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UCSB Reads 2025

Information about UCSB Reads 2025

UCSB Reads 2025 Short List

The UCSB Library is pleased to announce its short list of titles under consideration for UCSB Reads 2025.

UCSB Reads is an award-winning campus-wide and community-wide “one book” program. The selection committee consists of UCSB faculty, staff, students, and community partners who 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. The final pick will be announced in the fall.

The selections are listed in alphabetical order:

  1. Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (2021) by John Green
  2. Book of Delights: Essays (2019) by Ross Gay
  3. Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (2023) by Ned Blackhawk
  4. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022) by Gabrielle Zevin
  5. Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (2024) by Venki Ramakrishnan 

To share your input with the committee, vote for your top pick here. One survey participant will be chosen at random to receive a free copy of the final selected book.

Going into its 19th year, the UCSB Reads program will kick off at the beginning of Winter Quarter 2025 with a book giveaway and culminate in a public lecture with the author in the spring. A variety of free events will be held along the way to engage UCSB and the community at large around the book’s themes.

If you are a UCSB faculty member who is interested in exploring teaching one of these titles in winter or spring 2025, please write the Library at outreach@library.ucsb.edu. Your feedback will be taken into consideration for the final selection. 

If you would like to find out more about supporting the UCSB Reads program, please contact Heather Silva, Senior Director of Development, at heathersilva@ucsb.edu.