Common Read 2009

Panel Discussion on October 26 - "The Simple Life: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Why Less if Really More"

Flyer listing the 2009 Common Read Events at UNH.

Greasy Rider is the chronicle of two friends who drive cross country in a Mercedes station wagon with the goal of not stopping at a gas pump.  Along the way they stop at Al Gore’s house and make an interesting discovery, Google Headquarters which uses solar energy, the National Ethanol Council, an "eco-friendly" Wal-Mart and Fort Knox which has the world's largest geothermal heating system.  The book addresses environmental issues in a fun and readable way.   Melville is a journalist who has written for The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Money, and Popular Science among other publications.

Record from the Library of Congress

Book description on Amazon.com

Book description on LibraryThing.com

Algonquin Books, the publisher of Greasy Rider, provides information about the book.

  Special: Greasy Rider - How to Veg Your Car from Link TV

    E-mail questions to the author for an upcoming Book Group Discussion or videoconference.

    Ask the Greasy Rider a question by visiting OutsideOnline, where you can also find the answers to other questions such as: What large company is the greenest?  Could biofuels be worse for the environment than fossil fuels?  What is the best way to go green?

Videocast  10/15/2008 hosted by the Flying Pig Bookstore in Burlington, Vermont (45 minutes). Listen to the author, Greg Melville, read sections from his book and discuss selected topics.

Videocast: Long lost Greasy Rider Road Trip Video Footage

Learn about the author - Greg Melville                      

Greg Melville is a freelance journalist, and former newspaper reporter and editor at Men's Journal. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1992, and has written for such publications as the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, Skiing, Popular Mechanics, Outside, Reader's Digest, and Money. He lives with his wife, kids and dog in Asheville, North Carolina.

Biographical information from the Author's Website

Join the author's blog.

Biographical information on the Publisher's website, Algonquin Books.

Author entry on LibraryThing.com 

Author entry in Wikipedia.com 

Greasy Rider Fuels Mercedes with Vegetable Oil
article by Lori Ruggiero on CNN.com June 26, 2008.

        A Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future - an interview with Greg Melville by Ally Donnelly, NECN, October 13, 2008. 

Northeast Public Radio, October 20, 2008.  A recent interview on the environment and Greasy Rider.  Is it possible to drive coast-to-coast without stopping at a single gas pump? Journalist Greg Melville is determined to try. With his college buddy Iggy riding shotgun, he sets out on an enlightening road trip. Joe Donahue speaks with Greg Melville about his book and what he discovered on his journey.

Virginia Public Radio, October 28, 2008.  "Interview: Greasy Rider Author Greg Melville."  Host Mitch Wertliev speaks with Greg Melville.

WNYC - "30-Issues (Wiki): Drill Baby Drill? Oil vs. Alternative Energy," October 20, 2008.  John Raymond Takacs and Greg Melville kick off the discussion with tales from their "on the street" visions of energy independence. John Takacs is the author of The Take-Us, a novel about the inventor of a self-powered car and Greg Melville's new non-fiction book is Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-Oil-Powered Car, and a Cross-Country Search for a Greener Future (Algonquin Books, 2008).

Greasy Rider - the Movie 

Greasy Rider (Feature Film; 46:41)  Morgan Freeman, Noam Chomsky, Tommy Chong, and Yoko Ono star in this documentary film about a cross-country road trip in a 1981 Mercedes that runs on used vegetable oil.

Greasy Rider (produced and directed by Joey Carey and JJ Beck) Follow filmmakers JJ Beck and Joey Carey on a cross-country road trip powered by vegetable oil in a 1981 Mercedes-Benz. Interviews include Morgan Freeman

Greasy Rider Trailer - Chomsky, Tommy Chong, and Yoko Ono star in this documentary film about a cross-country road trip in a 1981 Mercedes that runs on used vegetable oil

HOW to FIND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION on TOPICS

This section will provide suggestions for finding additional information on topics covered in GREASY RIDER such as the Ultimate Green Home, Wind Power, Ethanol, Googleplex: a "Fence Swinger," Heat, and "Is Wal-Mart Green?"

How to Research for More Information

UNH Online Catalog - Searching the UNH Online Catalog for books and U.S. Government Documents will be a good starting point to explore some of the major themes of the book.  A subject search will be most useful under terms such as ethanol, green movement, environmental issues, energy conservation, wind power, to name a few. 

