UAB President Carol Garrison has selected the Discussion Book Committee’s top choice, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, as the 2008 UAB Discussion Book.

The book’s author, Elizabeth Kolbert, will be on campus Monday, Aug. 18, when all new freshmen will participate in freshman discussion groups. Kolbert will deliver a short presentation on her book and participate in a panel discussion with Robert Mendelsohn, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Economics at Yale University, and Henry Pollard, professor emeritus in geophysics, University of Michigan. This event will inaugurate a year-long monthly series on different perspectives related to the significance, meaning, causes and consequences of climate change.

Students will have an opportunity at New Student Orientation to purchase Field Notes at a discounted price from the UAB Bookstore. Information on essays and other resources that present alternate perspectives on global warming also will be distributed.