{"id":1437,"date":"2025-08-13T15:34:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.winona.edu\/about\/?page_id=1437"},"modified":"2025-08-13T15:35:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:35:15","slug":"common-book","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.winona.edu\/about\/news-events\/speakers-educational-series\/common-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Book"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Common Book<\/h1>
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For nearly 20 years, the Common Book has brought together the WSU community of readers in the discussion of a single literary work.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n

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Each academic year, a new Common Book is selected and incorporated into the curriculum of numerous courses, including sections of ENG 111: College Reading and Writing. It may also be adopted by any faculty interested in the issues it raises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public readings, lectures, discussions, and other related events scheduled concurrently with each author’s visit to WSU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funding for the Common Book has generously been made available by the College of Liberal Arts and the WSU Cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n \n

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2025-2026 Common Book<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n
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This year’s Common Book is \u201cFuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law\u201d by Mary Roach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the Book <\/div>\n
Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial.<\/div>\n \n\n

These days, as\u202fNew York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFuzz\u201d takes on a journey through the complicated relationships between humans and other animals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and \u201cdanger tree\u201d faller blasters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter\u2019s Square in the early hours before the Pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature\u2019s lawbreakers. <\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n

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When it comes to \u201cproblem\u201d wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem\u2014and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, \u201cFuzz\u201d offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary has written for National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most Watched list. She has been a guest editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing, a finalist for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies’ journalism award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Upcoming Events<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Get involved in this year’s Common Book with campus events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n View Upcoming Common Book Events<\/span>\n<\/a>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n \n

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How to Join<\/div>\n
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We hope you’ll read and incorporate what you take away from the book into your life while at WSU.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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You can purchase this book from: <\/p>\n\n\n\n