Readin' Vegans--"The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon"

For our April 25 online book club, we'll discuss THE FLAG, THE CROSS, AND THE STATION WAGON: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, by Bill McKibben (2022).
You need not have attended a previous discussion to join us for this one. We'll discuss the book until about 8:00, followed by open conversation.

If you'd like to read ahead:
May 23 -- Leave Only Footprints, by Conor Knighton
June 27 -- The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson (fiction)
July 25 -- A Wild Idea, by Jonathan Franklin

The Zoom link to the discussion is posted on the right, visible to those who RSVP. PLEASE NOTE: THIS LINK DISAPPEARS AT THE MEETUP START TIME, THAT IS, 7:00 PM. We'll be available from 6:50 on to help anyone who might need extra time to connect.
You will need a computer, laptop, smartphone or other device with internet access. It's pretty easy; if you're curious, check out https://zoom.us/.
If you can't get on, call us at 303-300-2368.
We hope to "see" you there!
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Bill McKibben—award-winning author, activist, educator—is fiercely curious. “I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.”

Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth.

But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril.

And he is curious: What the hell happened?

In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth—The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon—could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.

“This is a book that every American who cares about democracy and truth needs to read. . . So much went wrong over the fifty-plus years McKibben traces, and he follows the lines with care and sympathy.“
―HBT News

“Plainspoken, direct, conversational, and inspiring, Bill McKibben offers us generous insight into who he is and how he has been shaped by his middle-class upbringing in the suburbs. We see through inner and outer choices, struggles, and influences, why one of the world's most effective and humble leaders in the climate justice movement committed himself to an activist's life on behalf of a warming planet. The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon is more than a memoir, it is a bow to the power of social justice movements and a smart and savvy historical reflection on what has brought us to this crucible moment of climate collapse. Bill McKibben is an every-day hero who continues to show us not only what is possible, but necessary to our survival, the survival of our democracy, and all life in the places we call home.“
―Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing

“What went wrong with America in the 1970s? In this searching book, Bill McKibben wrestles with a generation that lost its way, and why, and how to find the way back.”
―Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

“Bill McKibben has written a great American memoir, using the prism of his own life to reflect on the most important dynamics in our society. Bill McKibben’s writing is poignant, engrossing and revealing. His message is a clarion call for a generation to understand what happened to their American Dream, and to fight for our common future.”
―Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: How Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

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