Imagine that the Oswego Reading Initiative (ORI) committee, inspired by the success of Sherman Alexie's presence, decided to get Atul Gawande to appear next year.  As author of Complications: a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science , we might have a shot at getting the medical writer to come on campus. The goal of ORI, as initially envisioned, is to foster community-wide discourse and sense of commonality, based on this text.  In addition, the "ideal" book for this purpose should be one which is inter- (or cross-) disciplinary, touching on (and involving) many different educational fields.  To promote the book's use, there will be classes taught, centered on or around themes from the book; there will be discussions and art surrounding this book; there will be pleas for professors to integrate the book, somehow, into their classrooms.   As an extra push, ORI will provide faculty with a folder chock-full of information and enticements

Your task is to "create" a folder, or folder parts, for Complications: a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science. The ORI folder for 2002-3 (for Haven) contained:
 *a cover letter explaining the purpose of ORI;
 *a student guide-- letter explaining ORI to students; information on author; historical context; time line; map of Europe in 1939; critical reading questions, thematically based (Self and Society; Tolerance and Intolerance in US; Freedoms in American Society); further exploration (web cites, other references);
 *a faculty guide (ideas for classroom activities;
 *faculty guide (with resources for additional information).

For the purposes of this assignment, you can skip the first and last sections, and concentrate primarily on the student guide and/or faculty guide. To be most effective, it might help for you to think about how one could use this book in your particular discipline, and what would make for an efficient student guide. Obviously, for a book that begins in the late 1930s, historical context and a map of Europe were important; neither is likely to be particularly important for Complications: a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science, but other elements might be.  Think creatively, think like a teacher, think "the only resource I should have to use for this assignment is Gawande's book."

As always, punctuation, grammar and neatness count. If you choose to do a slightly unconventional approach, that is fine, as long as you adhere to the above. And, if you do cite information from any source other than Gawande, it needs to be cited appropriately (see Berkin).