History and Foreign Affairs Roundtable Discussion &Book Club

We’ll look at the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto and this major revolt by Jews who chose to fight the Nazi occupation forces against overwhelming odds in the face of deportations to concentration camps and certain death, an episode that challenges the narrative of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust. We'll also discuss press coverage of events.
(A separate discussion will be scheduled in July on the 1944 Warsaw Uprising by the Polish Home Army.)

We'll discuss the provocative ideas presented by acclaimed columnist and political commentator Peter Beinart regarding one of the defining conversations of our time - the political and moral dilemmas around how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We'll discuss Beinart's views on topics that have caused deep divisions within the Jewish community as well as across the American political landscape. Beinart himself has evolved and his positions have been met with both support and criticism.

A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo.

It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium, one of 17 countries gaining independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. Just as Patrice Lumumba became the prime minister of Congo, the new army mutinied. Despite intervention by Belgian forces and UN peacekeepers, chaos was spreading. Frustrated, Lumumba turned to the Soviets for help, setting off fears in the CIA of Communism spreading in Africa. Lumumba had to go.

A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times
“This is one of the best books I have read in years . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” - Fareed Zakaria
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

Award-winning history writer and journalist Clay Risen tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in political hysteria during the decade following WW II. McCarthyism arose amid the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, and the onset of the Cold War.

An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.