What we’re about
We meet at the Draught house English pub and imbibe some beer and food while discussing history.
Titles range from more rigorous and scholarly works to lighter, more journalistic writing. Genres tend to include foreign policy, history, culture, science, politics, and area studies (e.g. The Middle East, Europe, South Asia, etc.) See our "Past Reads" page for titles.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern AgeDraught House Pub & Brewery, Austin, TX
Join us over food and drinks to discuss “The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age.”
Description of the book:
From one of the world's preeminent political historians, a magisterial study of political leadership around the world from the advent of parliamentary democracy to the age of Obama.
All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership -- as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders -- meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process -- are the most successful and admirable.
In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures and foibles of a broad array of twentieth century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change -- Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, among them -- Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength.
Overturning many of our assumptions about the twentieth century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjeL67qoV0Q - The Anarchy: the east India company, the pillage of an empireDraught House Pub & Brewery, Austin, TX
Join us over food and drinks to discuss “The Anarchy: the east India company, corporate violence and the pillage of an empire.”
Description of the book:
In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his stead, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company's reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was essentially ruled from a boardroom in the city of London. The Anarchy tells one of history's most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire-which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources-fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation answerable only to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and had no idea about the country whose wealth provided their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, William Dalrymple provides a devastating portrait of the brutality that results when a company becomes a colonial power.
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUeyOEY9oWg - After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work AheadDraught House Pub & Brewery, Austin, TX
Join us over food and drinks to discuss the “After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead.”
Description of the book:
Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history—books written to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and to think his way through to a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here—mired as we still are in its wreckage. With bracing clarity, Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good—and too unregulated for the public good—experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the “bond bubble” was larger and more devastating. Some people think of the financial industry as a sideshow with little relevance to the real economy—where the jobs, factories, and shops are. But finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body: if the blood stops flowing, the body goes into cardiac arrest. When America’s financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover, to its horror, just how truly interconnected—and fragile—the global financial system is. Some observers argue that large global forces were the major culprits of the crisis. Blinder disagrees, arguing that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque, and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them. The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown. Many of the U.S. government’s actions, particularly the Fed’s, were previously unimaginable. And to an amazing—and certainly misunderstood—extent, they worked. The worst did not happen. Blinder offers clear-eyed answers to the questions still before us, even if some of the choices ahead are as divisive as they are unavoidable. After the Music Stopped is an essential history that we cannot afford to forget, because one thing history teaches is that it will happen again.
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnGKHsTmep4
