About us
We meet at the Draught house English pub and imbibe some beer and food while discussing history.
Titles range from more rigorous and scholarly works to lighter, more journalistic writing. Genres tend to include foreign policy, history, culture, science, politics, and area studies (e.g. The Middle East, Europe, South Asia, etc.) See our "Past Reads" page for titles.
Note to avoid scams: We will never contact you asking for money to read or review your book. If you have received an email claiming to be from us, please be aware that this is a scam. Please report it to your email provider.
Upcoming events
12
The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
Draught House Pub & Brewery, 4112 Medical Pkwy, Austin, TX, USJoin us over food and drinks to discuss the book, “The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life.”
Description of book:
Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. At the same time, we have been warned by everybody from marketing gurus to psychologists about the negative consequences stemming from our current obsession with choice. It turns out that not only are we not very good at realizing our personal desires, we are also overwhelmed with too many possibilities and anxious about what best to select. There are social costs too. How did all this happen? The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom. Taking readers from the seventeenth century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one’s convictions. Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life, politics, and the ideals of human rights. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the lives of women, those often with the fewest choices, who have frequently been the drivers of this change. She concludes with an exploration of how reproductive rights have become a symbolic flashpoint in our contemporary struggles over the association of liberty with choice. Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from novels and restaurant menus to the latest scientific findings about choice in psychology and economics, The Age of Choice urges us to rethink the meaning of choice and its promise and limitations in modern life.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the István Hont Book Prize, Institute of Intellectual History
Finalist for the Cundill History Prize
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuVBWUWklBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myyf-8mbTSA
Look for the group with lights and a sign.12 attendees
Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana
Draught House Pub & Brewery, 4112 Medical Pkwy, Austin, TX, USJoin us over food and drinks to discuss the book, “Bolivar: American Liberator”
by Marie Arana.
Description of book:
Simón Bolívar—El Libertador—freed six countries from Spanish rule and is still the most revered figure in South America today. He traveled from Amazon jungles to the Andes mountains, engaged in endless battles and forged fragile coalitions of competing forces and races. He lived an epic life filled with heroism, tragedy (his only wife died young), and legend (he was saved from an assassination attempt by one of his mistresses). In Bolívar, Marie Arana has written a sweeping biography that is as bold and as passionate as its subject. Drawing on a wealth of primary documents, Arana vividly captures the early 19th-century South America that made Bolívar the man he became: fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, dedicated abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician. A major work of history, Bolívar not only portrays a dramatic life in all its glory, but is also a stirring declaration of what it means to be South American.
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWie06yy7CY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2jdX5PAdjM
Look for the group with lights and a sign.21 attendees
No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One
Draught House Pub & Brewery, 4112 Medical Pkwy, Austin, TX, USJoin us over food and drinks to discuss the book, “No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One.”
Description of book:
How, for just over a century, Britain ensured it would not face another Napoleon Bonaparte—manipulating European powers while building a global maritime empire At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, a fragile peace emerged in Europe. The continent’s borders were redrawn, and the French Empire, once a significant threat to British security, was for now cut down to size. But after decades of ceaseless conflict, Britain’s economy was beset by a crippling debt. How could this small, insular seapower state secure order across the Channel? Andrew Lambert argues for a dynamic new understanding of the nineteenth century, showing how British policymakers shaped a stable European system that it could balance from offshore. Through judicious deployment of naval power against continental forces, and the defence strategy of statesmen such as the Duke of Wellington, Britain ensured that no single European state could rise to pose a threat, rebuilt its economy, and established naval and trade dominance across the globe. This is the remarkable story of how Britain kept a whole continent in check—until the final collapse of this delicately balanced order at the outset of World War One.
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z72IgKFwsDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRfNt9Henr8
Look for the group with lights and a sign.9 attendees
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, Making of the Modern World
Draught House Pub & Brewery, 4112 Medical Pkwy, Austin, TX, USJoin us over food and drinks to discuss the book, “1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World.”
Description of book:
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lords of Finance, a magnificent and timely reckoning with the first truly global financial calamity and the famous banking family at the center of the whirlwind Over the course of the 1850s and 1860s, during the first era of globalization, the world experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Fueling this expansion was an explosion in the global bond market, at the hub of which stood one family—the Rothschilds, arguably the wealthiest banking family in history. While the giant sums of capital provided through the bond market built the railroads, the century’s most transformative investments, the money raised also unleashed a frenzy of speculation, massive overinvestment, and wasteful borrowing by governments. With excessive euphoria leading to disappointed expectations, in the early 1870s the bubble burst. Stock markets from Vienna to New York crashed, and dozens of railroads and many governments defaulted. Financial officials responded by blundering into a precipitous remaking of the global currency system—exacerbating the ensuing economic collapse and setting the stage for decades of a punitive deflation that sparked waves of anti-globalist populism. As Liaquat Ahamed shows us in this enthralling history, the crisis of 1873 was, among other things, a death blow to Reconstruction in the United States and the proximate cause of the Ottoman Empire’s slow death spiral. Ironically, though the Rothschilds had presciently kept a low profile during the bubble, when the deluge came, they were viciously scapegoated as part of a wider hatred directed at “Jewish finance,” a strain of antisemitism that would come to full evil flower during the twentieth century. 1873 is a bird’s-eye reckoning with the full dimension of the crisis, from its buildup to its long aftermath. The Rothschilds and a cast of other witnesses give us the human perspective. And we have a brilliant financial historian’s grasp of the larger forces at play, resulting in a global narrative with thrilling explanatory power.
“A lively and compelling account . . . The cumulative effect is impressive. . . . Ahamed tells his story with an easy fluency and a high velocity.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Superb . . . Ahamed thrillingly brings back to life a boom not unlike today's . . . In the process, he illuminates new ways of thinking about finance.” —Financial Times
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Literary Hub
Lecture with author:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igBaMOhp-38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orKd0g3D3pY
Look for the group with lights and a sign.19 attendees
Past events
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