MRSPL Thursday Evening Book Group

March 2012: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

2012-02-06T12:56:00.004-05:00

Thursday, March 1, 2012 @ 7:30 PM
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
by David Mitchell

In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.

But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author. (from http://www.amazon.com/)

Background Information

Disucssion questions and background information - reviews, author bio, and related links - will be posted here at least one week before the discussion.

February 2012: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

2012-01-15T14:50:00.014-05:00

Thursday, February 2, 2012 @ 7:30 PM
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

"One of the most enjoyable baseball books in years." - The New York Times

"Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?" (from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/)

Reviews:

Ackman, Dan. "Book Review: Moneyball." Forbes. May 28, 2003.
Hyman, Mark. "Putting the Lie to Baseball's Big 'Crisis.'" Business Week. June 9, 2003.
Kipen, David. "Billy Beane's Brand-New Ballgame." The San Francisco Chronicle. June 1, 2003.
Knopes, Carol. "Baseball Stats Take on New Meaning as 'Moneyball' Tells Tale." USAToday. June 8, 2003.
Maslin, Janet. "Books of the Times: Three Strikes and Your Out at the New Ballgame." The New York Times. May 12, 2003.

Audio/Video:

"A Conversation About Baseball with Michael Lewis." Charlie Rose. May 23, 2003. [video: 14 min 30 sec]
"'Moneyball': Tracking Down How Stats Win Games." Fresh Air from WHYY. September 23, 2011 (originally broadcast on May 28, 2003). [audio: 31 min 53 sec]
"The Man Behind the 'Moneyball' Sabermetrics." Talk of the Nation. September 26, 2011. [audio: 17 min 6 sec]

Related Resouces:

Crasnick, Jerry. "'2002' Moneyball Draft Class in Review." ESPN.com. September 24, 2011.
Wikipedia: Billy Beane
Wikipedia: Michael Lewis

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide (with discussion questions) for Moneyball is availabe online through LitLovers.com.

January 2012: The Wednesday Letters

2011-12-12T12:03:00.008-05:00

Thursday, January 5, 2012 @ 7:30 PM
The Wednesday Letters
by Jason F. Wright

New York Times Bestseller

Jack and Laurel Cooper die in each other's arms one night in the bed-and-breakfast that they own and operate. The event calls their three grown children home for the funeral, including their youngest son, a fugitive from the law who must face an outstanding warrant for his arrest and confront his one true love, now engaged to another man. As events unfold around the funeral, the three children discover a treasure trove of family history in the form of "Wednesday letters"-notes that Jack wrote to his wife every single week of their married lives. As they read, the children brush across the fabric of a devoted marriage that survived a devastating event kept secret all these years. (excerpted from Publishers Weekly)

Audio/Video:

Interview with Jason Wright about The Wednesday Letters on KSL5 (Salt Lake City, UT) [video: 3 min 52 sec]

Related Resources:

Jason F. Wright's Offical Web Site
Official Web Site for The Wednesday Letters
Wikipedia: Jason F. Wright

Discussion Questions:

A reader's guide with discussion questions is available online on the Penguine USA web site.

December 2011: Mayflower

2011-11-13T23:57:00.001-05:00

Thursday, December 3, 2011 @ 7:30 PM

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound. The Mayflower’s religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups—the Wampanoags, under the charismatic and calculating chief Massasoit, and the Pilgrims, whose pugnacious military officer Miles Standish was barely five feet tall—maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England would erupt into King Philip’s War, a savagely bloody conflict that nearly wiped out English colonists and natives alike and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them. With towering figures like William Bradford and the distinctly American hero Benjamin Church at the center of his narrative, Philbrick has fashioned a fresh and compelling portrait of the dawn of American history—a history dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion. (www.amazon.com)

Reviews:

Maslin, Janet. "Pilgrims and Indians, the Forgotten Years." The New York Times. May 4, 2006.
Parini, Joe. "New World, Old Woes." The Guardian. July 21, 2006.
Ramsey, Bruce. "A War with Bad Guys on Both Sides in Early America." The Seattle Times. May 12, 2006.
Shorto, Russell. "Pilgrims and Indians." The New York Times. June 4, 2006.
Yardley, Jonathan. "Mayflower: A Story of Courage. Community, and War." The Washington Post. May 7, 2006.

Audio/Video:

Philbrick, Nathaniel. "Debunking Pilgrim Myths: Before Plymouth." NPR's All Things Considered. November 22, 2006. [audio: 3 min 44 sec]
Philbrick, Nathaniel. "Debunking Pilgrim Myths: The First Thanksgiving." NPR's All Things Considered. November 23, 2006. [audio: 3 min 29 sec]
Philbrick, Nathaniel. "Mayflower." C-Span Video Library. June 8, 2006. [video: 58 min]

Related Resources:

BookReporter: Biography of Nathaniel Philbrick
Nathaniel Philbrick's Official Site
Wikipedia: Nathaniel Philbrick

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for Mayflower are available from Nathaniel Philbrick's official site.

November 2011: The Killer Angels

2011-10-08T14:31:00.004-04:00

Thursday, November 3, 2011 @ 7:30 PM

The Killer Angels
by Michael Shaara

In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping, unforgettable—the dramatic story of the battleground for America’s destiny. (Amazon.com)

"My favorite historical novel…A superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant."

James M. McPherson

Related Sites:

Bio of Michael Shaara from Jeff Shaara's Official Site
CliffsNotes for The Killer Angels
Gettysburg National Military Park
HowStuffWorks: How the Battle of Gettysburg Worked?
eHistory Archive: Gettysburg (1863)
Wikipedia: Battle of Gettysburg
Wikipedia: The Killer Angels
Wikipedia: Michael Shaara

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for The Killer Angels can be found on the Framingham (MA) Public Library site.

October 2011: Catfish and Mandala

2011-09-09T17:28:00.004-04:00

Thursday, October 6, 2011 @ 7:30 PM

Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
by Andrew X. Pham

A brilliantly written memoir in which a young Vietnamese-American uses a bicycle journey in his homeland as a vehicle to tell his eventful life story. The veteran-penned “going back” book has become a subgenre of the American Vietnam War canon. So, too, has the multigenerational Vietnamese-refugee family saga. Now comes a stunning first: a family tale by a Vietnamese-American that centers on an eye-opening trip to his native land. Pham (born Pham Xuan An) fled Vietnam with his family in 1977 at age ten. Raised in California, he worked hard, went to UCLA, and landed a good engineering job. A few years ago, rebelling against family pressures to succeed and a patronizing, if not racist, work environment, Pham quit his job. Much to his parents’ displeasure, he set off on bicycle excursions through Mexico, Japan, and, finally, Vietnam. “I have to do something unethnic,” he says. “I have to go. Make my pilgrimage.” In his first book, Pham details his solo cycling journeys, mixing in stories of his and his family’s life before and after leaving Vietnam. The most riveting sections are Pham’s exceptional evocations of his father’s time in a postwar communist reeducation (read: concentration) camp and the family’s near miraculous escape by sea from their homeland. The heart of the narrative is Pham’s depiction of his five-month adventure in Vietnam, often not a pretty picture. Because of his unique status as a budget-minded Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese), he runs into significant harassment from the police and many unfriendly civilians. For every moment of self-discovery and enchantment there seem to be ten of disappointment and dispiritedness—plus nearly constant physical pain from his journey and a bout of dysentery. But Pham perseveres. He returns to his home, America, with a smile on his face. An insightful, creatively written report on Vietnam today and on the fate of a Vietnamese family in America. (Kirkus Reviews 10/01/1999)

Reviews:

"Andrew Pham's Catfish and Mandala." BBC's h2g2. May 10, 2001.
Goodheart, Adam. "Travel: Holiday Books 1999." The New York Times. December 5, 1999.
"In Brief: Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham." The Guardian. October 13, 2000.
Lee, Yishane. "Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam." Time Asia. January 10, 2000.
Lloyd McMichael, Barbara. "Going Full Cycle: Andrew X. Pham Pedals Along a Journey of Discovery." The Seattle Times. September 30, 1999.
Orizio, Riccardo. "From Lost Identities to Lost Tribes." The Independent. April 16, 2000.

Audio/Video:

"Catfish and Mandala." C-SPAN2's BookTV. December 2, 1999. [video: 51 min 46 sec]
Susan Stamberg. "Favorite Summers - Part IV: Andrew X. Pham." NPR's Morning Edition. July 24, 2001. [audio: ?]

Related Resources:

Andrew X. Pham's Official Web Site
Bissell, Tom. "Destination: Vietnam: The Literary Guide to the World." Salon. June 15, 2006.
Pham, Andrew X. "Belonging to All the World: A Poem by Andrew X. Pham." NPR. October 17, 2001.
Wikipedia: Andrew X. Pham

September 2011: City of Thieves

2011-08-21T13:38:00.072-04:00

Thursday, September 1, 2011 @ 7:30 PM

City of Thieves
by David Benioff

During the Nazis' brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible. By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men. (synopsis from www.powells.com)

Reviews:

Berrett, Jesse. "Fiction Review: Benioff's City of Thieves." The San Francisco Chronicle. May 13, 2008.
Collins, Robert. "City of Thieves." The Observer. June 28, 2009.
Fishman, Boris. "Wartime Rations." The New York Times. July 6, 2008.
Keenan, Justin. "Nothing Is Illuminated." The Harvard Book Review. Summer 2008.
Meaney, Thomas. "Living by Their Wits." The Washington Post. July 10, 2008.

Audio/Visual:

"David Benioff of City on Thieves: Interview, Part I (from BordersMedia)." YouTube. March 31, 2009. (6 min 4 sec)
"David Benioff of City on Thieves: Interview, Part II (from BordersMedia)." YouTube. March 31, 2009. (6 min 4 sec)
"David Benioff of City on Thieves: Interview, Part III (from BordersMedia)." YouTube. March 31, 2009. (3 min 11 sec)

Related Sites:

"David Benioff." The Internet Movie Database (IMBD)
"David Benioff." Wikipedia.
Kachka, Boris. "Dungeon Master: David Benioff (Q&A)." New York Magazine. May 18, 2008.

