December Not Fiction Book Discussions

Perhaps you've heard this Groucho Marx quotation: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." The stories we tell and the stories we are drawn to listen to are some of the most important relationships of our lives.

 My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead is a memoir about Mead's relationship with George Eliot's novel Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. From her first encounter with the novel as a young girl in school to her repeated readings through young adulthood and early career and into middle age and family life, Mead found instructive, inspiring, and consoling parallels between the plot lines of the book and her own life, parallels that only became understandable as she grew into them. She says, "A book may not tell us exactly how to live our own lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book."

What is your relationship with Middlemarch? Are you as fond of it as Mead is, or have you just become acquainted with it through Mead's memoir? Which story lines, characters, and relationships resonate the most with your life? If you have not read Middlemarch, has Mead's book inspired you to do so?

Virginia Woolf characterized Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." What did she mean by this? Are marriage plots and happy endings merely childish fantasies?

Do you have a relationship with a book like the one Mead has with Middlemarch? What has this book revealed to you about your life over the years, and what has your life helped you understand about the book?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, December 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, December 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed November's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs, then you might also like these books, articles, and films recommended by our discussion group members: Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz; Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy by Andrew Lohse; Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward; Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson; Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell; To Reduce Inequality, Abolish Ivy League, an editorial in USA Today by Glenn Harlan; and Good Will Hunting, a film written by and starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs brings together many of the themes we have been exploring in our discussions this year: the underdog as hero, double lives, race and social justice, and our relationship to the stories we are drawn to listen to and believe and to the stories we enact and tell.

Robert Peace was Jeff Hobbs' roommate for four years at Yale University. Peace had come to Yale from challenging circumstances in urban Newark, NJ--a father in prison, a mother struggling to support her family and encourage her brilliant and sensitive son's education. As the title suggests, Peace's life ended in tragedy. Although he graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and then returned home to teach at the Catholic high school he'd attended, he was murdered at the age of 30 because of his work selling drugs. Peace had succeeded in spite of the odds, yet his success alienated him from both of the worlds he inhabited, academia and the streets, leaving him code-switching in both.

When Hobbs learned of Peace's death, he realized he had never known the whole person that was Robert Peace. In an interview with his publisher, Simon & Schuster, Hobbs said, "To some degree, no matter the medium or intention, everyone writes about what conflicts them, and nothing has ever conflicted me more than the death of Rob Peace. . . . My young daughter, clued in to what I've been working on for more than half her life, asked me once: 'Why did your friend Rob Peace pass away?' I replied, 'He had a lot of bad luck, and he made a lot of bad decisions.' This answer is tailored to a child, but I think it remains the most accurate answer." A true tragedy in literature is not just a story of a lamentable event but one of a great person destined to fall because of a character flaw, a conflict with an overpowering force, or some ineluctable and frustrating combination of the two. What, in your opinion, was Robert Peace's tragic flaw? What social and cultural forces influenced his life? Consider Oswaldo Gutierrez, Rob's friend who also grew up in Newark and went to college at Yale. How were the circumstances of their lives and their responses to them similar, and how were they different? How does Gutierrez's life help you understand Peace's choices? Do you think that the professors and administrators of Yale University bear any responsibility for Peace's ultimate disconnect from the college community? What about Newark was so compelling to him that he returned to that community?

