOT use this book if you read it in Eng. 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term.

          As teenagers, Sara (known then as “Seren”), her sister, and her friends were taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp, the only Jewish girls there in a Gentile women’s prison camp where many died.  Library Journal calls this account “unpretentious…vivid” and Booklist says, “This compelling saga is told in a warm and heartfelt manner.”  The book is an account of all of Bernstein’s war years, moving here and there, often working for Nazis as a seamstress.  The assignments below cover primarily her period in the concentration camp.

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the picture on p. 1, the two maps just before it, and the picture on p. 71.  Then read as follows, depending on your course:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Wk. 1: pp. 195-233.  Wk. 2: pp. 234-264.  Wk. 3: pp. 265-294 (or any other 30 pp.).  Wk. 4: pp. 295-328 (or any other 30 pp.). 

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Book by a Minnesota Doctor Who Was a Jewish Teenage Woman Avoiding Nazis During Holocaust: Hiding in the Open by Sabina Zimering.  Publishers: North Star Press. 

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: a few copies.  2-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy there for the first time starting Tues., Sept. 9, 2008.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

Zimering was a practicing doctor for forty-two years in Minneapolis until her retirement.  Before, she was a teenager and Jew during World War II who escaped the Holocaust by pretending to be an orphaned Polish Catholic girl.  She and her sister moved through parts of Europe, including Germany itself, successfully avoiding capture for six years.  Her story, while lacking the horror of being in a concentration camp herself, is a vivid story of what it was like to secretly be a hated, supposedly subhuman person successfully masquerading each day as a thoughtful, pretty, "master race" girl.  This book may also be more interesting to some because it is by a Minnesotan, a woman, and an obviously intelligent person who was a practicing physician for many years.

Reading Assignment, Eng 1108 (Comp I): Simply choose any 35-40 pp.each week for three weeks.

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Book by Young Survivor of Cambodian Genocide: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers  by Loung Ung.  Publisher: Harper.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 1 copy available per section (but if you're in Eng 1108, look in the Eng 1114/Jewell section of the bookstore shelves).  3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: many have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

          The Denver Post calls this “an important book…a harrowing book, a book you will read through tears.”  In the late 1970’s, after the end of the War in Vietnam, in next-door Cambodia the ruling party killed some two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the population in one of the most extensive genocides of modern times.  Ung recounts her story of those years, starting from age five when she and her family lived in the capital and her father was a privileged, high-ranking government official.  Ung’s family had to flee and disperse with the arrival of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army.  Ung was trained as a child soldier, and her siblings were sent to labor camps.  (Note: If you are in Eng 1114 and you have already read this book in Eng 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term, you cannot use this book now for your second reading in Eng 1114.)

Reading Assignment: Before starting, look at the picture on the back cover; the Author’s Note, p. xi; the Family Chart, p. xiii; Map, p. xv; and pictures, pp. 1110-111.  Then read as follows, depending on your course:

Eng 1108 (Comp I): Read any 25 pp./wk. for four weeks.

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Book about America's Responses to Genocide over 100 Years: "A Problem from Hell" - America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power.  620 pp. with an Index.  Publisher: Harper Perennial.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: none this time.  Open circulation at IHCC Library: 2 copies. Libraries and Bookstores in General: almost all will have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

          This 2002 book has won so many awards that just listing them would take too much space.  The most prestigious is the Pulitzer Prize for the best nonfiction book of the year.  Power, a foreign policy columnist at Time magazine and a professor at Harvard, traveled the world researching how genocide develops and why the United States has, for the past 100 years, chosen not to intervene for a significant period of time in every single genocide in the past 100 years.  Her prose is vivid, her style insistent, and her facts overwhelming.  (Note: If you are in Eng 1114 and you have already read this book in Eng 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term, you cannot use this book now for your second reading in Eng 1114.)

Reading Assignment: Start with the 11-page "Preface."  Each chapter is about a different genocide in history and in various parts of the world.  It is okay to skip around, choosing different chapters in any order you want.  Read a total of about 20-25 pp. per week. 