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide, including discussion questions, for City of Thieves is available online from the Penguin.com (USA) site.

August 2011: Whatever You Do, Don't Run

2011-07-20T16:51:00.002-04:00

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide
by Peter Allison

Whatever You Do, Don’t Run is a hilarious collection of true tales from top safari guide Peter Allison. In a place where the wrong behavior could get you eaten, Allison has survived face-to-face encounters with big cats, angry elephants, and the world’s most unpredictable animals—herds of untamed tourists and foolhardy guides whose outrageous antics sometimes make them even more dangerous than a pride of hungry lions! Join Allison as he faces down charging lions—twice; searches for a drunk, half-naked tourist who happens to be a member of the British royal family; drives a Land Rover full of tourists into a lagoon full of hippos; and adopts the most vicious animal in Africa as his “pet.” Full of lively humor and a genuine love and respect for Botswana and its rich wildlife, Whatever You Do, Don’t Run takes you to where the wild things are and introduces you to a place where every day is a new adventure! (from back cover)

Reviews:

Alford, Henry. "Holiday Books: Travel." The New York Times. December 2, 2007.

Audio/Visual:

The Cheetah Watch Chat with Peter Allison: Part 1 (8 min), Part II (4 min 1 sec), and Part III (4 min)

Related Resources:

Westwood, Alison. "Interview with Peter Allison, Author of Don't Look Behind You." Getaway. March 19, 2010.
Wikipedia: Peter Allison

July 2011: Group Book Share!

2011-06-10T15:16:00.087-04:00

Thu, July 7, 2011
@ 7:30 PM
Our First Ever
Group Book Share!

During our July 7 meeting, instead of discussion ONE book, we'll each be sharing a book that we have read independently and loved! Just bring the book and tell us - during an informal, open discussion - why you read it... and why we should, too! As always, all are welcome and light refreshments will be served. And on August 4, we'll resume our regular format with a discussion of Peter Allison's Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide.

Note: The following books were recommended by group members during the book share:

Fiction

Belles on Their Toes by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.and Earnestine Gilbreth Carey
Butterfly's Child by Angela Davis-Gardner
City of Thieves by David Benioff [selected for September 1 discussion]
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
The Counterlife by Philip Roth
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Secret Lives by E.M. Benson *
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Wednesday Letters by Jason M. Wright

Nonfiction

Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay by William W. Warner
Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X. Pham * [selected for October 6 discussion]
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from America's Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz
The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Own Words by Ronald C. White, Jr.
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 1830-1900 by David McCullough
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt

* Item is not currently in the MRSPL collection but is linked to Amazon for more information.

June 2011: The Help

2011-05-12T09:26:00.000-04:00

Thu, June 2, 2011 @ 7:30 PM
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett

Set in Stockett's native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. A century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black maids raised white children and ran households but were paid poorly, often had to use separate toilets from the family, and watched the children they cared for commit bigotry. In Stockett's narrative, Miss Skeeter, a young white woman, is a naive, aspiring writer who wants to create a series of interviews with local black maids. Even if they're published anonymously, the risk is great; still, Aibileen and Minny agree to participate. Tension pervades the novel as its events are told by these three memorable women. Is this an easy book to read? No, but it is surely worth reading. It may even stir things up as readers in Jackson and beyond question their own discrimination and intolerance in the past and present. (from Library Journal)

Reviews:

Clements, Toby. "The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Review." The Telegraph. July 24, 2009.
Maslin, Janet. "Racial Insults and Quiet Bravery in 1960s Mississippi." The New York Times. February 18, 2009.
Memmott, Carol. "Good Help Isn't Hard to Find, Thanks to Kathryn Stockett." USA Today. March 4, 2009.
Steinberg, Sybil. "The Black Maids' Tale." The Washington Post. April 1, 2009.

Audio/Visual:

"[Katie Couric Interviewing Kathryn Stockett]" CBSnews.com. March 2, 2010. [video: 62 min 9 sec]
"Readers Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett." The Diane Rehm Show. February 25, 2010. [audio: 51 min 34 sec]
"The Help Author Says Criticism Makes Her Cringe." NPR's All Thing's Considered. Decemebr 23, 2009. [audio: 8 min 20 sec]
"Warwick's Books Presents Kathryn Stockett." FORA.tv. March 27, 2009. [video: 35 min 14 sec]

Relates Resources:

Curtis, Mary C. "Coping with The Help." The Root. March 11, 2010.
"Interview: Kathryn Stocket Discusses Her First Novel, The Help." Bookbrowse.com. [No date.]
"Interview Kathryn Stockett (Author of The Help)." The Book Whisperer. June 11, 2010.
Kathryn Stocket's Official Website
Robertson, Campbell. "Family Maid Files Suit Against Author of The Help." The New York Times. February 11, 2011.
Stockett, Kathryn. "This Life: Kathryn Stockett on Her Childhood in the Deep South." Daily Mail. July 18, 2009.
Suddath, Claire. "Q&A: Kathryn Stocket, Author of The Help." Time. November 11, 2009.

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide, including an author interview and discussion questions, is available online through Penguin.com (USA).

May 2011: The City of Falling Angels

2011-04-25T09:36:00.002-04:00

Thu, May 5, 2011 @ 7:30 PM
The City of Falling Angels
by John Berendt

Venice--a city of masks and riddles, where narrow streets and passageways form a giant maze that confounds the uninitiated and deepens the sense of mystery. As captivating as it is elusive, the city teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Architectural treasures crumble--foundations shift, ornaments fall--even as efforts to preserve them are under way. In The City of Falling Angels, John Berendt, author of the record-breaking bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, unveils the enigmatic Venice as only he can. (from http://www.bn.com/)

Reviews:

Goodheart, Adam. "There's Life After Lady Chablis." The New York Times. September 25, 2005.
Maslin, Janet. "Book of the Times: Turning Venice into Savannah on Stilts." The New York Times. September 22, 2005.
Morris, Jan. "Dirt in Venice: Jan Morris Takes Issue with Jon Berendt's Muck-Raking Exploration of the Serenissima, The City of Falling Angels." The Guardian. September 24, 2005.
Povoledo, Elisabetta. "Venice Bristles at the Savannah Treatment." The New York Times. February 15, 2006.
Yardley, Jonathan. "The Invisible City: The Indominable City of Venice Has Lessons for Us About Surviving Disaster." The Washington Post. September 18, 2005.

Audio/Video:

"A Conversation with Author John Berendt." Charlie Rose. November 11, 2005. [video: 26 min 47 sec]
"Mystery in Venice, The City of Falling Angels." NPR's Morning Edition Saturday. October 8, 2005. [audio: 7 min 56 sec]

Other Resources:

"John Berendt Is Not Writing a Book." New Orleans Living. [March 5, 2009]
Mitchell, Gloria. "Meet the Writers: John Berendt." Barnes&Noble.com. Fall 2005.
Teatro la Fenice: Official Web Site
Weich, Dave. "Author Interviews: Midday in the Annex with John Berendt." Powells.com. July 14, 1999.
Wikipedia: John Berendt

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide with discussion questions for The City of Falling Angels is available through Penguion,com (USA).

April 2011: The Leopard

2011-03-08T16:07:00.001-05:00

Thursday, April 7, 2011
@ 7:30 PM
The Leopard
by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time. Although Giuseppe di Lampedusa had long had the book in mind, he began writing it only in his late fifties; he died at age sixty, soon after the manuscript was rejected as unpublishable. In his introduction, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, Lampedusa's nephew, gives us a detailed history of the initial publication and the various editions that followed. And he includes passages Lampedusa wrote for the book that were omitted by the original Italian editors. Here, finally, is the definitive edition of this brilliant and timeless novel. (from http://www.bn.com/)

"...Lampedusa's deftness with words is so fine that, although nothing much appears to happen in the book ... to many readers The Leopard is the greatest Italian novel this century, perhaps the greatest ever, and uniquely relevant to modern Italy." -- The Economist

Reviews:

Donadio, Rachel. "The Leopard Turns 50." The New York Times. July 13, 2008.

Other Resources:

Barnes, Julian. "Letters from the Man Who Wrote The Leopard." The Guardian. November 13, 2010.
"Lessons from The Leopard." The Economist. December 10, 2009.
Mitgang, Herbert. "Books of the Times: The Dying World of the Last Leopard." The New York Times. August 21, 1991.
Wikipedia: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Wikipedia: The Leopard

March 2011: The Lemon Tree

2011-02-10T11:19:00.000-05:00

Thursday, March 3, 2011

@ 7:30 PM

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East
by Sandy Tolan

In the summer of 1967, not long after the Six Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramla, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly twenty years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited him in. This poignant encounter is the starting point for a true story of two families, one Arab, one Jewish, amid the fraught modern history of the region. In Bashir's childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, he sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. Both are swept up in the fates of their people, and their lives form a personal microcosm of more than half a century of Israeli-Palestinian history. (from the publisher)

Reviews:

Bird, Kai. "The Middle East: A Land of Two People." The Washington Post. June 25, 2006.
Kehe, Marjorie. "One House, Two Families' Dreams." The Christian Science Monitor. May 9, 2006.

Audio/Visual:

"An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East." FORA.tv. May 21, 2007. [video: 64 min 48 sec]
"The Lemon Tree Tells Mideast History via Friendship." NPR's Fresh Air from WHYY. May 15, 2006. [audio: 24 min 56 sec]
"Sandy Tolan - On Writing The Lemon Tree." Google Videos. "3 years ago" [video: 7 min 25 sec]

Other Resources:

Homeland Production: Sandy Tolan
Sandy Tolan's Official Web Site
USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism: Sandy Tolan

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide - with discussion questions - for The Lemon Tree is available on Sandy Tolan's official web site.