The Librarians have prepared the Library Catalog Tutorial to show you step-by-step how to search and find books and other materials in our online library catalog.  Just follow this link: Online Library Catalog Tutorial

Databases

Databases are also good places to search for information on the various aspects of different subjects.. Searching by keyword and subject will probably yield the best results. Here are some suggestions for search terms to get you started: ethanol, energy conservation, green movement wind power, solar power, environmental conservation, etc.

The M. K. Peterson Library subscribes to a variety of subscription databases some of which are listed below.  PLEASE NOTE: You will need your UNH network log-on in order to search these databases.

Before you start searching you might find it helpful to learn more about searching databases by completing the Database Searching Tutorial.  The Database Searching Tutorial is designed to help you understand how to search databases effectively.  In this tutorial, you will log into a database to do searches that replicate ones that we have done and compare your results to ours.

             General and News Sources

Newspapers by ProQuest. Full text coverage with images of  the Christian Science Monitor, 1988 on, Hartford Courant, 1992 on, Los Angeles Times, 1985 on, New York Times, 1999 on, Wall street Journal 1982 on, and Washington Post, 1987 on. 

Campus Research powered by WestLaw.  This database provides access to news and business sources and legal information. The News & Business tab allows comprehensive searching of newspapers, trade journals, magazines, broadcast transcripts, and other sources. It also contains company information from Hoover's Company Records, the SEC, and EDGAR.  Environmental issues and current news will be particularly helpful since this is a topic of concern and interest to many people at this time.

CQ Global Researcher This database focuses on global affairs and aims to expose students to a variety of international viewpoints on a selected topic. Each issue covers a single topic written by experienced journalists who have extensively covered the subject at hand. Sections in each issue include background information, an historic chronology, the current situation, a "pro-con" debate, an outlook for the future, a bibliography of sources used for the issue, suggested articles from current periodicals, and "voices from abroad." Also includes maps and graphs.

CQ Researcher CQ Researcher provides original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news.  Controversial topics are addressed in a balanced, unbiased manner in the CQ tradition. New topics are published weekly.

CREDO Reference This collection of both general and subject specific, full text reference books is helpful in providing background information on a wide variety of topics. This database includes dictionaries, encyclopedias, census information, images, biographies and more.

Expanded Academic ASAP. Provides access to citations and abstracts from 3,200 sources, and 2000 full text titles in both scholarly and popular journals, as well as newspapers.  Subjects covered include health, education, history, science, psychology, economics, and cultural studies.

InfoTrac OneFile from iCONN. 4,200 full text titles covering a broad range of subjects.  Access to 8,000 titles from general interest magazines, academic journals, business and technology publications, law journals, health care periodicals, newspapers and news services.  Largely full text with some citations and abstracts.

Science and Engineering

Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Collection (Knovel Books)
Earth Sciences Collection (Knovel Books)
Environment & Environmental Engineering Collection (Knovel Books)
Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering Collection (Knovel Books)

Full text electronic manuals, handbooks and other reference texts on the topics of the designated collections of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Earth Sciences, Environment & Environmental Engineering, and Mechanics & Mechanical Engineering. Click on the My Subscription tab and select the Subject Area of interest to you, which takes you to these reference books. There is also a search box that lets you select a subject area from the drop-down menu and search across all titles that we have for this subscription.

Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Online (McGraw-Hill)  Enjoy online access to illustrated articles from the latest edition of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. This resource also includes research updates from the McGraw-Hill Yearbooks, the latest Science News headlines, scientific biographies, links to evaluated and approved web sites, and more. Entries are written by experts in their respective fields

Engineering Village 2  A suite of engineering databases, including Compendex, the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering database in the world. Compendex contains over 8 million records and references over 5,000 international engineering sources including journal, conference, and trade publications. Also links to Referex database, IHS Standards, US Patent and Trademark Office, Esp@cenet (European Patent Office), Scirus (science search engine) and LexisNexis News.