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Book about the Newest (and Current) Genocide in Darfur: The Devil Came on Horseback - Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle and Gretchen Steidle Wallace.  230 pp. BBS Public Affairs.

        The hardbound is the edition I have; perhaps by now a paper-bound  (either in "trade" size or paperback) is available.  IHCC Bookstore: none this time.  Open circulation at IHCC Library: 1 copy. Libraries and Bookstores in General: many will have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

          This 2007 book and the documentary movie based on it, along with Steidle himself, touring the country to talk about it, have stunned many thousands of people.  A genocide is happening right now, and there is little that other countries have been able to do to stop it.  Steidle, a former Marine Corps. Captain, was hired after he got out of the Marines to observe the crisis in Darfur.  He was taken aback by what he found, saw, and was allowed to photograph.  The book comes with 20 photographs.  And an excellent documentary film by Steidle shows much more.  The film also is available for viewing in the Inver Hills library, and I probably will show it in class.   (Note: If you are in Eng 1114 and you have already read this book in Eng 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term, you cannot use this book now for your second reading in Eng 1114.)

Reading Assignment: Start with the 7-page "Prologue."  Then you should pretty much read it in order, though you can skip over some sections, if you like.  The book is basically a narrative of his time in Darfur, step by step, and reads like a journal or diary, so it is not difficult to follow.  Please read about 30 pp. per week.   

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Book about Genocide with 17 essays: The Specter of Genocide - Mass Murder in Historical Perspective edited by Gellately and Kiernan.  Publisher: Cambridge UP.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: none this time.  2-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy there for the first time starting Tues., Sept. 9, 2008.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: some may have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

          Specter is a scholarly collection of interesting, well written, and intelligent academic essays attempting to define genocide culturally, politically, and socially.  It is an excellent resource for papers written on genocide, with some essays discussing individual genocides in history and others looking at several or more.  There are seventeen separate essays with bibliographies and a well done appendix for looking up good quotations for research papers.  To see the list of individual essays in the "Table of Contents" and list of subjects in the "Appendix," go to http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0521527503/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S009#reader-link.  (Note: If you are in Eng 1114 and you have already read this book in Eng 1108 with me or for any other course during the past or present term, you cannot use this book now for your second reading in Eng 1114.)

Reading Assignment: Each essay is about 20-25 pp.  Simply choose any one essay each week.  Read one essay for one week, two for two weeks, or three for three weeks.

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Book about the Japanese Genocide Against Chinese in WW II: The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang.  Publisher: Penguin, 1997.

        The wide, tall paper-bound  ("trade") size is cheapest.  IHCC Bookstore: 1 copy available per section (but if you're in Eng 1108, look in the Eng 1114/Jewell section of the bookstore shelves).  3-hr. Reserve at Desk of IH Library: 1 copy.  Libraries and Bookstores in General: many have it.   Amazon.com w/credit card: used copies may be cheap; add $4 postage; allow 2 wks. 

        Richard Rhodes' review in the New York Times calls this "a powerful, landmark book, rivteting in its horror."  In 1937, the Japanese army invated Nankin and, in a matter of weeks, systematically raped, tortured, and killed 300,000 Chinese, primarily civilians.  This book tells the story from three different points of view: the Japanese, the Cinese, and some Westerners who helped save another 300,000 people from similar fates.  The book is very carefully researched yet gripping in its details as it explores the Japanese militaristic culture that allowed such brutality, the culture of the people of Nanking, and the heroic efforts by such people as German John Rape, who some call the "Oskar Schindler of China."   

        Reading Assignment: This is a longer book, though relatively easy to read.  The first week, read pp. 1-22 (Prologue-Chapter 1).  After that, choose any 30 pp. to read each week for two more weeks. 

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- End of "'B' - Options for Second Reading" Page -

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Contents and page design: Copyright (©) 2005-2008 by Richard Jewell 

Images courtesy of IHCC, Barry's Clip Art, Clip Art Warehouse, Clip Art Universe, Clipart Collection, MS Clip Art Gallery and Design Gallery Live, School Discovery, and Web Clip Art

First date of publication: January 1, 2005.  Graphics redesigned June 3, 2007 & Aug. 1, 2008.
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