Summer Reading 2009

“The Last Town on Earth”

The year is 1918 and America is fighting a war on foreign soil that has divided the nation. Meanwhile, rumors of the spread of the deadliest epidemic ever are causing panic on the home front. The uninfected town of Commonwealth, Washington, votes to quarantine itself, and two young friends are asked to guard the town entrance and keep strangers out.

One day, a starving, cold - and seemingly ill - soldier comes out of the woods begging for sanctuary, and the two guards are confronted with an agonizing moral dilemma.

So begins The Last Town on Earth, a novel by Thomas Mullen, which has been selected as the Whitman College 2009 summer reading assignment for new students and the community. Listen to an interview by Liane Hansen with Thomas Mullen on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, September 24, 2006 here.

The following events have been planned by the College and community partners:

Faculty Panel
Saturday, August 29, 2009
2:00 – 3:00 p.m., Cordiner Hall

Nadine Knight, Assistant Professor of English; Jason Pribilsky, Associate Professor of Anthropology; and Jim Russo, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Health Professions Adviser will share their unique, discipline-specific perspectives on the summer reading, The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen. This session will provide a brief introduction to the intellectual community at Whitman and serve as a springboard for the engaging book discussions to follow.

An Evening with Thomas Mullen
Monday, September 21, 2009
7:30 p.m., Cordiner Hall

Thomas Mullen is the author of The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today, was a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction. His second novel, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, will be published in January 2010 by Random House. He was born in Rhode Island in 1974, graduated from Oberlin College, and has lived in Boston; Chapel Hill, NC; Washington, DC; and now lives in Atlanta with his wife and son.

Sponsored by ASWC Public Speakers, the Office of the Provost and the Dean of the Faculty, and the Office of the President.