Looking for something to read this summer? How about getting a head start on the Campus Community Book Project? The 2015-16 book, announced last week, is The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, by Matt Taibbi, a regular contributor to Rolling Stone magazine.

Taibbi and the featured book for 2015-16

The book project, begun in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, promotes respectful discussion among the university’s diverse population, and in the wider community, around a book that everyone is reading. We’ve had a book every year since then.

Each year’s book selection process starts with a topic — it’s “structural inequality” for 2015-16. The year after that, it’ll be “poverty/hunger/food security,” and book nominations are now being taken.

But, first, The Divide, and a program of related events such as lectures, workshops and panel discussions, art exhibitions and film screenings — all culminating in the author’s talk scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 3, at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Mikael Villalobos, who chairs the Campus Community Book Project, welcomes volunteers to serve on the program planning committee this summer. Have a programming idea? Interested in serving on the planning committee? See “Next Steps” box.

For the 2016-17 project, on the topic of “poverty/hunger/food security,” nominations are welcome from anyone in the campus and wider community, with a deadline of Aug. 14, 2015. Please include title, author and a short description of the book, plus an explanation of why it complements the topic and represents a worthy selection.

Villalobos will assemble a selection committee in late August to read the nominated books through the summer and into the fall. Interested in being on the committee? See “Next Steps” box.

In The Divide, published in 2014, Taibbi ponders a “bizarre statistical mystery” two decades in the making: Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. And, he says, not one of the new prisoners is among the rich whose fraud wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. Read more about the book in this Dateline article.

Look for The Divide in UC Davis Stores some time around Thursday (July 16). The paperback will sell for $11.95, about a 30 percent discount off the list price (and less than the Amazon price!). Hardcover copies are due to arrive around the end of July, and they will also sell for $11.95.

Follow the Campus Community Book Project on Facebook and Twitter, and use the hashtag #ccbp2015.

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