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Serious Societal Issues Weigh Heavily on the Minds of Undergraduates
HOUSTON (December 9, 2002) -The critical perception that today's undergraduate students are typically immature, self-absorbed, and only interested in socializing, celebrities, fashion, sports, downloading free music off the Internet, and other fun but superficial topics is called into question by the serious subject matter of the ebooks dominating the November Top 20 Best Read eBooks list. Clearly, a strong contingent of students are interested in weightier subjects as shown by the ebook reading habits of the users of the Questia service, the world's largest online library, whose user base is predominantly comprised of undergraduate and other students.
The Top 20 Best Read eBooks provides a view of the most widely read ebooks on Questia. The monthly list published by Questia Media, Inc. is available immediately at www.top20ebooks.com. Eight out of the Top 20 Best Read eBooks and thirteen out of the Top 35 Best Read eBooks focus on violence, abortion, AIDS, ethics, and gun control. The profound and thought-provoking subject matter of these books sheds an interesting light on what a portion of the undergraduates around the country are really pondering. Interestingly, the best read ebooks reflect subjects that are foremost on the social consciousness of undergraduates in the United States. Violence, AIDS, gun control, abortion and ethics are some of the most important domestic issues facing the United States, according to undergraduates polled by the national research organization, Student Monitor (Student Monitor, Lifestyle & Media Fall 2001).
"The top ebooks data can be useful to us from a strategic point of view as we expand the Questia library beyond the current 70,000-title collection and incorporate new subjects, titles, and media," said Troy Williams, Questia Media, Inc.'s President and CEO. "What we've seen over the past five months of data is that the online reading habits of Questia users tend to either mirror the societal issues that are foremost in the national consciousness - for example, violence against children - or they reflect serious social concerns that have been contemplated and debated for years, such as abortion and gun control," continued Williams.
To develop the Top 20 Best Read eBooks, the reading patterns of Questia users are aggregated and then ranked, with ranking based primarily on page views (each time one user looks at a page results in one "page view") and the overall number of unique users who accessed that title. Secondarily, book length is factored in to correct for the fact that shorter books, even if read in their entirety, would have fewer page views. This is the fifth publishing of The Top 20 Best Read eBooks. The November list and past months can be accessed at www.top20ebooks.com, and the December list will be available on January 9, 2003.
The Questia service is a personal online library for its subscribers, offering unlimited, simultaneous access to every title regardless of how many other users are reading the same book or journal article. Research tools help students and researchers organize, highlight, cite, and store their work on personalized bookshelves in the Questia library.
Questia Top 20 Best Read eBooks
November 2002
(October Ranks in parentheses) |
| 1. | Frida Kahlo: An Open Life , by Raquel Tibol and Elinor Randall. University of New Mexico Press, 1993. | (NA) |
| 2. | Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies , by Richard L. Davis. Praeger Publishers, 1998. | (2) |
| 3. | Islam: An Introduction , by Annemarie Schimmel. State University of New York Press, 1992. | (NA) |
| 4. | The Ethics of Human Cloning , by Leon R. Cass & James Q. Wilson. American Enterprise Institute, 1998. | (14) |
| 5. | The First World War , by Keith Robbins. Oxford University Press, 1993. | (18) |
| 6. | Aids: The Facts , by John Langone. Little Brown & Company, 1991. | (NA) |
| 7. | Women and the Koran: The Status of Women in Islam , by Anwar Hekmat. Prometheus Books, 1997. | (NA) |
| 8. | Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction , by Damien Keown. Oxford University Press, 1996. | (11) |
| 9. | The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice , by Robert M. Baird & Stuart E. Rosenbaum. Prometheus Books, 1993. | (7) |
| 10. | Capital Punishment in the United States: A Documentary History , by Cynthia Morris and Bryan Vila. Greenwood Press, 1997. | (35) |
| 11. | Causes and Consequences of World War II , by Robert A. Divine. Quadrangle Books, 1969. | (19) |
| 12. | The Navajo Indians , by Dane Coolidge & Mary Roberts Coolidge. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930. | (9) |
| 13. | Leadership for the Twenty-First Century , by Joseph C. Rost. Praeger Publishers, 1993. | (1) |
| 14. | The Abortion Controversy: A Documentary History , by Eva R. Rubin. Praeger Publishers, 1998. | (4) |
| 15. | The Bill of Rights: Its Origin and Meaning , by Irving Brant. Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. | (8) |
| 16. | The American Revolution , John Fiske. Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1891. | (10) |
| 17. | The Industrial Revolution , by Arnold J. Toynbee. Beacon Press, 1956. | (20) |
| 18. | Dangerous Relationships: How to Stop Domestic Violence Before It Stops You , by Noelle Nelson. Perseus Publishing, 1997. | (NA) |
| 19. | The Psychological Assessment of Abused and Traumatized Children , by Francis D. Kelly. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. | (NA) |
| 20. | The Salem Witch Crisis , by Larry Gragg. Praeger Publishers, 1992. | (6) |
| Rankings reflect total page views and unique users on the Questia service for November 1 through November 30, 2002, statistically weighted to factor in book length. |
About Questia
Founded in 1998, Questia Media, Inc., launched its revolutionary online library with powerful search and writing
tools created specifically to help students write better papers in January 2001. Questia provides unlimited access
to the full content of an extensive collection of books and journal articles, as well as a wide range of tools
including highlighter, markup, automatic footnotes and bibliography builder. For millions of students and researchers,
the Questia SM service will enable them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from virtually
every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet
by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Visit www.questia.com for
more information.
CONTACTS:
Helen Wilson
Questia Media, Inc 713-358-2551
hwilson@questia.com
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