Books to Change Your Life Chicago Book Club

Hello all! We will meet online (1st of two meetings) for a discussion of Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu. (Please read all of the first half, chapters 1 through 8, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher:
"NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”

Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny.

Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today."

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Mon Oct 27, 2025 (Rescheduled from Oct 20): Chapters 1 through 8
Mon Dec 1, 2025: Chapters 9 through 15 (end)

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/7tWa76j

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Bluets by Maggie Nelson. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher, "A Guardian Book of the Year. A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.

Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts."

You can get the book in paperback here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluets-Maggie-Nelson/dp/1933517409

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online (2nd of 2 meetings) for a discussion of Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu. (Please read all of the second half, chapters 9 through 15, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher:
"NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • From two winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, “who have demonstrated the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity”

Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, or geography that determines prosperity or poverty? As Why Nations Fail shows, none of these factors is either definitive or destiny.

Drawing on fifteen years of original research, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is our man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or the lack of it). Korea, to take just one example, is a remarkably homogenous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created those two different institutional trajectories. Acemoglu and Robinson marshal extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today."

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Mon Oct 20, 2025: Chapters 1 through 8
Mon Dec 1, 2025: Chapters 9 through 15 (end)

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/7tWa76j

All are welcome!