February 2011: The Daughter of Time

2011-01-12T17:55:00.000-05:00

Thursday, February 3, 2011
@ 7:30 PM
The Daughter of Time
by Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey re-creates one of history's most famous — and vicious — crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction, now with a new introduction by Robert Barnard. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains — a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England's throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower. The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing's most gifted masters. (from the publisher)

Related Reading:

Butler, Pamela J. "The Mystery of Josephine Tey." Reprinted from the Richardian Register. Fall 2002.
Stabenow, Dana. "How My Mother and Josephine Tey Lead Me into a Life of Crime." July 29, 2009.
Wikipedia: Josephine Tey
Wikipedia: Richard III
Yardley, Jonathan. "Josephine Tey: Sleuthing into The Mystery of History." The Washington Post. March 12, 2003.

January 2011: Justice

2010-12-09T13:51:00.003-05:00

Thu, Jan 6, 2011 @ 7:30 PM
Justice: What's The Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel

Harvard government professor Sandel (Public Philosophy) dazzles in this sweeping survey of hot topics—the recent government bailouts, the draft, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and reparations for slavery—that situates various sides in the debates in the context of timeless philosophical questions and movements. Sandel takes utilitarianism, Kant's categorical imperative and Rawls's theory of justice out of the classroom, dusts them off and reveals how crucial these theories have been in the construction of Western societies—and how they inform almost every issue at the center of our modern-day polis. The content is dense but elegantly presented, and Sandel has a rare gift for making complex issues comprehensible, even entertaining… Erudite, conversational and deeply humane, this is truly transformative reading. (Publishers Weekly)

Reviews:

Etzioni, Amitai. "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?" The Hedgehog Review (UVa). Spring 2010.
Girgis, Sherif. "The Ends of Justice." The Oxonian Review (Oxford University). November 9, 2009.
Hamilton, Kevin J. "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?: A Witty Road Map for Negotiating Moral Dilemmas." The Seattle Times. September 27, 2009.
Rauch, Jonathan. "You Be the Judge." The New York Time. November 27, 2009.
Ree, Jonathan. "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Micahel Sandel." The Guarduan (UK). November 1, 2009.
Shea, Christopher. "Michael Sandel Wants to Talk to You About Justice." The Chronicle of Higher Education. September 28, 2009.

Audio Interviews:

"The First Teleforum with Michael Sandel." Macmillan Books. November 2010. [58:00] Note: Scroll to the bottom of the page to access this audio feature. [audio - 58:00]
"Michael Sandel on Justice." NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook. December 14, 2009. [audio - 46:41]
"Michael J. Sandel: Justice." The Diane Rehm Show. October 7, 2009. [audio - 51:34]

Video Lectures:

Download and view, for free through iTunes University, the entire Harvard course (12 roughly 1 hour lectures) upon which Michael J. Sandel's book is is based!
The same free lectures may also be viewed on YouTube or through a nice multi-media portal at http://www.harvardjustice.org/.

Related Sources:

Harvard University's Department of Government: Michael J. Sandel
Wikipedia: Michael J. Sandel

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions and additional suggested reading are available at http://www.harvardjustice.org/.

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December 2010: Homer & Langley

2010-11-05T12:38:00.003-04:00

Thursday, December 2, 2010
@ 7:30 PM
Homer & Langley: A Novel
by E.L. Doctorow

NOTE: This will be the 50th book the group has read since starting in November 2006!

Doctorow, whose literary trophy shelf has got to be overflowing by now, delivers a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers. When WWI hits and the Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley's parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war, with his Columbia education and his godlike immunity to such an ordinary fate as death in a war. Homer, alone and going blind, faces a world considerably dimmed though more deliciously felt by his other senses. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans: inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion, Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects, each eventually abandoned, though he continues to imagine them in increasingly bizarre ways, which he then recites to Homer. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness. Doctorow's achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It's a feat of distillation, vision and sympathy. (from Publisher's Weekly)

Reviews:

Alter, Alexandra. "The Mad Kings of Clutter." The Wall Street Journal. August 21, 2009.
Churchwell, Sarah. "Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctor." The Guardian (UK). January 24, 2010.
Dirda, Michael. "The Collyer Brothers: A Collective Obsession." The Washington Post. September 3, 2009.
Epstein, Robert. "Homer and Langley, by E.L. Doctorow." The Independent (UK). January 17, 2010.
Kakutani, Michiko. "How Did They End Up That Way?" The New York Times. August 31, 2009.
Teele, Elinor. "Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctor." California Literary Review. August 31, 2009.
Ulin, David L. "Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow." Los Angeles Times. August 30, 2009.

Audio/Visual:

"A Conversation with Author E.L. Doctorow." Charlie Rose. Septemebr 10, 2009. [video: 18 min 29 sec]
"E.L. Doctorow: Homer & Langley." The Diane Rehm Show. Septemebr 27, 2009. [audio: 52 min 15 sec]
"E.L. Doctorow Interview." C-Span. September 25, 2008. [video: 1 hr 9 min]
"E.L. Doctorow on His New Novel Homer & Langley." WYNC Radio. (Posted on Youtube.com on eptember 22, 2009.) [video: 5 min 50 sec]
Wultz, Mark. "A Discusison of E.L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley." WebsterStateU. September 8, 2010. (Posted on YoueTube on September 14, 2010.) [video: 1 hr 1 min 7 sec]

Related Sites:

Cowles, Gregory. "Doctorow's Pack Rats." The New York Times. May 14, 2009.
"E.L. Doctorow on Homer & Langley." CBS Sunday Morning. September 20, 2009.
E.L. Doctorow's Official Web Site
Lidz, Franz. "The Paper Chase." The New York Times. October 26, 2003.
Wikipedia: Collyer Brothers
Wikipedia: E.L. Doctorow

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for Homer & Langley are available from Random House.

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November 2010: Zeitoun

2010-10-09T15:39:00.003-04:00

Thursday, November 4, 2010
Zeitoun
by Dave Eggers

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and contracting business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared. Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores Zeitoun’s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy — an American who converted to Islam — and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible. Like What Is the What, Zeitoun was written in close collaboration with its subjects and involved vast research — in this case, in the United States, Spain, and Syria. (from amazon.com)

“Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina.... Eggers’s tone is pitch-perfect—suspense blended with just enough information to stoke reader outrage and what is likely to be a typical response: How could this happen in America?... It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction.... Fifty years from now, when people want to know what happened to this once-great city during a shameful episode of our history, they will still be talking about a family named Zeitoun.” — Timothy Egan, The New York Times Book Review

Reviews:

Egan, Timothy. "After the Deluge." The New York Times. August 13, 2009.
Martin, Valerie. "Zeitoun by Dave Eggers." The Guardian (UK). March 21, 2010.
O'Hehir, Andrew. "Dave Egger's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Reality." Salon. July 16, 2009.
Rahim, Sameer. "Zeitoun by Dave Eggers: Review." The Telegraph (UK). March 18, 2010.

Audio/Visual:

"Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun." PBS's Tavis Smiley. August 27, 2010.
"Dave Eggers: Zeitoun." NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook. July 31, 2009.
"War on Terror, Katrina Intersect in Zeitoun." NPR's All Things Considered. July 25, 2009.
Wesam, Nassar. "An Interview with Dave Eggers on His Best Selling Book Zeitoun." Vimeo.com. April 26, 2010.

Related Resources:

McSweeney's: Dave Eggers
Moyer, Justin. "Conversations: Dave Eggers." The Washington Post. August 13, 2009.
San Francisco Public Library's Once City One Book 2010: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
Wikipedia: Dave Eggers
Zeitoun Founation

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide, including discussion questions, is available from Random House.

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October 2010: Bridge of Sighs

2010-09-30T14:56:00.006-04:00

Thu, October 7, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
Bridge of Sighs
by Richard Russo

Richard Russo's portraits of smalltown life may be read not only as fine novels but as invaluable guides to the economic decline of the American Northeast. Russo was reared in Gloversville, N.Y. (which got its name from the gloves no longer manufactured there), and a lot of mid–20th-century Gloversville can be found in his earlier fiction (Mohawk; The Risk Pool). It reappears in Bridge of Sighs, Russo's splendid chronicle of life in the hollowed-out town of Thomaston, N.Y., where a tannery's runoff is slowly spreading carcinogenic ruin.At the novel's center is Lou C. Lynch (his middle initial wins him the unfortunate, lasting nickname Lucy), but the narrative, which covers more than a half-century, also unfolds through the eyes of Lou's somewhat distant and tormented friend, Bobby Marconi, as well as Sarah Berg, a gifted artist who Lou marries and who loves Bobby, too. The lives of the Lynches, the Bergs and the Marconis intersect in various ways, few of them happy; each family has its share of woe. Lou's father, a genial milkman, is bound for obsolescence and leads his wife into a life of shopkeeping; Bobby's family is being damaged by an abusive father. Sarah moves between two parents: a schoolteacher father with grandiose literary dreams and a scandal in his past and a mother who lives in Long Island and leads a life that is far from exemplary. Russo weaves all of this together with great sureness, expertly planting clues—and explosives, too—knowing just when and how they will be discovered or detonate at the proper time. Incidents from youth—a savage beating, a misunderstood homosexual advance, a loveless seduction—have repercussions that last far into adulthood. Thomaston itself becomes a sort of extended family, whose unhappy members include the owners of the tannery who eventually face ruin.Bridge of Sighs is a melancholy book; the title refers to a painting that Bobby is making (he becomes a celebrated artist) and the Venetian landmark, but also to the sadness that pervades even the most contented lives. Lou, writing about himself and his dying, blue-collar town, thinks that the loss of a place isn't really so different from the loss of a person. Both disappear without permission, leaving the self diminished, in need of testimony and evidence. If there are false notes, they come with Russo's portrayal of African-Americans, who too often speak like stock characters: (Doan be given me that hairy eyeball like you doan believe, 'cause I know better, says one). But Russo has a deep and real understanding of stifled ambitions and the secrets people keep, sometimes forever. Bridge of Sighs, on every page, is largehearted, vividly populated and filled with life from America's recent, still vanishing past. (Publisher's Weekly)

Reviews:

Charles, Ron. "The Optimist's Son: Richard Russo's Epic Tale of a Town, a Family, and Life's Rhythms." The Washington Post. September 30, 2010.
Maslin, Janet. "Coming of Age Upstate: To Grow but Not Change?" The New York Times. September 24, 2007.
Medwed, Mameve. "Love and Lament: Bridge of Sighs Capturs the Rhythms of a Vanishing Small Town America." The Boston Globe. September 16, 2007.
Menand, Louis. "Upstate: Small Town Dreamers." The New Yorker. October 15, 2010.
Metcalf, Stephen. "Town Without Pity." The New York Times. November 4, 2007.
Taylor, D.J. "No Way Out: A Slice of Small Town America in Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs Impresses DJ Taylor." The Guardian (UK). October 20, 2007.