New York Times Book Review critic Anand Giridharadas notes that The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace "asks the consummate American question: Is it possible to reinvent yourself, to sculpture your own destiny? . . . That one man can contain such contradictions makes for an astonishing, tragic story. In Hobbs's hands, though, it becomes something more: an interrogation of our national creed of self-invention." Hobbs spent hundreds of hours interviewing members of both of Peace's worlds. In the interview with Simon & Schuster, Hobbs suggests that while Peace's story can stimulate social and cultural debate, his intention was to present the story of one man, as whole and complete as he could write it: "This is the story of one man’s life, a relatively anonymous man who died because he sold drugs—and that stark fact can be and has been sufficient for any given person to dismiss his story as one of potential wasted in the service of thuggery. And if that’s your reaction, you’re perfectly entitled to it. But this book is about details, it’s about empathy—about remembering that everyone does not experience each moment the same way. It’s about getting to know and understand a remarkable, flawed young man. Yes, his life touches on race and class in this country; yes, it illuminates education and entitlement and access; and yes, it speaks to the fact that living a decent life in America can be tremendously difficult. These issues are quite subjective, and they are best served to remain that way; my intent is not to make statements but simply to tell what happened." What are your feelings about the short and tragic life of Robert Peace?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, November 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed October's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, then you might also like these books and articles suggested by our discussion group members: To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee; The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the October issue of The Atlantic; The Worst of the Worst: Saving Notorious Killers from the Death Penalty by Patrick Radden Keefe in the September 14 issue of The New Yorker; and the NPR podcast Serial.

Also see this list of Public Education Materials from Equal Justice Initiative which includes  a list of Recommended Reading on Racial Justice.

Marshall Project interview with Bryan Stevenson on Charleston and Our Real Problem with Race

Bryan Stevenson, author of our October discussion book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, is a member of The Marshall Project's advisory board. He spoke with Corey Johnson in Opening Statement about the racially motivated shootings at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston in June. Here are a few excerpts:

" . . . I don't believe slavery ended in 1865, I believe it just evolved.

 . . . we are very confused when we start talking about race in this country because we think that things are 'of the past' because we don’t understand what these things really are, that narrative of racial difference that was created during slavery that resulted in terrorism and lynching, that humiliated, belittled and burdened African Americans throughout most of the 20th century. The same narrative of racial difference that got Michael Brown killed, got Eric Garner killed and got Tamir Rice killed. That got these thousands of others — of African Americans — wrongly accused, convicted and condemned. It is the same narrative that has denied opportunities and fair treatment to millions of people of color, and it is the same narrative that supported and led to the executions in Charleston. . . . The question I ask is not how could this young man be affected by these historic failures, by this ideology, the question is how could he not? We're all affected by it.

 . . . You'll see lots of people talking enthusiastically about imposing the death penalty on this young man in South Carolina. But that’s a distraction from the larger issue, which is that we’ve used the death penalty to sustain racial hierarchy by making it primarily a tool to reinforce the victimization of white people. The greatest racial disparity of the death penalty is the way in which the death penalty is largely reserved for cases where the victims are white. . . . I don’t think anybody should get the death penalty. I'm against the death penalty. Not because I believe people don’t deserve to die for the crimes that they commit. I think that we don’t deserve to kill. The system of justice in South Carolina is not going to be better or more racially just based on whether this kid gets executed or not. If I were the governor of South Carolina, I’d say: ‘We’re going to abolish the death penalty, because we have a history of lynching and terror that has demonized and burdened people of color in this state since we’ve became a state. I'm not gonna end the death penalty because there are innocent people on death row, I'm not gonna end the death penalty because I think it's unreliable or it's too expensive, I'm gonna end it because in South Carolina, we have a history of bias and terror and violence and segregation, and the death penalty has been a tool for sustaining that, and I’m gonna say we're not gonna have that.’"

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

We are looking forward to the upcoming discussions of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, a troubling book by an inspiring author. Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. He and EJI challenge bias against the poor and people of color and have won relief for dozens of prisoners who have been wrongly imprisoned and condemned.

In his Introduction, Stevenson tells readers about his grandmother's words of advice to him when he was a child: "You can't understand most of the important things from a distance, Bryan. You have to get close." In his memoir, Stevenson narrates some painful situations, such as the execution of prisoners and the great uncertainty and suffering endured by the prisoners and their families in the years, days, and hours leading up to these planned state killings, that are very difficult to read. Why do you think he asks us to live through these moments with these individuals and their families, and how does his decision as a writer relate to his grandmother's advice?

Justice is often personified as a blindfolded woman. The blindfold represents objectivity and impartiality. Stevenson introduces readers to many individuals whose cases illustrate that our justice system is not objective and impartial, especially where race, gender, and socio-economic status are concerned. Were you surprised by any of the statistics and stories Stevenson presents? Which of these stories most affected you and why?

