Books & Banter Book Club

Everyone, please join us on Monday, November 10 at 7 p.m. to discuss Abundance | 297pp by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Our meetings have a $3 fee, purely to offset the cost of Meetup. This can be paid via Venmo, Paypal, or in cash.

We do not accept requests from authors to read their books. We will never ask for money beyond the above fee. If you receive offers purporting to come from the club they are part of an online scam.

Everyone, please join us on Monday, December 8 at 7 p.m. to discuss The Origins Of Totalitarianism | 477pp by Hannah Arendt.

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

Our meetings have a $3 fee, purely to offset the cost of Meetup. This can be paid via Venmo, Paypal, or in cash.

We do not accept requests from authors to read their books. We will never ask for money beyond the above fee. If you receive offers purporting to come from the club they are part of an online scam.

Everyone, please join us on Monday, January 12 at 7 p.m. to discuss The Spire | 223pp by William Golding.

Set in medieval England, The Spire tells the story of one man’s vision – the construction of an enormous spire onto a cathedral without foundations. Believing himself to be chosen by God, Jocelin, Dean of the Cathedral, insists that the spire must rise higher and higher, despite the singing pillars and the creeping ground. Told with an inventive narration that reflects Jocelin’s ever-increasing madness, The Spire is an astonishing portrait of obsession, betrayal, and arrogance. Jocelin’s vision produces terrible consequences for those around him; the human ‘cost’ of one man’s folly.

Our meetings have a $3 fee, purely to offset the cost of Meetup. This can be paid via Venmo, Paypal, or in cash.

We do not accept requests from authors to read their books. We will never ask for money beyond the above fee. If you receive offers purporting to come from the club they are part of an online scam.

Everyone, please join us on Monday, February 9 at 7 p.m. to discuss The Rule of Laws: A 4,000-Year Quest to Order the World | 454pp by Fernanda Pirie.

In The Rule of Laws, Oxford scholar Fernanda Pirie traces the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems underpinning ancient empires and religious traditions, while also showing how common people—tribal assemblies, merchants, farmers—called on laws to define their communities, regulate trade, and build civilizations. Although legal principles originating in Western Europe now seem to dominate the globe, the variety of the world’s laws has long been almost as great as the variety of its societies. What truly unites human beings, Pirie argues, is our very faith that laws can produce justice, combat oppression, and create order from chaos.

Our meetings have a $3 fee, purely to offset the cost of Meetup. This can be paid via Venmo, Paypal, or in cash.

We do not accept requests from authors to read their books. We will never ask for money beyond the above fee. If you receive offers purporting to come from the club they are part of an online scam.