Audio/Visual:

[video] "A Conversation with Author Richard Russo." Charlie Rose. December 19, 2007.
[video] "An Interview with Richard Russo: Part 1 & Part 2." WETA's Author, Author! (No Date.)

Related Resources:

Birnbaum, Robert. "Interview: Richard Russo." identitytheory.com. 2001.
Weich, Dave. "Author Interviews: Richard Russo's Working Arrangements." Powells.com. June 6, 2001.
Wikipedia: Richard Russo.
Yabroff, Jennie. "Is Author Richard Russo a Misogynist?" Newsweek. August 5, 2009.

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for Bridge of Sighs are available from BookBrowse.com.

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September 2010: A History of the World in 6 Glasses

2010-08-24T20:33:00.003-04:00

Thu, Sep 2, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
by Tom Standage

As the tides of history have ebbed and flowed, different drinks have come to prominence in different times, places and cultures, from stone-age villages to Ancient Greek dining rooms or Enlightenment coffeehouses. Each one became popular when it met a particular need or aligned with a historical trend: in some cases, it then went on to influence the course of history in unexpected ways. Just as archaeologists divide history into different periods based on the use of different materials — the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and so on — it is also possible divide world history into periods dominated by different drinks. Six drinks in particular — beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola — chart the flow of world history. Three contain alcohol and three contain caffeine, but what they all have in common is that each drink was the defining drink during a pivotal historical period, from antiquity to the present day. (from http://www.tomestandage.com/)

Reviews:

Maslin, Janet. "A History of the World in 6 Glasses." The New York Times. June 1, 2005.
Shapin, Steven. "Liquid Assets: The Social Life of Beverages." The New Yorker. August 1, 2005.

Audio/Video:

"A History of the World in 6 Glasses." The Kojo Nnamdi Show. January 1, 2009 (rebroadcast).
"Tom Standage: An Edible History of Humanity." FORA.tv. July 8, 2009.

Additional Resources:

Tom Standage's Official Web Site
Wikipedia: Tom Standage

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions are available from Deborah Smith Johnston at Lakeside High School in Seattle,Washington.

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August 2010: Out Stealing Horses

2010-07-28T19:33:00.004-04:00

Thu, August 5, 2010 @ 7:30 PM

Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson

"In this quiet but compelling novel, Trond Sander, a widower nearing seventy, moves to a bare house in remote eastern Norway, seeking the life of quiet contemplation that he has always longed for. A chance encounter with a neighbor—the brother, as it happens, of his childhood friend Jon—causes him to ruminate on the summer of 1948, the last he spent with his adored father, who abandoned the family soon afterward. Trond's recollections center on a single afternoon, when he and Jon set out to take some horses from a nearby farm; what began as an exhilarating adventure ended abruptly and traumatically in an act of unexpected cruelty. Petterson’s spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force, and the narrative gains further power from the artful interplay of Trond's childhood and adult perspectives. Loss is conveyed with all the intensity of a boy’s perception, but acquires new resonance in the brooding consciousness of the older man."—The New Yorker

Reviews

Binding, Paul. "Handstands in the Rain with My Father." The Independent. November 6, 2005.
Cummings, Raymond. "Out Stealing Horses." Baltimore City Paper. May 2, 2007.
Lytal, Benjamin. "Through a Glass Darkly." The New York Sun. June 20, 2007.
McGuane, Thomas. "In a Lonely Place." The New York Times. June 24, 2007.
Shuster, Robert. "The Mane Attraction: Per Petterson Shoots for the Cinematic in His Award-Winning Out Stealing Horses." The Village Voice. July 10, 2007.

Audio/Video:

[audio] Astle, David. "Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses (Review)." The Book Show. November 14, 2007.
[video] "Internatinal IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Winner Per Pettersen: Part 1 and Part 2." YouTube. Posted April 8, 2010.
[audio] "Reader's Review: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson." The Diane Rehm Show. April 28, 2010.

Additonal Resources:

Campbell, James (interview by). "A Life in Writing: Per Petterson." The Guardian. January 3, 2009.
Thompson, Bob. "A Northern Light: Per Petterson's Poignant Family Tales Have Placed Him on the Literary Map." The Washington Post. December 26, 2007.

Discussion Questions:

Reading Group Guide (with discussion questions) is available through Picador USA.

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July 2010: In a Sunburned Country

2010-06-24T16:47:00.015-04:00

Thu, July 1, 2010 @ 7:30 PM

In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson

Compared to his Australian excursions, Bill Bryson had it easy on the Appalachian Trail. Nonetheless, Bryson has on several occasions embarked on seemingly endless flights bound for a land where Little Debbies are scarce but insects are abundant (up to 220,000 species of them), not to mention crocodiles. Taking listeners on a rollicking ride far beyond packaged-tour routes, IN A SUNBURNED COUNTRY introduces a place where interesting things happen all the time. Leaving no Vegemite unsavored, listeners will accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in deserts where temperatures leap to 140 degrees F, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House. [from http://www.bn.com]

Reviews:

Maslin, Janet. "Say, Mate, Just What Is It about You Australians?" The New York Times. June 5, 2000.
Powers, Sienna. "Worth Getting to Know." January Magazine. June 2000.
Schimmel, Noam. "Let's Go Australia." Yale Review of Books. Summer 2001.

Audio/Video:

[audio] "Australia." NPR's Talk of the Nation. June 6, 2000. [Discussion with Bill Bryson.]
[audio] "Bill Bryson." NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. September 17, 2000.
[video] "Bill Bryson: Down Under." YouTube.com. (2006?)
[audio] "Bill Bryson: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir." The Diane Rehm Show. October 19, 2006.

Additional Resources:

Bill Bryson's Official Random House Site
Bill Bryson's Offical Transworld Publisher (UK) Site [NOTE: Includes info about his new book, which has already been released in the UK but will not be published in the US until October.)
Interview with Bill Bryson from Live Your Life E-Zine
Interview with Bill Bryson from Powells.com (January 15, 2000)
Wikipedia: Bill Bryson

Discussion Questions:

Discussion Questions from Madison Public Library in Madison, WI
Reading Guide (with Discussion Questions) from Central Highlands Regional Librray Corporation in Ballarat, Australia

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June 2010: Nine Stories

2010-05-29T15:05:00.012-04:00

Thu, June 3, 2010 @ 7:30 PM

Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger, was born in New York City on Jan. 1, 1919, and established his reputation on the basis of a single novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), whose principal character, Holden Caulfield, epitomized the growing pains of a generation of high school and college students. The public attention that followed the success of the book led Salinger to move from New York to the remote hills of Cornish, New Hampshire. Before that he had published only a few short stories; one of them, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," which appeared in The New Yorker in 1949, introduced readers to Seymour Glass, a character who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Salinger's only other published books. Of his 35 published short stories, those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories (1953). [from http://www.bn.com]

Obituaries, Tributes & Appraisals:

Barnes. Bart. "J.D. "Salinger, 91; 'Catcher in the Rye' Author Became Famous Recluse." The Washington Post. January 29, 2010.
de Coursey, Anne. "Why Did J.D. Salinger Spend the Last 60 Years Hidng in a Shed and Writing Love Notes to Teenage Girls?" The Daily Mail. January 29, 2010.
Gopnik, Adam. "J.D. Salinger." The New Yorker. February 8, 2010.
Kakutani, Michiko. "Of Teen Angst and an Author's Alienantion." The New York Times. January 28, 2010.
Klinkenborg, Verlyn. "J.D. Salinger." The New York Times. January 28, 2010.
Lacayo, Richard. "J.D. Salinger Dies: Hermit Crab of American Letters." Time. January 29, 2010.
Lodge, David. "The Pre-Postmodernist." The New York Times. January 29, 2010.
McGrath, Charles. "J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91." The New York Times. January 28, 2010.
Zezima, Katie. "J.D. Salinger a Recluse? Well, Not to His Neighbors." The New York Times. January 31, 2010.

Audio/Visual:

[video] "An Appreciation of Author J.D. Salinger (with Adam Gopnik)." Charlie Rose. February 1, 2010.
[video] "Christopher Hitchens on J.D. Salinger." YouTube. Posted February 5, 2010.
[audio] "Remembering J.D. Salinger." On Point with Tom Ashbrook. January 29, 2010.

Related Resources:

"J.D. Salinger." Wikipedia.
Smith, Denita. "Salinger's Daughter Writes of Her Father's Obsessions." The New York Times. August 31, 2010.

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May 2010: No Ordinary Time (updated)

2010-05-01T16:05:00.005-04:00

Thu, May 6, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
by Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Engrossing…No Ordinary Time is no ordinary book…An ambitiously conceived and imaginatively executed participants eye view of the United States in the war years… The sheer abundance of colorful biographical anecdotes and the cumulative weight of telling detail sustain and atmosphere of immediacy and leave a lastingly vivid impression." — David M. Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review

"No Ordinary Time describes how the isolationist and divided United States of 1940 was unified under the extraordinary leadership of Franklin Roosevelt to become the preeminent economic and military power in the world. Using diaries, interviews, and White House records of the president's and first lady's comings and goings, Goodwin paints an intimate portrait of the daily conduct of the presidency during wartime, and the Roosevelts' extraordinary constellation of friends, advisers, and family. Bringing to bear the tools of both history and biography, No Ordinary Time relates the unique story of how Franklin Roosevelt led the nation to victory against seemingly insurmountable odds and, with Eleanor's essential help, forever changed the fabric of American society." (from the publisher)

Reviews:

Kennedy, David M. "Affairs Both Foreign and Domestic." The New York Times. September 11, 1994.
Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. "Books of the Times: A Monumental Presidency and the Telling Details." The New York Times. September 19, 1994.

