For the second year, the Santa Barbara Public Library System and UCSB are partnering up for a community-wide, all-campus reading program known as Santa Barbara Reads.

This year’s book, The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy, by Georgetown University business professor Pietra Rivoli, was a finalist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year 2005 award. Copies are available at all branches of the public library, and a digital audio version can be downloaded from the Santa Barbara Public Library. UCSB has distributed 2,000 copies of the book free to its students, and Ventura-based Patagonia Co. has purchased 1,000 copies for its employees.

To reveal how the global economy really works, Rivoli chronicles the round-the-world odyssey of an ordinary T-shirt, from cotton growers in Lubbock, Texas, to factory workers in Shanghai, labor champions in the southern United States, a Walgreens store in Florida and a used-clothing bazaar in Africa. Questions about the politics, economics, ethics and history of modern business and globalization are examined.

The highlight of the Santa Barbara Reads program will be “community conversations” held during the last two weeks of February, led by experts such as Rich Appelbaum, director of the UCSB Global & International Studies Program; Nicole Bassett of Patagonia Co.; and others. The discussions will take place at the Santa Barbara Public Libraries.

Rivoli will give a free public lecture at UCSB’s Campbell Hall on March 5.