UCSB Reads: Home

UCSB Reads is an award-winning program that brings the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling issues of our time.

The program is sponsored by UCSB Library and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and was started in 2007 by the Library and Executive Vice Chancellor Gene Lucas. Each year, a committee of faculty, staff, students, and community partners convene to select an intellectually stimulating, interdisciplinary book by a living author that appeals to a wide range of readers and can be incorporated into the UCSB curriculum.

UCSB Reads kicks off at the start of the winter quarter with the Chancellor, Executive Vice Chancellor, and University Librarian distributing free copies of the selected book to UCSB students in the Library. Throughout the winter and spring quarters, the Library will sponsor talks, book clubs, workshops, and other learning, experiential, and social events to explore the book’s themes. UCSB Reads culminates in a live appearance by the author on campus. Events are generally free and open to the public.

For more information, please email UCSBReads@library.ucsb.edu.

UCSB Reads - All Years

2025: The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay 

2024: Your Brain On Art: How the Arts Transform Us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

2023: Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery

2022: Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

2021: When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors & asha bandele

2020: Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush

2019: The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

2018: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

2017: Into the Beautiful North by Luis Urrea

2016: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

2015: Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

2014: The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

2013: Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer

2012: Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

2011: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

2010: Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

2009: Ethics for the New Millennium by Dalai Lama

2008: The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli

2007: Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert

A book that:

• is by a living author who is also a strong public presenter and who has not recently been an Arts & Lecture speaker
• is intellectually stimulating
• is interdisciplinary
• can be incorporated into the UCSB curriculum
• appeals to a wide range of UCSB student and Santa Barbara community readers
• was recently published (but is, ideally, available in paperback)
• was critically well-received
• is not too long (under 400 pages is recommended)
• adds to the UCSB Reads corpus of diverse topics and authors
• enables strategic partnerships between the library and campus or community entities