December Not Fiction Book Discussions

In this year's discussions, we have explored our understanding of our world--our world view--and how it affects the uses we make of the earth, our wanderings across it, our settlements on it, our confrontations with the elements and animals that inhabit it, and our confrontations with each other. For our final book of 2011, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben, we will take a wide-angle view of the entire planet and consider McKibben's argument that what we do locally really does matter globally.

In 1989, McKibben wrote The End of Nature, widely regarded as the first book for a general audience to address the possible effects of global warming. In Eaarth--note the extra "a"--he argues that we have waited too long to address climate change, that we have created a new planet that is fundamentally different from the one we have known. Many of his predictions are now a reality, as he summarizes on his website on the page titled From the End of Nature to the Beginning of Eaarth.

While McKibben intends for his book to be sobering, he also hopes to rally readers with practical suggestions for how to build civil and sustainable societies and economies. His most world-view-challenging argument is that endless economic growth is not only unsustainable but also unnecessary to our well being and happiness. And he believes passionately in the value of individual effort. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009 with the goal of creating awareness of the need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm.

What do you think? We didn't pay attention 20 years ago, and we are all too willing to consider the arguments of those who claim climate change is not driven by human behavior. Why is it so difficult to shift our understanding on this issue to the point that we take action? Will our individual and communal actions be enough? Can we ethically require the same actions from developing countries that have not had the chance to create a materially more comfortable life through economic growth? As Paul Greenberg, writing for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, notes, "in the absence of some overarching authority, a kind of ecologically minded Lenin, [these solutions] will remain hipster lifestyle choices rather than global game changers. Which I suppose in the end is part of McKibben's point. Eaarth itself will be that ecological Lenin, a harsh environmental dictator that will force us to bend to new rules. The question is whether we will be smart enough to bend ourselves first."

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, December 6, at 6:30 at Main Library; Thursday, December 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

We continue our consideration of our conflicts with each other with Eliza Griswold's The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. Griswold traveled for seven years along the tenth parallel, the line of latitude 700 miles north of the equator, along which half of the world's Christians and Muslims live--and compete for new converts and scarce natural resources, as we see daily in international news.

She decided to write the book after she traveled with Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, in 2003 to visit with Sudan's President Omar al Bashir. Franklin had recently called Islam "a very wicked and evil religion" just after 9/11, and Griswold was curious to see their interaction. With vivid stories of her travels and interviews, Griswold helps readers understand the way religion and the struggle to survive are intertwined in Africa and Asia. She says that all of the conflicts she reported on had a secular trigger, such as a dispute over land rights and control of a natural resource such as water, oil, or chocolate, yet because the state is no longer a strong unifying factor in people's lives, the conflicts are framed by religious differences. Surprisingly, based on her observations over these seven years, she argues that the greatest upheavals are within these religions, not between them, as the understanding of faith and nationhood evolves.

A "preacher's kid" herself, Griswold is the daughter of liberal Episcopalian Bishop Frank Griswold. In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, she describes how her background influenced the writing of the book: "I grew up in a household where questions of faith and intellect were raised on a daily basis, so I definitely have always wondered, how do smart people believe--and there are many [believers] among conservatives and liberals alike--how do they take these stories to be true? So I certainly came from that background of these two intertwined threads and that's how I came to wonder about the question of whether all fundamentalism leads to violence. I thought that I would find among the fundamentalists--whether they were Christian or Muslim--that their beliefs would be entirely different and entirely incomprehensible [to me]. But that is not what I found. What I found was that I had more sympathy and more ability to understand their different points of view than I had imagined. And I think that that had something to do with my upbringing."

Griswold notes that since the first lines of latitude were drawn in the third century B.C.E., the regions they define "have carried social and moral connotations, and cartographers have used them to separate one 'type' of human from another." The tenth parallel falls within what was called the "Torrid Zone," thought by Aristotle and philosophers who followed him to be home to a race of strange and violent peoples but containing rich resources. We saw the roots of the geographical and religious competition for converts and resources in our first book this year, The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester. After reading The Tenth Parallel, what do you predict for the future of this region of the world? Is religion interfering with peace, or is it the best hope for peace?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says of Griswold's book, which won the 2011 Anthony J. Lukas prize, "She returns us to the most basic truth of human existence: that the world and its people are interconnected." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, November 1, at 6:00 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, November 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

Our next two titles for discussion explore our confrontations with each other, particularly those in which religion seems to be the point of conflict but in reality has come to represent many other, more basic disparities, such as those involving sovereignty, security, land ownership, and control of natural resources.

