Not Fiction Book Discussion Titles for 2015

As we look forward to a new year of nonfiction reading, it is helpful to remember Mark Twain's explanation for why "true" stories can be so compelling: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." In 2015, we will read strange and wonderful stories about heroes and underdogs, adventures and misadventures, tales and their tellers. What is our relationship to the stories we are drawn to listen to and believe and to the stories we enact and tell? And what is our relationship to the shared act of listening and telling itself?

We hope you will join us--see the dates and titles posted on the right side of this page.

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

If you enjoyed The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo, then you might also like these great classic road books suggested by our discussion group members: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck; On the Road by Jack Kerouac; and Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.

In a conversation between Caputo and Leat Heat-Moon about travel and the genre of the road book published in the New York Times (July 11, 2013), Caputo said, "The road book is a peculiarly American genre. I don’t know of any Italian road books or British road books or French road books or Spanish road books. Maybe “Don Quixote” would qualify as a Spanish road book. Why do you think that is?" Least Heat-Moon replied, "My theory is it comes from the historic fact we are all from the other side of the planet. I know there are American Indian tribes that deny that, but I think archaeology and anthropology show that all of the so-called Native American tribes did indeed come from the Eastern Hemisphere. We’re all the descendants of travelers. And with the exception of people of African descent, virtually all of our ancestors came here wanting to find better territory. I think it’s genetic memory functioning — when life gets this way or that way, and we’re not really happy with it, what do we do? Put a kit bag over one shoulder and head out for the road because that’s where solutions might lie. Somewhere out there is an answer to why a life is as it is."

December Not Fiction Book Discussions

We began our virtual road trip through American history and culture this year with The Unwinding by George Packer, a montage of biographical sketches and cultural memes that Packer uses to describe the "unwinding" over the last three decades of the America most of us take for granted, "when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way." We will end our journey with The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean by Philip Caputo,  in which Caputo recounts his epic journey across the United States, with his wife, two dogs, and an Airstream trailer in tow, asking Americans "What holds us together?"

Over the years of his journalism career, Caputo has visited Barter Island off the coast of Alaska and has lived in Key West, Florida, and he says, "My thinking ran something like this: The Inupiat schoolkids here [in Alaska] pledge allegiance to the same flag as the children and grandchildren of Cuban immigrants on Key West, six thousand miles away. Native Americans and Cuban Americans on two islands as far apart as New York is from Moscow, yet in the same country. How remarkable. I felt then a heightened awareness of America's vastness and diversity. And a renewed appreciation for its cohesiveness. In an itinerant life, I'd traveled through more than fifty foreign countries. A lot of them, riven by centuries-old hatreds, all too often delaminated into ghastly ethnic and sectarian wars . . . .What a marvel that the huge United States, peopled by every race on Earth, remained united. What held it together?" In the course of his journey across America, Caputo sees evidence of the same unwindings that Packer describes. Yet at the end of it, he is more optimistic about our future than Packer seems to be, finding hope in what he calls our "dynamic disequilibrium," the tension of conflict between community and individualism.

What do you think? After our reading and discussion this year, what do you think unites us as a nation and a culture? What do you think threatens to tear us apart? In his Prologue, Packer suggests that unwindings of political, social, and cultural structures in our country are nothing new, that "Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion." Yet in an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, Packer says of this particular devolution, "What I see happening is not just cyclical, though, it feels like a real cultural shift where the value of the community, of what makes this a coherent society, has really been submerged." Do you agree with Packer that we have undergone an irreversible shift away from community? Or does community ultimately hold us together in spite of other changes in our legislative and cultural makeup? What, exactly, is community in a nation as diverse as ours?

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

Read- and watch-alikes: If you enjoyed November's selection . . .

If you enjoyed reading about the political-media complex in our nation's capital in This Town by Mark Leibovich, then you might also like these books and television shows about politics and the fourth estate suggested by our discussion group members: All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren, which won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize, and the 1949 and 2006 film adaptations, about the rise of Louisiana governor Willie Stark told from the point of view of Jack Burden, a political reporter who becomes his right-hand man; The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse, a non-fiction book about pack journalism during the 1972 United States Presidential campaign; and House of Cards, a contemporary Netflix television series about a ruthless politician who manipulates a young, equally conniving reporter to further his own political agenda and rise to power.

