Books to Change Your Life Book Club

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of The Book of Why by Judea Pearl. (Meeting 1 of 2; Please read all of the first half, chapters 1 through 5, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher:
"Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Mon Jan 12, 2026: Chapters 1 through 5
Mon Feb 23, 2026: Chapters 6 through 10 (end)

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/7OpxPe0

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Nostromo by Joseph Conrad. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher, "Nostromo, published in 1904, is one of Conrad's finest works. Nostromo - though one hundred years old - says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life. Insistently dramatic in its storytelling, spectacular in its recreation of the subtropical landscape, this picture of an insurrectionary society and the opportunities it provides for moral corruption gleams on every page with its author's dry, undeceived, impeccable intelligence."

“I’d rather have written Conrad’s Nostromo than any other novel”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

You can get the book on kindle or paperback here:
https://a.co/d/5Y1zxWg

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of The Book of Why by Judea Pearl. (Meeting 2 of 2; Please read all of the second half, chapters 6 through 10, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher:
"Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Mon Jan 12, 2026: Chapters 1 through 5
Mon Feb 23, 2026: Chapters 6 through 10 (end)

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/7OpxPe0

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher, "More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: '[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.'"

You can get it on kindle or paperback here:
https://a.co/d/eU0OROV

All are welcome!