Among the many stories that Stevenson tells in Just Mercy, the one he devotes the most time to in his narrative is that of Walter McMillian. McMillian, a poor Black man, is sentenced to die for the murder of a young White woman in spite of overwhelming evidence showing he could not have committed the crime and many instances of blatant misconduct by law enforcement officers, prosecuting lawyers, and judges assigned to the case. Why do you think Stevenson chose to highlight McMillian's case? What does his case represent about our justice system? Do you think justice was finally served to McMillian in the end?

Reviewers have compared Stevenson to the fictional lawyer Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Stevenson is frustrated that the novel is a point of pride in Monroeville, the town where his client Walter McMillan was sentenced to die for a crime he didn't commit. What are the ironies of this coincidence, and why does this comparison to Finch and the town pride in the novel frustrate Stevenson?

Stevenson titles one of his chapters Broken and his book as a whole Just Mercy. To whom is Stevenson referring? Who is broken, and who deserving of mercy? Do you agree with Stevenson that it is our own fear of brokenness that motivates our justice system's worst intentions and abuses?

Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative do necessary work motivated by a belief in justice and mercy. While Stevenson and EJI are admirable and heroic in their efforts, what does the fact that there is so much work for them to do say about our justice system? What do we as a society need to do to make their work less necessary?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog. See the previous post about October's discussions for information about Starbucks' partnership with Stevenson and EJI to promote the book and support their work by donating profits from the sales of the book in their coffee shops.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed September's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members: Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics by Noah Berlatsky; Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World's Most Famous Heroine by Tim Hanley; When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins; Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore; Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirshman (just published this month); and My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem (to be published in October).

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

Our October book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, is an inspiring memoir by a real-life hero. Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and a professor of law at New York University Law School. He and EJI challenge bias against the poor and people of color and have won relief for dozens of prisoners who have been wrongly imprisoned and condemned. John Grisham says of Stevenson, "Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Though larger than life, Atticus exists only in fiction. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God's work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story."

We thought you might like to know that Starbucks is partnering with Stevenson by making his book available at their coffee shops nationwide at the great price of $10.40, and they are donating 100% of profits from the sale of the book to EJI. You can purchase a copy online or at your favorite neighborhood shop.

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Esquire, and Time, Just Mercy is also the winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction, the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, the Books for a Better Life Award, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, a Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize, and an American Library Association Notable Book.

We hope you will buy a copy at Starbucks to support EJI or check out a copy from your public library and join the discussion: Tuesday, October 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Watch Bryan Stevenson's inspiring TED talk:

Learn more about Equal Justice Initiative at www.eji.org.

And check back for some questions to consider as you are reading the book!

September Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore is another story of secret identities hidden in plain sight, illustrating the trope that things are not always what they seem. The most popular female superhero of all time, Wonder Woman, was created by a man, William Moulton Marston, who "braided together more than a century of women's rights rhetoric, his own very odd brand of psychology, and, inevitably, his peerless hucksterism."

As well as his complicated family life--an advocate of free love and "love bonds," he lived with two and sometimes three women at once, who became the inspiration for the character, yet kept their relationships a secret. What did you make of William Moulton Marston, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, Olive Byrne, and Marjorie Wilkes Huntley, as individuals and in their relationships with one another? Why do you think they kept their life together a secret even though they advocated for free love?

Marston proclaimed, "Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." He was inspired by the women's suffrage movement and the birth control movement, yet Wonder Woman's appearance was influenced by erotic pin-up art, and she was frequently depicted in bondage that went beyond the allegorical bonds of oppression of women. What did you make of Marston's feminism? Did he have an enlightened view of women, or was it, as portrayed in both his life and his art, "feminism as fetish"? What complexities of gender perception, gender equality, sexuality, and feminism does Wonder Woman embody? What if Holloway and Byrne had taken over the writing of Wonder Woman after Marston died? What kind of story lines do you think they would have written?

