More than 4,000 members of the Cornell community will spend two days of Orientation Week discussing American history through the prism of the true story of two brothers who lived and died in a world of their own, created entirely in their New York City home.

Over the summer, the 3,325 freshmen in Cornell's incoming Class of 2015 and 572 new transfer students received and read E.L. Doctorow's 2009 novel "Homer & Langley," Cornell's 2011 New Student Reading Project selection. The students will attend lectures and group discussions across campus Aug. 21-22.

The book is a fictionalized revision of the story of the Collyer brothers, who sequestered themselves in their family mansion and filled it with collections of newspapers and objects found on the street. The brothers became the stuff of urban legend when they died in 1947. In Doctorow's retelling, the Collyers live apart from, but intimately and paradoxically connected with, transformative events of 20th-century American history.

New students will attend one of six pre-assigned faculty lectures on topics related to themes in the book, Aug. 21 at 3:30 p.m. They also will meet across campus Aug. 22 in dozens of small group discussions with faculty and staff facilitators. Student participants will submit an essay on the book, choosing their topics from a list of 10 accompanying study questions available on the Reading Project website (http://reading.cornell.edu). Prizes will be awarded in an annual essay contest.

"We have chosen in the study questions to emphasize the reality effect -- to call students' attention to the fact that this book is based on a real story," said Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Laura Brown. "This raises interesting questions about Doctorow's choices in revising the historical facts."

Doctorow is "the pre-eminent historical novelist of our period," Brown said. Focusing discussions of the book on the adaptation of real lives and events, she said, "also allows us to bring up the question of what reality is, in terms of the relationship between imaginative realities and historical realities, but also in regard to the popular fascination with the supposed reality of today's media -- reality TV, the reality of coverage of the news, of the video footage that seems to be capturing something 'real' on the TV screen or the computer monitor."

Until 2010, Orientation Weekend featured a Reading Project panel discussion attended by all new students. The format was changed last year to six faculty lectures held simultaneously across campus, while still showcasing Cornell's intellectual diversity.

The "Homer & Langley" lecture topics, speakers and venues are:

"The new format of six lectures is working very well, we think," Brown said. "Students seem very attentive and engaged, and the faculty speakers last year were happy with their experience in presenting these lectures."