In Zeitoun, Dave Eggers tells the true story of a New Orleans family--Abdulrahman Zeitoun, his wife, Kathy, and their children--caught up in both the war on terror and Hurricane Katrina. With compassionate, straightforward prose, Eggers tells how, as Hurrican Katrina approached, Zeitoun stayed in New Orleans to watch over his home and painting business while Kathy took the children out of town to safety. In the first few days after the storm, Zeitoun paddled about in a canoe feeding abandonned dogs and rescuing people. But when the National Guard arrived, Zeitoun was arrested on his own property, he was held without due process, and he and other prisoners experienced abuse. Because he grew up in Syria, his captors assumed he must have terrorist connections, and they accused him and his fellow detainees of being al Qaeda and Taliban. After nearly a month of captivity, during which he was unable to make a phone call, he was released on a charge of looting, which was later dropped. Meanwhile his family, both Kathy in Arizona and his extended family in Syria, try frantically to find him and secure his release.

A uniquely American tragedy, Zeitoun also manages to offer a hopeful view forward, in the faith Zeitoun shows in his God, his family, his city, and his work. After he is released, he returns to work to help rebuild the city. Eggers writes, "More than anything else, Zeitoun is simply happy to be free and in his city. It's the place of his dreams, the place where he was married, where his children were born, where he was given the trust of his neighbors. So every day he gets in his white van, still with its rainbow logo, and makes his way through the city, watching it rise again. . . . As he drives through the city during the day and dreams of it at night, his mind vaults into glorious reveries--he envisions this city and this country not just as it was, but better, far better. It can be. Yes, a dark time passed over this land, but now there is something like light."

The Zeitoun Foundation, created in 2009 to aid in the rebuilding of and ongoing health of the city of New Orleans, and to help ensure the human rights of all Americans, has distributed over $200,000 in grants to nonprofits, funded by the sale of the book. Zeitoun is also a recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the first and only annual U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace by leading readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view.

Timothy Egan, writing for the New York Times Book Review, says, "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." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 20, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

September Not Fiction Book Discussions

Last month we read The Tiger, a book about the confrontation between humans and Amur tigers in Russia's Far East. It's author, John Vaillant, says his writing explores "collisions between human ambition and the natural world." That phrase could also describe the relationship between giant rogue waves and the meteorologists, oceanographers, physicists, ship insurers, ship salvagers, and surfers who study them, work with their results, and, in the case of surfers, actively seek them out. To write The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean, journalist Susan Casey followed these brave and, some would say, crazy people around the globe to learn about unpredictable waves that swallow ships, destroy coastal communities, and entice extreme athletes to take the ride of their lives.

Casey notes that until very recently, scientifically recorded evidence for these waves was not available, and the waves were part of the lore of the sea along with mermaids, with very few survivors left to tell the tales. Casey cites a statistic from 2000 that an average of two large ships sink every week in the world's oceans, some disappearing without a trace. She also notes that these waves are possibly connected to climate change, particularly global warming, with serious implications for the heavily populated communities that live along the world's coasts. But especially intriguing to Casey, herself a competitive swimmer in college and beyond and author of a book about great white sharks, a woman who said in an interview with Esquire, "The ocean is my church," are the elite surfers who ride these waves. Casey asks, "What kind of person drops in on Mother Nature's biggest tantrums for fun? What drives him? And since he has gone into that dark heart of the ocean and felt its beat in a way that sets him apart, what does he know about this place that the rest of us don't?"

With thrilling prose and dramatic narrative events, Casey evokes the beauty, power, terror, and mystery of the sea and helps readers understand that "waves are the original primordial force." A reviewer for The Globe and Mail says The Wave is "a powerful, articulate ride into a world you never knew existed but that you will never, never forget." We hope you will join our discussion: Tuesday, September 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, September 22, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Want to see a giant wave in action but don't want to get too close? Go to YouTube and type "giant waves" in the search box!

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

In our reading and discussion this year, we have been exploring our understanding of our world, the uses we make of it, our wanderings across it, our settlements on it, our confrontations with the elements and animals that inhabit it, and our confrontations with each other. Our next two books explore what John Vaillant calls the "collisions between human ambition and the natural world."