Lepore's central historical argument is that "The fight for women's rights hasn't come in waves. Wonder Woman was a product of the suffragist, feminist, and birth control movements of the 1900s and 1910s and became  a source of the women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The fight for women's rights has been a river, wending." What do you think of this argument? Is it accurate? Overstated?

Is it any easier today than in the early days of the women's movement to "have it all"?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed August's selection . . .

If you enjoyed A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

• The novels of Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and John Le Carré, especially Le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is based on the events that exposed the Cambridge Five traitors.
• The nonfiction books A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS by Jennet Conant; Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case by Allen Weinstein; and Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, and Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre.
• The James Bond movies; the movie version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; the movie The Imitation Game; the television series The Bletchley Circle; and the television series MI-5.

You might also want to visit the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., which features the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ever placed on public display. You can learn more at www.spymuseum.org.

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

What stories do we tell about ourselves? What stories do we want to believe about others? And how do these stories affect and even form the foundation of our relationships with others? A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben Macintyre addresses these questions with one of the most famous spy stories of all time, told "through the prism of personal friendship."

Kim Philby, a British citizen, rose to the upper levels of Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For decades, no one detected that he was also a Soviet spy. His deception was made possible by his talent for cultivating friendships within the British and American intelligence agencies. The most important of these friends were Nicholas Elliott, also an agent in MI6, and James Jesus Angleton, head of counterintelligence for the CIA. Because Philby and Elliott were of the same social class, had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same clubs, Elliott was unable to see past his own preconceptions to the fact of Philby's betrayal. Angleton had also gone to public school in Britain, and Philby exemplified for him certain British qualities and values he admired. Over drinks and dinners through the years, Elliott and Angleton passed on information to Philby that allowed him to effectively shut down British and American counterintelligence in the Soviet Union and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of operatives and their families.

Some readers will already be familiar with these events from John Le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which is based on the event that exposed the Cambridge Five traitors, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross, as KGB moles in the British intelligence service. In an interview with Kirkus Reviews, Macintyre says, "I don't think it's an accident that some of the greatest novelists have been spies--Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming,  or John Le Carré. In some ways, what spies do is a form of fiction. They create an alternative reality and try to lure people into it. Philby in some ways was a kind of frustrated novelist, and a man of great theater. Never was a man more acutely aware of his role in his own drama."

What do you think? Why did Kim Philby betray his country and the people closest to him? Was it a matter of ideology and personal conviction? Or was it, as Macintyre suggests, that Philby was "addicted to infidelity"? If not, what do you believe motivated him? What kind of personality does it take to be a spy? And how was he able to deceive Elliott and Angleton, two of the most experienced spies in the world as well as his two closest friends? What role did assumptions about social class, education, and profession play in the success of his deception?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed July's selection . . .

If you enjoyed In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides, then you might also like these books suggested by our discussion group members: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert; Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand; and Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales.

July Not Fiction Book Discussions

In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette by Hampton Sides is another thrilling story of men and boats, this one a cool read set in Arctic ice for one of Charleston's warmest months.

Our central protagonist, Navy lieutenant George Washington De Long, captain of the Jeannette, warned, "Wintering in the pack may be a thrilling thing to read about alongside a warm fire, but the actual thing is sufficient to make any man prematurely old." In July 1879, De Long and his crew of 32 men set sail from San Francisco on the USS Jeannette in search of a passage to the North Pole. Their voyage was funded and promoted by New York Herald publisher and eccentric Gilded Age baron James Gordon Bennett, Jr., and based, disastrously, upon incorrect speculation that at the North Pole was an open, warm water sea. Just two months into the journey, the ship was trapped in pack ice, where it drifted for two years. Then, just hours after breaking free of the ice, it sank, leaving the crew nearly 1,000 miles from the nearest land, the Arctic coast of Siberia. Three boats set out to reach land . . . To say more about what happened would spoil a long, hot summer day's read.