ENGnetBASE: Engineering Handbooks Online  ENGnetBASE is CRC's online collection of full-text engineering handbooks, currently consisting of 1,155 titles. Browse by handbook categories, which include aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, environmental engineering, fluid dynamics, geotechnical engineering, heat transfer, lasers & optical engineering, microwaves & electromagnetics, nanoscience/nanotechnology, operations research, systems engineering, and tribology.

General OneFile  Comprehensive periodical resource with more than 60 million database records. More than 11,000 titles, backfile coverage from 1980, and an intuitive search interface make this a useful source for most popular, business, and professional topics.

GeoRef  From the American Geological Institute. Comprehensive geoscience resource containing over 2.6 million bibliographic records covering all branches of mineralogy and crystallography, of silicates and non-silicates. More than 3,000 journals are included in the database as well as journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports, and theses.

GreenFile This multidisciplinary database provides information on "all aspects of human impact to the environment," including legal, educational, agricultural, technological, health and other aspects.

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics Online(CRC)  Corresponds to the 89^th print 2008-2009 edition and provides data needed by chemists, physicists, and engineers on the properties of inorganic and organic compounds. Incorporates the latest CODATA/NIST values for fundamental physical constants and the new IUPAC standards for the pH scale for aqueous solutions.

HighWire Press 

A Stanford University site that indexes to articles in over 350 online journals from many publishers, largely in the science and health fields, with some free full text.  Check the Journals at the MKP Library link for the journals to which we have access.

Publications Included: Click on the Browse tab to find links for Journals to which I have Access at My Institution (from on-campus computers or connected by proxy connection) or Journals with free full-text articles (available from anywhere). There are also A-Z links to all HighWire journals at the bottom of the home page.

K-Essentials (Knovel) Content on Knovel is carefully selected from more than 30 leading publishing partners including McGraw Hill, Wiley, Springer and Elsevier. The full-text reference content that includes books, databases and conference proceedings is all presented on the same interface, is fully searchable and is integrated with our productivity tools.

Science.gov: FirstGov for Science  Gateway to government resources, you can search many government agency databases and publications by topic

Science Reference Center  EBSCOhost's Science Reference Center is helpful for all science research projects. Included in this database are reference books, journals, biographies, and images. Topics covered: biology, chemistry, earth, space, the environment, health & medicine, physics, technology and wildlife.

SCIRUS: for Scientific Information Only  An Internet search engine designed to retrieve scientific information

WileyInterscience  An index to publications of John Wiley & Sons, which includes 300 leading scientific, medical and technical journals. Register to search the site for free, and use the Journals at the MKP Library link on our home page for our journals.

Health, Psychology, and Social Science

Berkeley Electronic Press. Contains a vast repository of working papers and preprints, with a complete list arranged by subject.

BioMedCentral. Online journals in the sciences.

CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature). Designed to serve the needs of health care professionals.

Directory of Open Access Journals. Freely available online journals, organized by subject. Hosted at Lund University, Sweden, a co-project of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and Open Access Institute, Budapest. Browse by title or subject, or choose a keyword search.

Health and Wellness Resource Center from iCONN. Specialized database which concentrates on current medical news and information, including alternative medicine. Full-text coverage for many of the journals. Includes an online encyclopedia, Mosby's dictionary, directories of health providers and Associations, links to web sites and government databases.

Highwire - A Stanford University site that indexes to articles in over 350 online journals from many publishers, largely in the science and health fields, with some free full text. 

PsycARTICLES - A definitive source of searchable, full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The database contains more than 40,000 articles from 56 journals--45 published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and 11 from allied organizations.

PsycINFO - From the American Psychological Association (APA). The online version of Psychological Abstracts. Contains more than 2 million citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, all in psychology and related disciplines, dating as far back as the 1800s. Journal coverage, which spans 1887 to present, includes international material selected from nearly 2,000 periodicals in more than 25 languages.

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection from EBSCOHost.  Mostly full text of non-APA (American Psychological Association) journal literature from the 1970s on.  Includes book reviews, conference proceedings and reports. 

PubMed - The National Library of Medicine's PubMed database. Some full text, many more citations.

SCIRUS: for Scientific Information Only  An Internet search engine designed to retrieve scientific information, directly at http://www.scirus.com/.  Free to all.

Comments, additions, and suggestions are welcome and can be sent to: hdobi@newhaven.edu

This page was last updated on 18 August 2009.