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant takes readers to the vast, snowy taiga of Russia's Far East, where an Amur tiger is stalking humans, bent on revenge against poachers, while a team of trackers searches for the tiger before it can strike again . . . Vaillant has written a suspenseful narrative that is interwoven with beautifully written and deeply informative descriptions of the unique "boreal jungle" in which Amur tigers live, the people who have harmoniously coexisted with these tigers for thousands of years, and the complex political and economic events that have placed them in conflict with one another. According to Library Journal, "What spirits this adventure narrative from compelling to brilliant is Vaillant's use of the tiger hunt as an allegorical lens through which to understand the cultural, economic, and environmental devastation of post-Communist Russia." Most fascinating of all, Vaillant helps readers to understand not only the power and beauty of the Amur tiger, but also what the world must be like from its point of view.

Vaillant says his book was inspired by a documentary about the events in his book, Conflict Tiger, directed by Sasha Snow and shot on location in Russia's Far East in the winter of 2004. Snow is now working on a documentary based on Vaillant's first book, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, about logging in British Columbia and the felling of a golden spruce sacred to the Haida Indians, that also dramatizes the "collisions between human ambition and the natural world." Visit the Conflict Tiger website to view a clip of the film.

Visit Vaillant's website, http://www.thetigerbook.com/, for links to articles about the Amur tiger and websites of organizations working to prevent poaching and trafficking in Amur tigers.

Simon Winchester suggests we "read this fine, true book in the warmth, beside the flicker of firelight. Read it and be afraid. Be very afraid." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

July Not Fiction Book Discussions

We will continue our consideration of "what it has meant to be an American" (Karen R. Long, in a review of Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne in The Plain Dealer) with a reading and discussion of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. Wilkerson tells the story of America's Great Migration, the emigration of nearly 6 million black citizens from the rural South to the cities of the North and West, over half of the 20th century, in search of a better life.

Herself the daughter of people who had been part of this migration, Wilkerson interviewed over 1,200 individuals, visiting senior centers and churches across the country to preserve memories of this truly epic movement across the country. She chose three people to represent this collective experience of leaving one world and adapting to another, Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster. Wilkerson said in an interview on NPR's Tell Me More that in writing the book, "one of the goals was to try to get people to be able to imagine themselves doing the kinds of things that they did, and to try to picture: What would you do if you were in that circumstance. And beyond that, my goal was to restore the migration to its proper place in history. And then finally, it would be that all of us recognize that we have so much more in common than we've been led to believe, so much more in common. All of us have someone in our background who wanted something better and acted on it. And that's why we're here."

Toni Morrison describes this work, destined to become a classic of American history, sociology, and biography, as "profound, necessary, and an absolute delight to read." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, July 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, July 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Visit Wilkerson's website to see pictures of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster.

View an interactive slide show of artist Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series created by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Experience Lawrence's vivid paintings of his community, explore his world, and journey with the migrants.

June Not Fiction Book Discussions

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 takes readers back to a time before "The Middle" of America was settled, before railroads, farms, and towns. Gwynne tells two interconnected stories. The first is of Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by Comanches at the age of nine, and her mixed-blood son, Quanah Parker, who became the last great chief of the Comanches. The second is of the Comanche nation's forty-year war with the United States Government over the vast Great Plains and their resources. The Comanches, a nomadic and martial nation that depended upon the buffalo for its way of life and physical survival, effectively delayed the development of the center of the American nation and challenged the American sense of Manifest Destiny.

Both Cynthia Ann Parker and Quanah Parker are interesting case studies of cultural assimilation. Cynthia Ann adapted quickly to life with the Comanches, but she was unable to reassimilate to white culture when she was recaptured by American troops. Her "rescuers" could not understand her love of native life and desire to remain among the Comanche. Quanah adapted easily to his second life on the reservation after his eventual surrender, taking on a leadership role in both the white and native communities. Unfortunately, most members of his nation were, like Cynthia Ann, unable to accommodate themselves to the new dominant culture. Why are some people able to accept and adjust to new world views while others are not?

Gwynne's book also prompts questions about how history would have been different if the Spanish and French had been more successful in fighting the Comanches in previous centuries. Would America be the country it is today? And what if the Comanches had not been defeated by the United States Government? Would they have been forced to give up their way of life because of their inability and unwillingness to adapt to the increasingly technological and industrial world around them? As Karen R. Long, writing for The Plain Dealer, says, "Empire of the Summer Moon expands our sense of what it has meant to be an American."

Most of all, Empire of the Summer Moon is a compelling, epic story of our past, one that may keep you up reading by the light of the Comanche Moon. As Bruce Barcott, writing for the New York Times, says, Gwynne "pulls his readers through an American frontier roiling with extreme violence, political intrigue, bravery, anguish, corruption, love, knives, rifles and arrows. Lots and lots of arrows. This book will leave dust and blood on your jeans."

Listen to an NPR Fresh Air interview with Gwynne and read an excerpt from the book.

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