Audio/Video:

[video] "A Discussion with Doris Kearns Goodwin." Charlie Rose. May 8, 1995.
[video] "Doris Kearns Goodwin on Learning from Past Presidents." TED. 2008.
[audio] "Franklin Delano Roosevelt Speeches." Miller Center of Public Affairs.

Related Resources:

"Doris Kearns Goodwin." Wikipedia.com.
"Eleanor Roosevelt." Wikipedia.com.
"Franklin D. Roosevelt." Wikipedia.
FDR Presidential Library and Museum. (Hyde Park, NY)
"Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945." American Memory at the Library of Congress.
Kirkpatrick, David D. "Historian Says Borrowing Was Wider Than Known." The New York Times. February 23, 2002.
Official Web Site for Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Text of FDR's 30 Fireside Chats.

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April 2010: Mrs. Dalloway (updated)

2010-03-10T15:11:00.020-05:00

Thu, April 1, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf

“One of the most moving, revolutionary artworks of the twentieth century." — Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

“Fear no more the heat of the sun.” Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's fourth novel, offers the reader an impression of a single June day in London in 1923. Clarissa Dalloway, the wife of a Conservative member of parliament, is preparing to give an evening party, while the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith hears the birds in Regent's Park chattering in Greek. There seems to be nothing, except perhaps London, to link Clarissa and Septimus. She is middle-aged and prosperous, with a sheltered happy life behind her; Smith is young, poor, and driven to hatred of himself and the whole human race. Yet both share a terror of existence, and sense the pull of death. The world of Mrs Dalloway is evoked in Woolf's famous stream of consciousness style, in a lyrical and haunting language which has made this, from its publication in 1925, one of her most popular novels. (www.bn.com)

Audio/Video:

[audio] Krulwich, Robert. "Virgina Woolf, At Intersection of Science and Art." Weekend Edition Saturday. August 2, 2008.
[audio] "The Recorded Voice of Virginia Woolf." Youtube. [no date]

Related Sites:

Cliffs Notes: Virginia Woolf
The Modernism Lab at Yale University: Virginia Woolf
Wikipedia: Mrs. Dalloway
Wikipedia: Virgina Woolf

Discussion Questions:

A reading group guide, including discussion questions, for Mrs. Dalloway is available from ReadingGroupGuides.com.

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March 2010: 1776 (Updated)

2010-02-05T10:25:00.023-05:00

Thu, March 4, 2010 @ 7:30 PM

1776
by David McCullough

"David McCullough, America's most celebrated popular historian, has done it again..." --The Washington Post

"A stirring and timely work..."

--The New York Times

David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence — when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper. Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost — Washington, who had never before led an army in battle. The darkest hours of that tumultuous year were as dark as any Americans have known. Especially in our own tumultuous time, 1776 is powerful testimony to how much is owed to a rare few in that brave founding epoch, and what a miracle it was that things turned out as they did. Written as a companion work to his celebrated biography of John Adams, David McCullough's 1776 is another landmark in the literature of American history.

Reviews:

Fowler, William J., Jr. "What Washington Knew." The Christian Science Monitor. May 24, 2005.
Horwitz, Tony. "Revolutionary Road." The New York Times. May 22, 2005.
Kakutani, Michiko. "Books of the Times: A Nation Is Born, And You Are There." The New York Times. May 24, 2005.
Marshall, Joshua Micah. "National Treasure." The New Yorker. May 23, 2005.
Wood, Gordon S. "Born Fighting." The Washington Post. May 22, 2005.

Audio/Video:

[audio] "1776 Takes Reader's to the Battlefront." Morning Edition. July 1, 2005.
[video] "An Hour with Author David McCullough." Charlie Rose. May 30, 2005.
[audio] "David McCullough: 1776." The Diane Rehm Show. June 9, 2005.
[audio] "David McCullough Revisits 1776." Talk of the Nation. July 5, 2005.

Related Sites:

Bookreporter.com: David McCullough Bio & Interview
David McCullough's Official Site (through Simon & Schuster)
Powell's Books: Connecting with David McCullough
Wikipedia: David McCullough
Wikipedia: American Revolutionary War

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions (in PDF) for 1776 are available from the Madison Public Library (Wisconsin).

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February 2010: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-01-15T09:44:00.024-05:00

Thu, February 4, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson

"The ballyhoo is fully justified…. At over 500 pages this hardly sagged…. The novel scores on every front -- character, story, atmosphere."
--The Times (London)

An engrossing debut thriller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has been an international sensation, a bestseller in its native Sweden and throughout Europe. It features an unforgettable heroine: a brilliant 24-year-old punk-goth computer hacker and private investigator named Lisbeth Salander. Together with Mikael Blomkvist, a financial journalist on a most unusual assignment, she tracks a serial killer through a dangerous maze of business, political, and family secrets.

The intricate tale begins when Blomkvist is convicted of libeling top Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Unable to prove his innocence, Blomkvist prepares to leave his position at Millennium, the magazine he co-founded, now financially threatened by the verdict. But a summons from Wennerström's rival, the aging tycoon Henrik Vanger, presents an option he couldn't have imagined: In exchange for Blomkvist's writing the Vanger family history, Vanger promises to back Millennium financially and deliver incriminating evidence of Wennerström's crooked dealings.

But that's not all. The closets of the Vanger clan are littered with skeletons, and his new patron wants Blomkvist to set one at rest: the disappearance, 40 years ago, of Vanger's 16-year-old grandniece, Harriet. Intrigued by the cold case that was never solved despite multiple investigations, Blomkvist begins to dig for new evidence on an island north of Stockholm.

He is soon joined by Salander, a freelance investigator originally hired by Vanger to vet Blomkvist's reputation. Multiple piercings and tattoos are belied by the young computer genius's photographic memory. A victim of assault and harrowing abuse, Salander is driven by a relentless will and an astonishing capability for merciless retribution.

Larsson's narrative unfolds with mounting suspense, detailing the duo's intellectual ingenuity and increasing courage as they expose hidden cultures of right-wing fanaticism and misogyny and reveal the moral bankruptcy of big capital. As they race across Europe and on to Australia to trap their prey before another woman is tortured and killed, the reader is held in breathless anticipation until the novel's unforeseen conclusion. (from Barnes and Noble Recommends)

Reviews:

Berenson, Alex. "Vanished." The New York Times. September 14, 2008.
Gibbs, Jonathan."The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson." The Independent. February 24, 2008.
Guttridge, Peter. "Let's Play Corpse and Robbers." The Guardian. January 6, 2008.
Heinrich, Will. "Scandinavian Noir." The New York Observor. October 3, 2008.
Helfand, Michael. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Sieg Larsson." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. September 21, 2008.
Kakutani, Micjiko. "If Nick and Nora Lived in a Darker Place." The New York Times. September 29, 2008.
Smith, Joan. "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson." The Times (London). January 20, 2008.

Additional Reading:

"In Praise of...Stieg Larsson." The Guardian. October 3, 2009.
Williams, Wilda. "Q&A: Stieg Larsson." Library Journal. June 15, 2009.

Audio/Video:

Corrigan, Maureen. "Super-Smart Noir with a Feminist Jolt." Fresh Air from WHYY. September 23, 2008. [audio]
Woodruff, Martha. "The Making of a Posthumous Best-seller." Morning Edition. November 13, 2008. [audio]

Related Sites:

Official Web Site for the Millennium Trilogy
Wikipedia: Stieg Larsson
Wikipedia: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are available through Barnes and Noble and Random House. (Note: Each site has a different set of questions.)

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January 7, 2010: The Devil in the White City

2009-12-09T20:45:00.027-05:00

Thu, January 7, 2010 @ 7:30 PM
The Devil in the White City
by Erik Larson

Finalist for the 2003 National Book Award

Winner of the 2004 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime

A vivid account of the tragedies and triumphs of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the concurrent depravities of America’s first serial killer.

In roughly alternating chapters, former Wall Street Journal reporter Larson (Isaac’s Storm, 1999, etc.) tells the stories of Daniel H. Burnham, chief planner and architect of exposition, and Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, whose rambling World’s Fair Hotel, just a short streetcar ride away, housed windowless rooms, a gas chamber, secret chutes, and a basement crematory. The contrast in these accomplishments of determined human endeavor could not be more stark--or chilling. Burnham assembled what a contemporary called "the greatest meeting of artists since the 15th century" to turn the wasteland of Chicago’s swampy Jackson Park into the ephemeral White City, which enthralled nearly 28 million visitors in a single summer. Overcoming gargantuan obstacles--politically entangled delays, labor unrest, an economic panic, and a fierce Chicago winter--to say nothing of the architectural challenges, Burnham and his colleagues, including Frederick Law Olmsted, produced their marvel in just over two years. The fair was a city unto itself, the first to make wide-scale use of alternating current to illuminate its 200,000 incandescent bulbs. Spectacular engineering feats included Ferris’s gigantic wheel, intended to "out-Eiffel Eiffel," and, ominously, the latest example of Krupp’s artillery, "breathing of blood and carnage." Dr. Holmes, a frequent visitor to the fair, was a consummate swindler and lady-killer who secured his victims’ trust through "courteous, audacious rascality." Most were comely young women, and estimates of their total rangedfrom the nine whose bodies (or parts thereof) were recovered to nearly 200. Larson does a superb job outlining this "ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black."

Gripping drama, captured with a reporter’s nose for a good story and a novelist’s flair for telling it. (Kirkus Reviews)

Reviews:

Hoover, Bob. "'The Devil in the White City' by Erick Larson." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 23, 2003.
Lyons, Stephen. "Behold the Wonders of Science and the Evil Deeds of a Mad Doctor." The San Francisco Chronicle. March 30, 2003.
Maslin, Janet. "Books of the Times: Add a Serial Murderer to 1893 Chicago's Opulent Overkill." The New York Times. February 10, 2003.