Sides notes that Bennett and De Long were well-matched "co-conspirators in a quest." Bennett was "a brilliant publisher with electric sensibilities and a profound intuition for what moved and mesmerized the American public" and had "a bottomless appetite for a story that could usher in the modern world." He understood the fascination that the North Pole held for the world in the late 1800s as one of the last unexplored, unconquered places on earth and that "the fur-cloaked men who ventured into the Arctic had become national idols--the aviators, the astronauts, the knights-errant of their day. . . . their quest informed by a kind of dark romance and a desperate chivalry." De Long had grown up an over-protected and bookish boy reading and dreaming of naval adventure. He would become the hero of Bennett's tale. He was "a determined, straight-ahead sort of man, efficient and thorough, and he burned with ambition." His motto was "Do it now." Bennett and De Long each saw the potential for himself in the story of this expedition.

What, in your opinion, is the legacy of "the grand and terrible polar voyage of the USS Jeannette"? Did it contribute to the scientific understanding of Arctic, or was it merely a publicity stunt pulled off at great cost to the men who suffered through it? Why are we, as readers, hungry for stories of adventure in unexplored places, of striving and suffering? And what do you make of the great irony that, as Sides notes, by 2050 climate change, one of the stories most resisted and denied by the general public in the last few decades, will have rendered the North Pole an Open Polar Sea during much of the year after all?

We hope you will join us: Tuesday, July 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 23, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed June's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown, then you might also like the Best Sports History Books as rated by Goodreads.com members. You might also like The Greatest Generation, The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections, and An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation, all by Tom Brokaw.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Factory Man by Beth Macy, then you might also like these books and films suggested by other discussion group members. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang; The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn; Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus; Elsewhere: A Memoir by Richard Russo; Cotton Tenants: Three Families by James Agee; Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward; Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert Reich; The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik; W. Edward Deming's philosophy; and the film Norma Rae with Sally Field.

June Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown is a classic tale of the hero on a journey, complete with mentor figures, allies and enemies, and, of course, an ultimate quest. Joe Rantz, who had been abandoned by his family, and eight other working-class young men from the Pacific Northwest worked together at the University of Washington during the Great Depression to become one of the greatest crew teams of all time, winning the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics against Adolf Hitler's team.

The Boys in the Boat has been on bestseller lists since publication, perhaps because it shares the fundamental appeal and structure of what Joseph Campbell calls the monomyth in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." What do you think Joe Rantz' true quest is, and what knowledge and powers does he acquire on his journey?What significance does his point of view have for the unfolding of Brown's narrative that another point of view might not have? What was so special about Joe that he became the element that finally brought the boys of the Husky Clipper together?

The Boys in the Boat is also the story of a generation of young men and women, what Tom Brokaw calls "the Greatest Generation," during one of the most difficult times in American and world history. What are the special qualities of this generation, and how did their experiences with the Great Depression and World War II influence their development? What do you think Americans today can learn from this generation?

Author David Laskin calls The Boys in the Boat "Chariots of Fire with oars." To get a feel for the drama of the 1936 Olympics and the great athleticism of crew teams, watch this trailer from the publisher, Viking/Penguin, for The Boys in the Boat:

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, June 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, June 18 at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

What is it about an underdog that makes for a good story? In Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local--and Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy, we have two underdogs, John D. Bassett III, the factory man of the title, and American industry itself.

Bassett, Chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Company in Galax, Virginia, is a complicated hero. Macy says,

Once in a reporter's career, if one is very lucky, a person like John D. Bassett III comes along. JBIII is inspirational. He's brash. He's a sawdust-covered good old boy from rural Virginia, a larger-than-life rule breaker who for more than a decade has stood almost single-handedly against the outflow of furniture jobs from America. "He's an asshole!" more than one of his competitors barked when they heard I was writing a book about globalization with JBIII as a main character. Over the course of researching this book, over the course of hearing his many lectures and listening to him evade my questions by telling me the same stories over and over, there were times that I agreed.

Bassett fought against family intrigue to take charge of Vaughan-Bassett, and then he fought against the offshoring of American furniture manufacturing to Asia, to save 700 American factory jobs. As Shawn Donnan notes in a review of Factory Man in the Financial Times, "There is an element of Don Quixote about it."