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

As we approach election day, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!--in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich could demoralize you about the state of our nation's capital and the people who congregate there to run our government and report on those running our government. Or it could make you mad enough to go out and vote for change in your local and national referendums and races.

Leibovich is chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, based in Washington, D.C., and has been a national political correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau and a writer for the Washington Post and the San Jose Mercury News. In This Town, he covers four years in the life of the political-media complex in Washington, D.C., from 2008 to 2012, "a time of alleged correction." Called "a modern-day Balzac" by Richard McGregor of the Financial Times, Leibovich shows us through cynically humorous vignettes of shameless networking at an endless cycle of media events, parties, and funerals how Washington has become "a crucible of easy wealth, fame, forgiveness, and next acts. Punditry has replaced reporting as journalism''s highest calling, accompanied by a mad dash of 'self-branding,' to borrow a term that had now fully infested the city . . . the most compelling part of the Washington story, whether now or before: it is a spinning stew of human need." Leibovich readily admits that he is a part of This Town, but he says he pleads optimism for Washington and the nation, maybe not at this particular political and cultural moment, but as an ideal. In the Afterward to the paperback edition, Leibovich describes the reaction to his portrayal of This Town both inside and outside Washington. While most Washington insiders were more interested in finding out whether they were mentioned in the book than in denying or defending the culture Leibovich describes, outside of Washington, "[a]ctual readers of the book got the point that the systemic dysfunction of Washington has in fact sustained a vast, decadent, and self-obsessed political class. . . . 'What can be done?' was the single most common question I received outside Washington." Leibovich points out that his book is a work of journalism, which "requires a certain amount of dispassion and cynicism," so he does not offer solutions. But he observes that "[c]ynicism is idealism turned inside out. It stems from an expectation unrealized and a promise perverted. That is so much of Washington today in a nutshell. I want the capital to do better. It should do better. The country deserves better."

What do you think? Is This Town an accurate portrayal of Washington today? If so, is the political-media complex giving the American public what it wants and deserves, or has it underestimated its civic intelligence and desire for real political engagement? Do you agree with George Packer that the recent shift away from a cohesive web of public and private institutions that offered a sense of national identity and security and towards a loose association of organized money and the cult of celebrity represents a true cultural change more than just a cycle in the life of the nation? If so, what can be done?

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

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

If you liked The Good Soldiers and Thank You for Your Service by David Finkel, then you might also enjoy these books and films recommended by our discussion members: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a collection of semi-autobiographical and interrelated short stories inspired by O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam War; Jarhead, both the book by Anthony Swofford and the film written by William Broyles, Jr. and directed by Sam Mendes, based on Swofford's experiences as a Marine during Operation Desert Storm; The Hurt Locker, a film written by Mark Boal and produced and directed by Kathryn Bigelow about an Explosive Ordinance Disposal team during the Iraq War; Generation Kill, both the book by Evan Wright and the HBO miniseries, about the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ed combat since Vietnam; and Restrepo, a documentary directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington that follows the 2nd Platoon of Battle Company on a 15-month deployment in the Korangal Valley of northeast Afghanistan.

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel is the College of Charleston's 2014-2015 The College Reads! book selection. Between January 2007 and June 2008, Finkel spent eight months with the United States Army soldiers of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion in Iraq as they took part in the campaign know as "the surge." What is the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? These are the questions Finkel's unflinching third-person narrative poses to its readers as it follows Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich and the men and women in his charge through the violence, tension, and loss of armed conflict and its aftermath. Finkel writes, "my intent was to document their corner of the war, without agenda. This book, then, is that corner, unshaded." Finkel will speak on the College of Charleston's campus on Tuesday, October 14, 2014. There will be a public lecture at 7:00pm in Sottile Theatre. For more information, visit The College Reads! website. We hope you will take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to hear him speak about his work.

The Not Fiction Book Discussion read The Good Soldiers in 2010, and this month we are reading Thank You for Your Service, in which Finkel follows many of the men we met in The Good Soldiers home as they attempt to reintegrate into their families and into American society while struggling with Traumatic Brain Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, survivor's guilt, and a profound sense of loneliness.  In this work, Finkel asks two essential questions: When we ask young men and women to go to war, what are we asking of them? And when they return, what are we thanking them for? Kirkus Reviews calls Thank You for Your Service "one of the most morally responsible works of journalism to emerge from the post-9/11 era." We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 16, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.