Audio/Video:

"Erik Larson: 'The Devil in the White City.'" The Diane Rehm Show. March 3, 2003. [audio]
"The Devil in the White City." Weekend Edition Saturday. April 5, 2003. [audio]

Related Sites:

Official Random House Web Site for The Devil in the White City
The Chicago Post Card Museum's Presentations on the 1893 World's Fair
TruTV's Crime Library: H.H. Holmes: Master of Illusion
University of Chicago's Digital Library Collection on The Columbian Exposition
Wikipedia: H.H. Holmes
Wikipedia: The Devil in the White City
Wikipedia: World's Columbian Exposition

Discussion Questions & Background Info:

Discussion questions for The Devil in the White City are available on ReadingGroupGuides.com.

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December 3, 2009: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

2009-11-11T12:31:00.019-05:00

Thu, December 3, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
by Brock Clarke

"Wildly, unpredictably funny. . . ."
-The New York Times

A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist.

In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination. (www.bn.com)

Reviews:

Charles, Ron. "Hearts Afire." The Washington Post. September 2, 2007.
Hand, Elizabeth. "Burning Down the House." The Village Voice. August 14, 2007.
Maslin, Janet. "Book Review: An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England." The New York Times. September 11, 2007.
Sanson, Ian. "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England." The Guardian. May 16, 2009.
Wyman, Anne Julia. "Onetime Arsonist Tries to Escape His Incendiary Past." San Francisco Chronicle. Septemeber 16, 2007.
Zipp, Yvonne. "When Literature Goes Up in Flames." The Christian Science Monitor. September 4, 2007.

Audio/Video:

"An Interview with Brock Clarke by Bryan Smith." Department of English and Compartive Literature at University of Cincinnati. July 6, 2009. [video]
"Author, Author!: A Conversation with Brock Clarke." WETA. November 14, 2007. [video]
"Brock Clarke Interviews." Bill Thompson's Eye on Books. (no date) [audio]
"Cover to Cover: Brock Clarke." The Fly Pod. November 2, 2009. [audio]

Related Sites:

"An Interview with Brock Clarke." Bookslut.com. September 2007.
"Brock Clarke Continue to Set the Literary World on Fire." University of Cincinnati. December 10, 2007.
Brock Clarke's Faculty Biography at University of Cincinnati
Clarke, Brock. "What Does New England Matter?" Powells.com (no date)
Official Web Site for An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England
"Superstition Review Wants to Know Brock Clarke." Superstition Review. Spring 2009 Issue 3.

Discussion Questions & Background Info:

Discussion questions for An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England are available on the books official web site.

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November 2009: The Geography of Bliss

2009-10-05T13:30:00.013-04:00

Thu, November 5, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
The Geography of Bliss
by Eric Weiner

"a charming, funny and illuminating travelogue..."
-The Washington Post

As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Eric Weiner has spent much of his career traveling to some of the world's least happy places -- Iraq and Afghanistan among them. It bummed him out. Undertaking his first book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, he decided it was time for a change of approach. "What if, I wondered, I spent a year traveling the globe, seeking out not the world's well-trodden trouble spots but, rather, its unheralded happy places?" he writes. "Places that possess, in spades, one or more of the ingredients that we consider essential to the hearty stew of happiness: money, pleasure, spirituality, family, and chocolate, among others." So he set about seeking a variety of Shangri-Las: testing tolerance and Moroccan hashish in the Netherlands; learning to accept loss and relinquish regret in Bhutan; contemplating the lavish wealth and lack of culture (and taxes) in Qatar; marveling at the darkness, drunkenness, and remarkable creativity in Iceland; eschewing introspection and embracing fun in Thailand; looking for contrast in miserable Moldova, "the world's least happy country." Along the way, Weiner gathers insights from many wise and well-traveled people, relates the latest findings in the field of happiness research, and turns enough pleasing phrases to keep even the surliest reader…happy. (Amy Reiter, www.bn.com)

Reviews:

Alberts, Hana R. "Chasing Happiness." Forbes.com. April 23, 2008.
Gilbert, Daniel. "Happy Talk: Around the World in Search of a Cuppa Joy." The Washington Post. January 20, 2008.
Newnham, David. "Ode to Joy." The Gaurdian. July 19, 2008.
Paul, Pamela. "Why Is That Land Smiling?" The New York Times. December 30, 2007.
Peterson, Christopher. "Book Review: The Geography of Bliss." PsychologyToday.com. June 27, 2008.
Starr, Karla. "Eric Weiner Travels the World to Find 'Geography of Bliss.'" San Francisco Chronicle. January 20, 2008.

Audio/Video:

"'Bliss' Follows Globetrotting Grump's Search for Joy." Weekend Edition Saturday. January 5, 2008.
Colbert, Stephen, and Weiner, Eric. "January 21, 2008: Eric Weiner." The Colbert Report. January 21, 2008.
Rehm, Diane, and Weiner, Eric. "Eric Weiner: 'The Geography of Bliss.'" The Diane Rehm Show. January 2, 2008.
Weiner, Eric. "'Happiness Index' Bucks Financial Woes.'" All Things Considered. October 12, 2008.
Weiner, Eric. "Why Women Read More Than Men." NPR. September 5, 2007.
Weiner, Eric, and Wilkinson, Will. "Free Will: The Pursuit of Happiness." blogginghead.tv. February 9, 2008.

Related Sites:

Discussion Questions:

Brief discussion questions are available on The Reader's Den blog from NYPL.org.

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October 2009: The Clothes on Their Backs

2009-09-05T13:25:00.009-04:00

Thu, October 1, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
The Clothes on Their Backs
by Linda Grant

A brilliant little novel-winner of the Orange Prize-concerning family, memory and transformation. In passing a formerly smart London dress shop now going out of business, Vivien Kovaks runs into the shop proprietor, a former lover of her uncle Sandor, a week after the death of Vivien's father. Grant (When I Lived in Modern Times, 2001, etc.) uses this chance encounter to set the scene for Vivien's reminiscence about her past, a time decades before when she had "learned the only truth that matters: that suffering does not ennoble and that survivors survive because of their strength or cunning or luck, not their goodness, and certainly not their innocence." Vivien sweeps us into a narrative about her parents, Ervin and Berta, refugees from Hungary who moved to London shortly after World War II to start a new life. Vivien is curious about their past because it contains the seeds of her own, but her parents are decidedly reticent about sharing information on their former life, preferring instead to live within a narrowly circumscribed and risk-free circle of silence. Enter Sandor, a flamboyant and successful slumlord who's spent time in gaol for his shady business activities (and who's been labeled "the face of evil" by the London press). He's now out of prison, bent but not broken, and he commissions Vivien to help him write his life story; both are aware of their family connection, yet both keep up the pretense that they're just strangers. Vivien must keep her role of amanuensis secret from her father, who's violently opposed to Sandor's dubious professional activities. Much of the story involves Vivien getting in touch with her own identity by uncovering her father's; by dealing with the freakish and tragic death of her young husband on their honeymoon; and by engaging in and then walking away from a torrid sexual relationship with a young punk. Intelligent, distinguished and psychologically astute. (Kirkus Review)

Reviews:

Shamsie, Kamila. "The Warp of History." The Guardian. February 23, 2008.
Shilling, Jane. "The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant." The Times. January 24, 2008.

Audio/Video:

Cheuse, Alan. "To London with Only 'The Clothes on Their Backs.'"All Things Considered. January 28, 2009. [audio]
"Bookcast: Linda Grant Discusses Her Latest Novel 'The Clothes on Their Backs.'" YouTube.com. January 12, 2009. [video]

Related Sites:

Linda Grant's Official Site
Wikipedia: Linda Grant

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions and a brief reading guide are available online from Simon & Schuster.

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September 2009: A Peace to End All Peace

2009-08-30T19:16:00.016-04:00

Thu, September 3, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
by David Fromkin

“Wonderful...No book published in recent years has more lasting relevance to our understanding of the Middle East.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review

The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts—including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis, and the violent challenges posed by Iraq’s competing sects—are rooted in the region’s political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time, showing how the choices narrowed and the Middle East began along a road that led to the conflicts and confusion that continue to this day. A new afterword from Fromkin, written for this edition of the book, includes his invaluable, updated assessment of this region of the world today, and on what this history has to teach us. (from the publisher)

Reviews:

Louis, William Roger. "The Great Middle East Game, and Still No Winner." The New York Times. August 27, 1989.

Audio/Video:

"Blood and Oil: Interview with David Fromkin." Youtube. [video]
"Professor David Fromkin." Fresh Air on WHYY. April 14, 2003. [audio]
"The British Experience in the Middle East." On Point with Tom Ashbrook. April 4, 2003. [audio]

Related Sites:

"David Fromkin." Department of International Relations, Boston University.
"World War I." Wikipedia.

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August 2009 Discussion: The White Tiger

2009-07-06T12:54:00.024-04:00

Thu, August 6, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga

“The White Tiger is a penetrating piece of social commentary, attuned to the inequalities that persist despite India's new prosperity.”
- The New York Times

Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize

English-language Asian writers have adopted all manner of styles in the last three decades -- Raj nostalgia, magic realism, Zola-like fatalism - in their attempts to encapsulate India. What makes this much trumpeted debut novel by Aravind Adiga such a triumph is the strikingly contemporary voice with which it skewers its subject: a beguiling mix of pitch-black humor and devastating cynicism that feels both refreshingly modern and bracingly direct. As India rushes with careless abandon towards its longed-for status as an economic superpower, and as the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, the country has found in Adiga an acerbic commentator more than capable of chronicling its often grotesque inequalities. (The Barnes & Noble Review)

Reviews:

D'Souza, Tony. "Changing Lanes." The Washington Post. June 8, 2008.
Jordison, Sam. "How Did The White Tiger Capture the Booker?"Guardian. October 15, 2008.
Kapur, Akash. "The Secret of His Success." The New York Times. November 7, 2008.
Kumar, Amitava. "Viewpoint: On Adiga's The White Tiger." The Hindu. November 2, 2008.
Lively, Adam. "The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga." The Times. April 6, 2008.