Bassett's family built their furniture dynasty in the early 20th century through exploitation of American labor and the manufacture of an inferior product, and Asian manufacturers used those same business ethics and techniques to shift the profits of the furniture industry overseas. Bassett successfully fought this trend, but can American industry fight globalization? Macy said in an interview with Talking Biz News,

I hope the reader will come away from Factory Man with a deep understanding of why their furniture and other Asia-manufactured products cost a little bit less than they once did--and what that means for the 5 million Americans who used to make those products. I hope they're entertained and inspired by my main character, an iconoclast multimillionaire who cares enough for the generations of workers who made his family rich that when others in his industry were closing their factories, he dug in his heels and said, Oh hell no. I hope the families impacted by all the job losses take some small comfort in seeing the full story of globalization told: That work meant something to them. I hope policy makers and business leaders reading it are inspired to compete in the global economy based on more than just the quick-hit bottom line.

What do you think of JBIII and his company?  Is his example feasible for all of American industry? Or is his populist and Quixotic quest dependent upon his unique personality and circumstances? Is globalization really the villain? Or is it the American shareholder system, as Ethan Rouen suggests in his review in Fortune? Could American industry somehow turn globalization to its advantage?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, May 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection...

If you enjoyed The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, then you might also like these books and films suggested by our discussion group members:

• Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux by John Neihardt
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
• The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne
• The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity by Jill Lepore
• 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History winner Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn
• The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan
• Lonesome Dove both the novel by Larry McMurtry and the television miniseries
• the film Dances With Wolves starring Kevin Costner
• the film Red River starring John Wayne

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin illustrates the idea that, as the authors state in their Notes and Bibliography, " . . . history is fable agreed on." We think we know a story. In the old Westerns, the good guys defeated the bad guys, cowboys defeated the Indians. Then, in the last few decades, historians reconsidered the story, the bad guys defeated the good guys, cowboys defeated the Indians. And then a book like this complicates the story. Who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys? Who defeated whom? And for what purpose? Did their ends justify their means?

Drury and Clavin tell the story of Red Cloud, the Oglala Sioux warrior who was the only warrior in the 300-year-long war between Euro-Americans and Native Americans to defeat the United States government and force it to sue for peace on his terms--even though the U. S. eventually won the war. It is often said that the victor gets to tell the story, so that is at least part of the reason Red Cloud's had been largely forgotten. Drury and Clavin draw upon Red Cloud's own autobiography, along with other primary documents, to bring it back to common knowledge. But it is also a complicated story full of violence on all sides, and lies and trickery, especially on the part of the United States government. Red Cloud emerges as a brutal warrior and shrewd political strategist fighting to preserve the Plains Indians' way of life. Drury and Clavin point out that the relentless advance of white settlement for land, buffalo hides, and gold along the pioneer trails and rail lines would turn out to be more effective than any act of war on the part of the United States government at defeating the Indians, a fact that Red Cloud admitted on his first visit to Washington in 1870. As he told Secretary of the Interior Joseph P. Cox, "Now we are melting like snow on the hillside, while you are growing like spring grass." When asked why the United States fought Red Cloud, General Bisbee replied, "My only answer could be we did it for Civilization."

What do you think? What is your interpretation of Bisbee's answer? Do you think this is what most of the United States' soldiers and citizens believed? What kind of place would the United States be now if we had learned to accept different interpretations of the word "civilized"? And what do you think of Red Cloud? How did his childhood determine the man and leader he grew up to be? Do you feel Drury and Clavin's portrayal of Red Cloud and his cause was fair and impartial? Did you find that you were sympathetic to Red Cloud and the Sioux, or was it difficult for you to reconcile the brutality of the Indian battle ethic with the justness of their cause? And finally, although Drury and Clavin drew upon primary sources to write this book, we see how various participants in the events depicted strove to portray their involvement in the best possible light while blaming and even demonizing others. Given that human error and emotion play a large part in how we recall and record events, how accurate do you feel our understanding of any historical event can be?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 23, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson, then you might also like these books, articles, and films suggested by our discussion members:

Books--Nonfiction 
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence; Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan; No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes by Anand Gopal, and Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, especially the chapters on imperialism.

