For your interpretive essay, I'd like you to read the book, The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. You may be able to borrow the book from the Meriam Library (or the Chico Public Library). It is also available at Tower, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com, and similar outlets. You may be able to get it at a used bookstore, such as The Bookstore downtown.
I'd like you to write an essay report, roughly 5-7 pages long (typed or word-processed double-spaced). In it, I'd like you briefly to summarize the MAIN events in the story and then ruminate on the book's connection with the themes of this class. This report is due Thursday, 18 March.
Your writing mechanics will be assessed: They count for about a third of the points on this report. Pay close attention to the organization of your paper, spelling, grammar, correct and varied sentence structure, proper punctuation and capitalization, and avoiding sexist usage. Sexist usage is the use of a gender-specific term to refer to people of both genders (e.g., "man," when you mean "humanity" or "people"; "mankind," when you mean "humankind"; "men," when you mean "people," "he," when you could simply rework your phrasing to the plural, which is, in English, conveniently ungendered). Sexist usage can also occur when you use the third person singular (i.e., "he" or "she") and then make tacit assumptions about the gender of a hypothetical individual on the basis of the most commonly represented gender in a given group (e.g., the doctor, when he...; the nurse, when she...). When in doubt, switch to the plural.