April Not Fiction Book Discussion

Last month's book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, informed us of the threat posed by internet platforms for the benefit of a few technology entrepreneurs and their iconic companies to the economy, to democracy, to society, and to our right to define our own personal future by how we use our time and attention. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell  is a guide to taking back our time and attention. It is a political manifesto for resisting the limited future planned for us by what Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism." With her entertaining and subtly subversive ramble through ancient philosophy, stories of political resistance, art and literature, and nature, Odell encourages us to disconnect from the online world and its message of efficiency and productivity and reconnect to the actual world around us.

We hope you will join the discussion:

When? Tuesday, April 6, at 6:30 p.m.

Where? We will meet virtually on CCPL's Zoom server. Here is a link to register for the April meeting.

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Apr 6, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqceisqjkvGdQlXPa0Wx5dyNGMbiuz9u5K 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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

If you enjoyed The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff, then you might also like these books and film suggested by our discussion group members:

• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
• The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
• The Social Network by Ben Mezrich, book; Aaron Sorkin, screenplay; and David Fincher, director

March's Not Fiction Book Discussion

 

In this month's discussion, we'll talk about the evolution of capitalism as described in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Zuboff, the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, argues that through internet platforms we interact with every day, our private lives have become a free raw material that "surveillance capitalists" exploit without regulation to predict and shape human behavior. They are the new conquistadors and Gilded Age industrialists of the 21st century.

We hope you will join the discussion:

When? Tuesday, March 2, at 6:30 p.m.

Where? We will meet virtually on CCPL's Zoom server. Here is a link to register for the March meeting:

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.  

When: March 2, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqceisqjkvGdQlXPa0Wx5dyNGMbiuz9u5K 

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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

 If you enjoyed Silver, Sword, and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Marie Arana, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

• In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
• What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Autumn of the Patriarch, The General in His Labyrinth, and others by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann
• Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Death in the Andes, The Feast of the Goat, and others by Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

You might also enjoy listening to this podcast suggested by a discussion group member:

• There Will Be Bananas. Throughline. NPR 1/9/2020

February's Not Fiction Book Discussion

 

This month we continue reading about the forces that shaped the Americas with Silver, Sword and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Marie Arana. Arana tells the story of how exploitation (silver), violence (sword), and religion (stone) have influenced Latin America by interweaving history with the lives of three contemporary Latin Americans.

We hope you will join the discussion:

When? Tuesday, February 2, at 6:30 p.m.

Where? We will meet virtually on CCPL's Zoom server. Here is a link to register for the February meeting:

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.  

When: Feb 2, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqceisqjkvGdQlXPa0Wx5dyNGMbiuz9u5K 

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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

 If you enjoyed The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantu
What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forche
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

January Not Fiction Book Discussion

 

We begin our conversations for 2021 with the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin, professor of history at Yale University. Grandin asks us to take a fresh and honest look at the brutal realities behind the myth of American exceptionalism, using the symbols of the frontier and the border wall to frame his discussion of the evolution of American identity and its inextricable roots in capital gained through the paradigm of an extractive economy.

We hope you will join the discussion:

When? Tuesday, January 5, at 6:30 p.m.

Where? We will meet virtually on Zoom. Here is a link to register for the January meeting:

Hi there, 

You are invited to a Zoom meeting. 

When: Jan 5, 2021 06:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) 

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqceisqjkvGdQlXPa0Wx5dyNGMbiuz9u5K 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.