Books--Fiction
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje; The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell; and The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott

Articles
The Atlantic March 2015 article What ISIS Really Wants by Graeme Wood and The New Yorker January 5, 2015 article A Century of Silence about the Armenian genocide.

Films
The 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia directed by David Lean and starring Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, and Anthony Quinn; the 1981 film Gallipoli directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee; and the 1984 British television mini-series The Jewel in the Crown.

March Not Fiction Book Discussions

As its title indicates, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson tells the origin story of today's Middle East. As Melik Kaylan points out in a review in The Daily Beast, Anderson uses the storytelling genre of history writing, with colorful protagonists, narrative momentum, shocking facts, and an us-and-them divide between the West and the East. He uses these storytelling devices to good effect to show us how a handful of adventurers and bureaucrats were instrumental in ending the Ottoman Empire and dividing up the spoils into the Middle East that is the site and source of so much conflict today.


Our enigmatic hero is T. E. Lawrence, who led the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 during World War I. Anderson characterizes Lawrence as almost a mythological trickster:

A supremely private and hidden man, he seemed intent on baffling all those who would try to know him. A natural leader of men, or a charlatan? A man without fear, or both a moral and physical coward? Long before any of his biographers, it was Lawrence who first attached these contradictory characteristics--and many others--to himself. Joined to this was a mischievous streak, a storyteller's delight in twitting those who believed in and insisted on 'facts.' . . . Earlier than most, Lawrence seemed to embrace the modern concept that history was malleable, that truth was what people were willing to believe.

Anderson asks readers to consider,

How did [Lawrence] do it? How did a painfully shy Oxford archaeologist without a single day of military training become the battlefield commander of a foreign revolutionary army, the political master strategist who foretold so many of the Middle Eastern calamities to come?

Also in the cast of characters are three other men with double lives and complicated motives: Curt Prufer, a German spy in Arab disguise who hoped to incite jihad against Britain; William Yale, an employee of American Standard Oil searching for new oil supplies while pretending to be on a Grand Tour of the Holy Lands; and Aaron Aaronsohn, a Jewish agronomist, Zionist, and head of a Jewish spy ring hoping to secure Palestine for a new Jewish homeland. Lawrence himself called the Middle East during World War I "a sideshow of a sideshow." How did these four men and their personal agendas, in a secondary arena of the war, set the stage for the modern Middle East, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the Arab Spring, and for the terrible bully powers of ISIS, that is in many ways the central world conflict of our times? While Anderson focuses primarily on the events in the early 1900s, he does help readers understand the causes and conditions that led to the modern Middle East. As Kaylan notes in his review in The Daily Beast,

[Anderson] doesn't set out systematically to explicate the post-Ottoman origination of the region's enduring woes, a primary attraction for any potential reader. And yet we learn all we need to know and more without any of it being telegraphed as the narrative bowls along. Anderson carries his erudition lightly, but there's enough scholarship there to make an academic proud. As with the best kind of yarns, you don't realize what you've learned until the narrator goes silent.

Part of the interest of any good story is wondering what might have happened if things had gone otherwise. Anderson says,

Part of the enduring fascination with T. E. Lawrence's story is the series of painful 'what if?' questions it raises, a pondering over what the world lost when he lost.

What do you think of Anderson's tale? After reading it, do you understand Lawrence and his motivations? Do you think he is a hero? And what about the Middle East? Do you have a better grasp of the daily news coming from the modern Middle East? Does Anderson provide a balanced portrayal of all the political and cultural groups involved, or does he sacrifice objectivity for the sake of a good story? Was it a good read?


We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

Our discussions of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert were animated and far-ranging, generating lots of suggestions for further reading and viewing!

