King, a retired professor of English at the University of Guelph, is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter, photographer, woodworker and fledgling harmonica and flugelhorn player. In light of this recommendation, “we were pleased to have received the nomination of ‘The Inconvenient Indian’ for review and consideration,” said Eugene Lowe Jr., the chair of the One Book selection committee and assistant to the president. In response to a report from the John Evans Study committee, the University’s Native American Outreach and Inclusion Task Force recently recommended that the One Book program choose a reading on a Native American topic. The themes of “The Inconvenient Indian” dovetail with Northwestern’s ongoing Native American inclusion efforts. “‘The Inconvenient Indian’ will help diminish the ignorance many of us have and focus on some important issues that don’t normally come to the fore in media.”

“It’s a history book that turns conventional wisdom on its head, but is told with a storyteller’s humor and elegance,” said Medill Professor and former Dean Loren Ghiglione, the faculty chair of the 2015-16 One Book One Northwestern program. King’s original account of the disastrous relationship between Whites and Native Americans will be given to all incoming freshmen students at Northwestern University in the fall of 2015 and serve as the centerpiece of a year’s worth of lectures, films and other programs related to issues raised in the book. Thomas King’s provocative and unflinching book “The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America” will be the One Book One Northwestern selection for the coming academic year.

The inconvenient indian review