Freshman Reading Project (required)

Each year the Honors Program selects a book to be read by all incoming first-year Honors students. The Freshman Reading Project promotes community through the common experience of reading and discussing a thought-provoking text. Please read the book before arriving at Baylor. Once on campus, you will engage in a discussion with other students about the themes and ideas gleaned from your reading. Completion of the Freshman Reading Project is required.

This year’s reading is Shop Class as Soulcraft, the bestseller written by Matthew B. Crawford. From a review by the NYT columnist, Rod Dreher:

Every once in a great while, a book will come along that's brilliant and true and perfect for its time. Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft is that kind of book, a prophetic and searching examination of what we've lost by ceasing to work with our hands-and how we can get it back. During this time of cultural anxiety and reckoning, when the conventional wisdom that has long driven our wealthy, sophisticated culture is foundering amid an economic and spiritual tempest, Crawford's liberating volume appears like a lifeboat on the horizon.

You can purchase Shop Class as Soulcraft at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and a variety of other book retailers.

Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft (Penguin, 2010) 

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0143117469