James A. Garfield (1831 – 1881) was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment….
Genius of Place tells the story of one of the most important figures in the history of America, Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted was a fervent abolitionist, noted journalist, Civil War hero, early environmentalist, and the landscape architect behind New York’s Central Park, Boston’s Emerald Necklace, Stanford University, the Biltmore Estate and dozens of other green…
A spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings – for love, art, power, and God – set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order; by the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red comes a spellbinding tale of…
The year is 1921. A passionate affair between voracious romance reader Alma Webster and her dentist, Walter Baranov, has led to his wife’s murder. The lovers take flight aboard the Mauretania and the dentist takes the name of Inspector Dew, the detective who arrested the notorious wifekiller Dr. Crippen. But, in a disquieting twist, a…
The original ‘Great American Novel’, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a masterful study of obsession.
Originally published in 1907, this little known novel by the author of The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome was considered controversial for its frank treatment of labor and industrial conditions, drug addiction, mercy killing, divorce, and second marriages. Author Edith Newbold Jones was born into such wealth and privilege that her family inspired the…
Begins in 1910 and traces God’s relation to four generations of American seekers: Clarence Wilmot, a clergyman in Paterson, NJ who loses his faith. Son, Teddy, becomes a mailman who retreats from American exceptionalism into a life of ordinariness. Teddy’s daughter, Esther, becomes a movie star, an All-American goddess. Her son, Clark, is possessed of…
ORDINARY LOVEAt a reunion with her grown children, a woman recalls the long-ago affair that ended her relationship with their father–and changed all their lives irrevoccably.GOOD WILLDespite the carefully self-sufficient life he has designed for his small family, a man discovers that even the right choices have unexpected consequences–sometimes heart-breaking ones. Discussed September 10, 2016…
Saturday is set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a successful neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and enjoying good relations with his children. Henry wakes to the comfort of his large home in central London on this, his day off. He is as at ease here as he is…
A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression when America was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a President who becomes a dictator to save the nation…