If you enjoyed The Sixth Extinction, then you might also like these books recommended by our discussion members: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the classic that launched the environmental movement; 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann about how the Columbian Exchange changed the world; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari about the cognitive revolution and how the ability to tell fictions changed the world; The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Faultline between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold, in which she reveals that many religious disputes have a secular trigger, such as scarcity of resources and control over natural resources; Cod: A biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky about a species of fish that has helped to further the growth and spread of our species and that we have fished to near-depletion; Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish by G. Bruce Knecht about another species of fish, the Patagonian Toothfish, or Chilean Sea Bass, that is valuable enough to become the loot of real-life pirates; A Feathered River Across the Sky:The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction by Joel Greenberg about the extinction in just a 50-year time span of a bird that once comprised forty percent of our continent's birds; The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant about the pressures placed on the Amur tiger by consumer desire for exotic products made from this endangered animal; The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World by Shelley Emling about one of the first female scientists and first scientists to study extinction; Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species by Sean B. Carroll about the scientists who first studied the origins of our remarkable species; and Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum by Richard Fortey, a behind-the-scenes tour of London's Natural History Museum.

And you might also enjoy watching these films: Winged Migration by Jacques Perrin, a visually stunning documentary about the migration of birds around the world; and PBS's Earth: A New Wild series about our species' relationship with the planet and its wild places and diverse species.

This list should keep you busy inside during this cold weather, but don't forget our next book for discussion, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson, a book about how the Middle East as we know and experience it today was made by an improbable handful of adventurers and low-level officers during World War I . . . another almost unbelievable story!

February Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert tells perhaps the most important--and the most difficult to believe--story of our time. Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on planet Earth was suddenly and dramatically reduced. A sixth extinction is currently in progress, and we human beings are the agents of change. Moreover, we are causing change at a rate much faster than evolution, determining not only the fate of the planet and our fellow travelers on it, but also, of course, our own. In her Prologue, Kolbert says,

If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. It's also a fascinating one. In the pages that follow, I try to convey both sides: the excitement of what's being learned as well as the horror of it. My hope is that readers of this book will come away with an appreciation of the truly extraordinary moment in which we live.

Kolbert combines vivid descriptions of the natural wonders she visits, such as the Great Barrier Reef and tropical rain forests, with clear, detailed summaries of the findings of the scientists studying evolution and extinction. Her tone is resolute and understated, never shrill. Her narrative makes her sobering argument through showing, rather than telling. In an interview with the editors of Publishers Weekly, Kolbert said of her role in writing the book,

In many ways I see myself as a translator. I got a lot of knowledgeable people to explain their work to me, often multiple times. Almost all of the scientists I dealt with were incredibly generous. They put up with my questions for months, in some cases years. . . . They really want people to understand the enormity of what's going on.

 One of Kolbert's most unsettling points is that our effect on the planet is not a matter of good or bad intentions; it is a simple matter of the fact of our existence on the planet and of some of our unique qualities as a species--our creativity, our ability to collaborate, our ability to pass information from generation to generation, our mobility, our ability to transform our environment. Kolbert notes that "To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn't much matter whether people care or don't care. What matters is that people change the world."

An interviewer for the New York Times asked Kolbert whether she finds writing about extinction depressing. She replied,

I've tried to transcend my own feelings. Yes, it's depressing, but you have to look it in the face. That's true of a lot of topics. . . . The other side of it was that in writing a book about extinction, I went to some of the most amazing places on Earth. . . . Spending time with [scientists working to preserve species] showed me the amazing lengths people are willing to go through to preserve species. That's the other side of the extinction story.

How do you feel after reading The Sixth Extinction? If people change the world, can we decide to change it enough to avoid the worst consequences of the climate change and extinction event we have set in motion? If not, is change simply an inevitable and unavoidable fact of the universe, not worth despairing about? Or do you feel depressed? Why would we want to read a book about something that, individually, we have little control over? And why do some people resist this true story even in the face of persuasive evidence? Why is it so incredible?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, February 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Mail Library; Thursday, February 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed January's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti, then you might also like these books and films recommended by our discussion members: In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis; the Noriko Trilogy of films directed by Yasujiro Ozu; The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell and Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers; and the essay The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin.