Posted by
Jill Cowan on Friday, March 07, 2008 05:52 pm
If you’re a freshman this year, whether you remember it or not, you received a book in the mail over the summer. You were instructed to read the book so you’d have something in common with all the other freshman, and you could bond over the shared experience when you finished telling each other your name, major, and residence.
You even had the opportunity to partake in some enlightened discussion about what you learned in specially tailored seminars. The culmination of the program known as “On the Same Page” came when the author of the book, Gary Willis, came to speak at Zellerbach Hall. And there was much rejoicing.
The book was “Lincoln at Gettysburg,” and if you’re like us, it’s sitting on your shelf, untouched and collecting dust with all your other textbooks, because you brought it with you to the dorms on the off-chance you were somehow going to be graded on it. Luckily, you weren’t, because you didn’t read it. (No offense, Gary Willis.) read more »
Every year the College of Letters and Sciences selects a book to feature in their On the Same Page program. Every freshman and transfer student in the college receives a free copy, 
a chance to hear the author speak, and the opportunity to participate in classes and lectures related to the selection.
This year, the featured book was Garry Wills’ “Lincoln at Gettysburg.” Wills spoke Wednesday night in Zellerbach Auditorium to a crowd of about 600 on the relevance of the Gettysburg Address in the 21st century.
Not like numbers matter, but, well, they do. Or at least they feed our curiosity … Last year’s featured author was Stephen Hawking, who drew so many people that all 2,000 seats in Zellerbach were filled, and 800 people watched a live broadcast of the event in Wheeler Auditorium.
Why did so few students want to listen to a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of dead presidents and dead late-antique Catholic saints?
Though we might have answered the question for ourselves, we still ponder.
The Clog was curious if there was some special magic that Garry Wills lacked, other than the fact that no one has heard of him before. We brainstormed a few things that might make students a bit more enthusiastic about the ways in which UC Berkeley attempts to educate them.
3) Six thousand books were given out, and the market price for “Lincoln at Gettysburg” is $19.99 a book. Ignoring the fantastical possibility that the books were bought at comegetused.com for half the price, the sum total of this purchase is $119,940. If that money was put solely into advertising his lecture, maybe lecture attendance would tip into the quadruple digits like Stephen Hawking … because everyone knows that no one reads even the required reading.
2) Maybe if the College of Letter and Sciences chose Wills’ other book, “Why I Am A Catholic,” students would have a more enthusiastic response.
1) Never mind the fact that he doesn’t have a rare motor neurone disease, if Garry Wills had a wheelchair and a speech machine, perhaps students would appreciate his every effort at speech a bit more.
Image Source: Anna Callaghan, Daily Cal
Historian Speaks on Gettysburg [Daily Cal]
Book Project Continues with Lincoln at Gettysburg [College of Letters and Science]
Earlier: Renowned Cosmologist Draws Sold-Out Crowd
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