We met on June 1, 2024 at Dick’s. Most of us preferred Tinkers, Harding’s debut novel. Eden was far from Carolyn’s favorite. She found the author’s use of language to be almost a barrier to the story. He seemed to idealize and glorify the island residents who suffered from intellectual and/or physical limitations, which seemed…
On March 22, 2024 we met at the Larkes. Renee suggested this book. I remember Grace and I trying to force an alternative – the fictionalized account about the midwife in Maine. We did not prevail. This saga portrays a worldly/saintly/mythic Amazonian woman, Marie, based on an historical abbess, as being in direct contact with…
We started the new year on Saturday January 27, 2024 at Renee’s parents’ home in Rockland discussing Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein, which was proposed by Michael. Salmon Chase, as Secretary of the Treasury, was the irascible hero of this story. As an…
We selected this book at our outdoor gathering at Karen’s and Michael’s house, November 5, 2022. The weather was in the low 70’s – balmy! Other contenders were “On The Grid” and “The Shepherd’s Life.” Karen served a pumpkin buttermilk cake. Appetizers included salad, flake pastry with asparagus, cheese/grapes, and deviled eggs. Here is the…
Book club date September 24, 2022 A popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The myth of the “Dark Ages” obscures the truth that this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages…
Discussed March 14, 2021 From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when…
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this…
Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of…
The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring story of adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America; Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to…
Paul Theroux spent a lifetime crossing the globe, exploring exotic and rich history and folklore of foreign places. For his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America — the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing,…