Audio/Visual:

"Adiga's India, Through a Literary Kaleidoscope." Weekend Edition Saturday. July 18, 2009.
"Reader's Review: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga." The Diane Rehm Show. November 26, 2008.

Related Resources:

Aravind Adiga's Official Web Site
"Aravaind Adiga." Wikipedia
"Author Interview: Aravind Adiga." BookBrowse.com
Booker Prize Announcement for The White Tiger
Sharp, Sonja. "MoJo Interview: Aravind Adiga." Mother Jones. June 19, 2009.

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions are available on ReadngGroupGuides.com.

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To post a comment/opinion about this book -- or to just read what (if anything) others have said -- please click on the blue "comments" link immediately below.

July 2009 Discussion: In Spite of the Gods (Updated)

2009-06-25T15:33:00.027-04:00

Thu, July 2, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
In Spite of the Gods:
The Rise of Modern India
by Edward Luce

"In Spite of the Gods is not only fun to read, it is also a deeply insightful account of contemporary India. Based on the author’s rare combination of intimacy and detachment, the book can serve, remarkably enough, both as a fine introduction for unacquainted outsiders and as a mature scrutiny that is bound to stimulate insiders." -Professor Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods, Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India.

In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of India’s 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy---and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption.

Luce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s influence in Asia.

Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future "hers to lose." (from the publisher)

Reviews:

Bhattacharya, Soumya. "Where There's Dung, There's Brass." The Observer. August 20, 2006.
"Briefly Noted: In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce." The New Yorker. March 12, 2007.
Grimes, William. "The Power and Potential of India's Economic Change." The New York Times. January 17, 2007.
Tharoor, Shashi. "India's Quiet Revolution." The Washington Post. February 4, 2007.
"The Indian Paradox." BusinessWeek. February 12, 2007.

Audio/Video:

Luce, Edward. "Checking Up on India's Rush to the Future."[Commentary.] All Things Considered. February 15, 2007. [audio]
Luce, Edward. "The Strange Rise of Modern India." [Speech to The Asian Society.] FORA.tv. January 11, 2008. [video]
"In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India." [Interview with Edward Luce.] Weekend Edition Saturday. February 3, 2007. [audio]
"US-India Nuclear Disagreement." [Edward Luce is a panelist.] The Kojo Nnamdi Show. April 23, 2007. [audio]

Related Resources:

"Author Q&A." Random House.com
"Edward Luce." Wikipedia.
"India." CIA World Factbook.
"Speaker's Biography: Edward Luce." Milken Institute.

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June 2009 Discussion: Dreamers of the Day (Updated)

2009-05-28T09:55:00.027-04:00

Thu, June 4, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
Dreamers of the Day
by Mary Doria Russell

“Agnes [is] a memorable character with wit, bravery and remarkably few delusions…a woman of self-deprecating charm and earnest determination.”

– The Seattle Times

Agnes Shanklin, a forty-year-old schoolteacher form Ohio, has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take a trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes, she is freed for the first time form her mother’s withering influence and finds herself being wooed by a handsome, mysterious German. At the same time, Agnes – with her plainspoken American opinions – is drawn into the company of Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell, who will, in the space of a few days, redraw the world map to create the modern Middle East. As they change history, Agnes too will find her own life transformed forever. (from the book jacket)

Reviews:

Charles, Ron. "Awakening on the Nile." The Washington Post. March 23, 2008.
Mass, Judith. "Post-WWI Adventure Connects Past, Present." The Boston Globe. April 24, 2008.
Zipp, Yvonne. "A 'Thoroughly Modern' Middle East." The Christian Science Monitor. March 22, 2008.

Audio/Video:

"Author Mary Doria Russell." The Kojo Nnamdi Show. March 24, 2008. [audio]
"The Art of Historical Fiction." [Panel including Mary Doria Russell at the 2009 Virginia Book Festival.] With Good Reason. April 4, 2009. [audio]
"Interview with Mary Doria Russell." Cover to Cover with Richard Wolisnky. April 10, 2008. [audio]
"Mary Doria Russell and Alan Cheuse on Judaism." [Excerpt for the 2009 Virginia Book Festival linked above.] YouTube.com. April 3, 2009. [video]

Related Resources:

"Author Interview." Randonhouse.com.
"Looking Ahead: Mary Doria Russell's March Release." [Interview.] Loaded Questions with Kelly Hewitt. September 15, 2007.
Mary Doria Russell's Official Site
Wikipedia: Mary Doria Russell

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions for Dreamers of the Day are available on the Random House web site.

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May 2009 Discussion: Salt (Updated)

2009-05-01T10:25:00.018-04:00

Thu, May 7, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
Salt: A World History
by Mark Kurlansky

“The fascinating, indispensable history of an indispensable ingredient." —Anthony Bourdain

Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World, here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Kurlansky's kaleidoscopic history is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece. (from Penguin Group USA)

Reviews:

Rothstein, Edward. "Shelf Life: Salt, History's Mover and Shaker." The New York Times. March 30, 2002.

Audio/Video:

"The History of Salt, In a Pinch. [Kurlansky is interviewed.]" CBS Sunday Morning. October 26, 2008.
"Mark Kurlansky: Nonviolence (Modern Library). [Kurlansky discusses his 2006 book on nonviolence.]" The Diane Rehm Show. September 12, 2006.
"Salt. [An interview with Mark Kurlansky.]" All Things Considered. January 30, 2002.

Related Resources:

Mark Kurlansky: Sidney-Harman Writer in Residence, Spring 2007 [brief bio]." Weissman School of Arts & Sciences at Baruch College.
Powell's Q&A: Mark Kurlansky
Salt Instutute

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April 2009 Discussion: The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Updated)

2009-03-26T15:37:00.025-04:00

Thu, April 2, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery

“Gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet.”
- The Washington Post

Washington Post Book World Top 10 Book of 2008 & New York Times Bestseller

This dark but redemptive novel, an international bestseller, marks the debut in English of Normandy philosophy professor Barbery. Rene Michel, 54 and widowed, is the stolid concierge in an elegant Paris hotel particulier. Though “short, ugly, and plump,” Rene has, as she says, “always been poor,” but she has a secret: she's a ferocious autodidact who's better versed in literature and the arts than any of the building's snobby residents. Meanwhile, “supersmart”12-year-old Paloma Josse, who switches off narration with Rene, lives in the building with her wealthy, liberal family. Having grasped life's futility early on, Paloma plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. The arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who befriends both the young pessimist and the concierge alike, sets up their possible transformations. By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking, Barbery never allows either of her dour narrators to get too cerebral or too sentimental. Her simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts. (Publishers Weekly)

Reviews:

Crumley, Bruce. "Muriel Barbery: An Elagant Quill." Time. August 27, 2008.
Dirda, Michael. "Michael Dirda on 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog.'" The Washington Post. September 14, 2008.
James, Caryn. "Thinking on the Sly." The New York Times. September 5, 2008.

Audio/Video:

"Readers' Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery." The Diane Rehm Show. April 22, 2009. (for future reference)

Related Resources:

Brief Interview with Muriel Barbery on BookBrowse.com (Note: The first interview is a reproduction of the interview provided in the Europa Editions reading guide linked below. But scroll down the page for a few addiotnal questions that are not including in the Europa interview.)
Muriel Barbery's Official Web Site (in French!)

Discussion Questions & Background Information:

Discussion questions and a brief reading guide are available from the Europa Editions web site.

Additional background information -- reviews, author biographies, and related resources -- will be posted here one week before the discussion.

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March 2009 Discussion: Manhunt (updated)

2009-02-26T14:21:00.036-05:00

Thu, Mar. 5, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
by James L. Swanson

“Swanson's moment-by-moment account of the 12-day chase is compulsively readable.” - The Wall Street Journal

The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry troops on a wild, twelve-day chase from the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia. At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America’s notorious villain. A confederate sympathizer and member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame, wealth, and promise for a chance to avenge the South’s defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying the justice they sought. Manhunt is a fully documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you’ve never read it before. (from www.bn.com)

Reviews:

Maslin, Janet. "Pursuing a Famed Assassin at a Sceenplay-Styled Pace." The New York Times. March 9. 2006.
Yoder, Edwin M., Jr. "Two Actor's On History's Stage." The Washington Post. March 16, 2006.

Audio:

"At Ford's Theatre, Lincoln's Death Revisited." Morning Edition. February 12, 2009.
"Interview with James Swanson, Author of Manhunt." The Glenn and Helen Show. February 8, 2006.
"James Sawnason: Mahunt." Bill Thompson's EyeonBooks. [No date.]
"James Swanson: Manhunt." The Diane Rehm Show. February 10, 2006.
"What Happened to Those Who Conspired to Kill Lincoln?" Weekend Edition Sunday. February 8, 2009.

Video:

"Book TV: James Swanson Manhunt." YouTube.com. February 2007.
"Chasing Lincoln's Killer: James L. Swanson." YouTube.com. [No date.]
"Inside Media: Chasing Lincoln's Killer." Newseum. February 14, 2009.

Related Web Sites/Resources:

James L. Swanson's Official Web Site
Cato Instutute: James L. Swanson
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd House Museum
Ford Theatre's Official Web Site
George Eastman House Still Photograph Archives: The Lincoln Conspiracy Album
John Wilkes Booth's Escape Route (from CivilWarStudies.org)
Lincoln Bicentennial Official Web Site
Rothstein, Edward. "Where a Comedy Turned to Tragedy." The New York Times. February 6, 2009.
Surratt House Museum
Wikipedia: Abraham Lincoln Assassination
Wikipedia: John Wilkes Booth

Discussion Questions:

A reading guide - including discussion questions -- can be found in the back of the paperback edition of the book distributed to the group.

