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…
As far as I recall, this book was proposed by Carolyn Housman, when the club met at her home in Rockland, but what matter is that, 14 months later? We read it, we liked it (which, I suppose is true of most of our selections but never guaranteed). In any event, we met on Saturday,…
With meticulous research and page-turning suspense, Patriots brings to life the American Revolutionthe battles, the treacheries, and the dynamic personalities of the men who forged our freedom. Author A.J. “Jack” Langguth is Professor Emeritus of the the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California and an American author and journalist. In addition to…
The Professor and the Madman, masterfully researched and eloquently written, is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary — and literary history. Author Simon Winchester, OBE, is a British writer, journalist and broadcaster who resides in the United…
Originally published in 1942 (in Hungarian) and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs. Author Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer and journalist. He was born in the city…
When Nuremberg was scouted in 1945 as a possible site for the Nazi war crime trials, an American damage survey of Germany described it as being “among the dead cities” of that country, for it was 90% destroyed, its population decimated, its facilities lost. As a place to put Nazis on trial, it symbolized the…
Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Author Barbara Demick is an American journalist. She is…
More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the American Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today’s population would be six million. In This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation. Author Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust…
Winter, January 1945. It is cold and dark, and the German army is retreating from the Russian advance. Germans are fleeing the occupied territories in their thousands, in cars and carts and on foot. But in a rural East Prussian manor house, the wealthy von Globig family tries to seal itself off from the world….
The exhilarating, untold story of an extraordinary World War II rescue mission, where a plane crash in the South Pacific plunged a trio of U.S.military personnel into a land that time forgot. Author Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of…
