UCSB Reads 2024 is over, but we're gearing up for UCSB Reads 2025! Learn about the titles shortlisted for 2025 and vote on your favorite.
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UCSB Reads Books
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 and 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 Alberto Urrea
2016: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
2015: Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman
2014: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan
2013: Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
2012: Moby Duck: The True Story of 28,000 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools--Including the Author--Who Went in Search of Them 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
UCSB Reads 2025 Advisory Committee
Christoffer Bovbjerg: Associate Director, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
Veronica Castillo-Munoz: Faculty, History
Allyson Dahl: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Kenneth Kosik: Faculty, MCDB
Jasmine Liang: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Rebecca Metzger: UCSB Library
Sophie Najam: UCSB Undergraduate Student
Sharleen O'Brien: Director, Health & Wellness
Caitlin O'Hara: Director, Arts & Lectures
Alex Regan: UCSB Library
David Sherman: Faculty, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Heather Silva: UCSB Library
David Stein: Faculty, History
Anna Trugman: Faculty, Geography
Claudia Tyler: Faculty, College of Creative Studies
Barbara Warren: Community Member
Hangping Xu: Faculty, East Asian Studies