The discussion questions can also be accessed online through Harper Collins web site.

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February 2009 Discussion - Great Expectations

2009-01-09T09:44:00.012-05:00

Thu, Feb. 5, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

“One of Dickens's most fascinating and disturbing novels…” - Kirkus

A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens' haunting late novel depicts Pip's education and development through adversity as he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'. (from back cover)

Reviews:

"Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens." The Atlantic Monthly. September 1861.
Morgantaler, Goldie. "Meditations on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Autumn 1998. [emailed to group separately]

Audio/Video:

"Audio Interview with Peter Ackroyd About Charles Dickens." Wired for Books. 1991.
"Great Expectations for Dickens Theme Park." Morning Edition. April 19, 2007.
"Jane Smiley: Charles Dickens." The Diane Rehm Show. May 30, 2002.
"Les Standiford The Man Who Invented Christmas." The Diane Rehm Show. December 15, 2008.

Related Web Sites/Resources:

Charles Dickens by C.K. Chesterton (1906)
David Perdue's Charles Dicken's Page: Great Expectations
Dickens (PBS Series)
Ford, George H. "Charles Dickens." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 21: Victorian Novelist Before 1885. Literature Resource Center. (1983) [emailed to group separately]
The Charles Dickens Museum London
Wikipedia: Charles Dickens
Wikipedia: Great Expectations

Discussion Questions:

General discussion questions are included in the Penguin Reading Guide for Great Expectations (toward the bottom of the linked web page).

And for the truly ambitious, Victorian Web provides detailed chapter by chapter questions!

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January 2009 Discussion - The Nine

2008-12-11T13:37:00.030-05:00

Thu, Jan. 8, 2009 @ 7:30 PM
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
by Jeffrey Toobin

"Engaging, erudite, candid and accessible, often hard to put down."-- David Margolick, The New York Times Book Review

If Jeffrey Toobin is right, Supreme Court decisions are decided less by constitutional law precedent than by personality and political intuition. His gripping behind-the-scenes account of the Court from the Reagan years to the 2006-7 term shows how a consensus of moderation grew in an environment of adversity. Drawing extensively on interviews with the justices themselves, he reveals how such independent, even quirky thinkers worked toward agreement on major issues including abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, church-state separation, and gay rights. (www.bn.com)

Reviews:

Epps, Garrett. "The Nine." Salon.com. September 13, 2007.
Kakutani, Michiko. "Power Lineup, Swings form the Right." The New York Times. September 21, 2007.
Lazarus, Edward. "Supreme Politics: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes As the High Court of the Land Moves to the Right." The Washington Post Book World. September 23, 2007.
Lewis, Anthony. "The Court: How 'So Few Have So Quickly Changed So Much.'" The New York Review of Books. December 20, 2007.
Margolick, David. "Meet the Supremes." The New York Times Book Review. September 23, 2007.
Richey, Warren. "In the Chambers of the US Supreme Court." The Christian Science Monitor. September 25, 2007.
Whelan, Ed. "Bench Memos: Jeffrey Toobin's 'The Nine' - Part 1." National Review Online. September 24, 2007. (See also: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.)

Audio/Video:

"A Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin." Charlie Rose. October 23, 2007. [video]
"Jeffrey Toobin." Colbert Nation. September 20, 2007. [video]
"Jeffrey Toobin." Tavis Smiley. November 12, 2008. [audio/video/text]
Totenberg, Nina. "Tobin's 'The Nine' Reveals Politics of High Court." All Things Considered. September 14, 2007. [audio/text]

Related Web Sites/Resources:

Book World Live Discussion with Jeffrey Toobin. [September 26, 2007.]
"CNN Anchors & Reports: Jeffrey Toobin"
Official Jeffrey Toobin Web Site
Supreme Court of the United States

Discussion Questions:

Have -- as Toobin argues -- the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor and the subsequent appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito effectively established a "conservative majority" on the court?
How predictable are the judicial philosophies -- and practices -- of Supreme Court justices (past and present)? "Are the unpredictable personal dynamics among the justices more important than the agenda they brought with them?"
How will the election of Barack Obama potentially influence the court?
What is the "Constitution in Exile?" How does it relate to the court's history...and its future?
What is the function of the judiciary in the US government? How did John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803) shape the court's relationship with the legislative and executive branches?
What role does politics play in judicial appointments?
How does O'Connor's pragmatism differ from Scalia's originalist/constructionist perspective? How would each defend her/his position? How would each rebuke the other's?
Toobin quotes Rehnquist (on page 237): "Don't worry about the analysis and principles in the case. Just make sure that the result is a good one this time around - because those principles you announce will be ignored in the next case." Why did Rehnquist say that?
How much weight should the court give to precedent (stare decisis)?
What, if any, role should international law play in Supreme Court decisions?

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December 2008 Discussion - Mister Pip

2008-11-07T11:14:00.014-05:00

Thu, Dec. 4, 2008 @ 7:30 PM
Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones

2007 Man Booker Prize Finalist

"One of the best books of the year."
-- Isabella Allende

In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing. (from www.bn.com)

Reviews:

Atkins, Lucy. "Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones." The Sunday Times. July 8, 2007.
Edwards, Haley. "'Mister Pips' Fictional Escapes Exceeds Reality's Expectations." The Seattle Times. August 17, 2007.
Falconer, Delia. "Mister Pip." The Australian. November 4, 2006.
Maslin, Janet. "All They Need to Know They Learned from Dickens." The New York Times. September 17, 2007.
Smith, Wendy. "Great Expectations." The Washington Post Book World. August 26, 2007.

Audio/Video:

"Author Lloyd Jones on Mister Pip." [Unattributed. No Date.] [video]
Cheuse, Alan. "'Mister Pip' Brings Dicken's Tale to the South Pacific." All Things Considered. December 27, 2007. [audio/text]
"Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip." Bookbits. [No Date.][audio]

Related Web Sites/Resources:

"Bougainville Island." Wikipedia.
"From Hard Times to Great Expectations: The Booker Favourite Reflects n His Slow-Burn Success, His Debt to Dickens and the Pitfalls of Being an Author from the Other Side of the World." The Observer. October 14, 2007.
Kopel, Dave et al. "Little Island That Roared: The Story of Bougainville." National Review Online. February 6, 2002.
"New Zealand Writers: Jones, Lloyd." New Zealand Book Council.

Discussion Questions:

Discussion questions and a general reading guide for Mister Pip are available through ReadingGroupGuides.com.

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November 2008 Discussion - Legacy of Ashes

2008-10-29T22:58:00.001-04:00

Thu, Nov. 6, 2008 @ 7:30 PM
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

Winner of the 2007 National Book Award

"Weiner cannot be accused of kicking the agency when it is down. It is his thesis, amply documented, that the CIA was never up. He paints a devastating portrait of an agency run, during the height of its power in the Cold War years, by Ivy League incompetents, "old Grotonians" who lied to presidents-an agency that, more often than not, failed to foresee major world events, violated human rights, spied on Americans, plotted assassinations of foreign leaders, and put so much of its energy and resources into bungled covert operations that it failed in its core mission of collecting and analyzing information. Legacy of Ashes succeeds as both journalism and history, and it is must reading for anyone interested in the CIA or American intelligence since World War II."
- David Wise, The Washington Post

Reviews:

Ackerman, Spencer. "The CIA's Failures." The Nation. June 26, 2008.
Beschloss, Michael. "The CIA's Missteps, From Past to Present." New York Times. July 12, 2007
Epstein, Edward Jay. "Opening Up the CIA: Espionage, Covert Action, and the Trouble with 'Dangles.'" The Wall Street Journal. July 14, 2007.
Thomas, Evan. "Counter Intelligence." The New York Times Book Review. July 22, 2007.
Wise, David. "Covert Action: Has the CIA Ever Been Good at Intelligence Gathering?" The Washington Post Book World. July 22, 2007. [emailed to group separately]

Audio/Video:

"CIA Looks Back on a Secret Postwar Berlin Tunnel." The Bryant Park Project (from NPR News). June 23, 2008. [audio]
"A Conversation About the CIA with Journalist Tim Weiner." Charlie Rose Show. July 27, 2007. [video]
"Is the CIA Entitled to Complete Secrecy?" Day to Day. December 20, 2007. [audio]
"Tim Weiner: The Secret History of America's Spooks." Fresh Air from WHYY. June 28, 2007. [audio]
"The CIA's Worst Mistakes." The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC. July 16, 2007. [audio]
"Tim Weiner's 'History of the CIA.'" Minnesota Public Radio. June 26, 2008. [audio]
"'Legacy of Ashes' Describes Founding of CIA." Morning Edition. July 10, 2007. [audio]
"Tim Weiner." Tavis Smiley Show. September 17, 2007. [audio]
"Tim Weiner Discusses the History of the CIA." World Economic Forum of Oregon. June 5, 2008. [video]

Related Sites/Resources:

Official Web Site for Legacy of Ashes
"Q&A with Tim Weiner: Pierceing the CIA's Veil." U.S. News & World Report. July 29, 2007.
"2007 National Book Award Winner, Nonficton." National Book Foundation.
"Book World Live Discussion with Tim Weiner." The Washington Post Online. July 24, 2007.
"Tim Weiner." Contemporary Authors. September 5, 2008. [emailed to group separately]

Discussion Questions:

Why has the CIA been such an historically problematic -- or worse, counterproductive -- governmental agency? What are the chances these problems can ever be effectively corrected?
What influence do the following have on the CIA: The President of the United States? The CIA Director? The Director of National Intelligence? The House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence? The Pentagon? Who ultimately "controls" -- and is responsible for -- CIA policies and actions?
How has the CIA's role changed in the face of post-911 restructuring of the intelligence community?
What problems do national security secrets pose in a transparent democratic society?
How do the intelligence gathering and covert action arms of the CIA interact? What tensions exist between the two?
What moral issues surround CIA attempts to overthrow foreign governments or even assassinate foreign leaders?
How do intelligence failures leading to the Iraq war in 2003 mirror previous intelligence failures over the past 60 years?

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