January Book Club

Note: All the upcoming books and those that we didn’t select in the November vote are listed at the bottom of this section.

January: Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Cockett

How can one European capital be responsible for most of the West’s intellectual and cultural achievements in the twentieth century?

Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna.

The city of Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, and Klimt was the melting pot at the heart of a vast metropolitan empire. But with the Second World War and the rise of fascism, the dazzling coteries of thinkers who squabbled, debated, and called Vienna home dispersed across the world, where their ideas continued to have profound impact.

Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of this extraordinary story. Tracing Vienna’s rich intellectual history from psychoanalysis to Reaganomics, Cockett encompasses everything from the communist rebels of Red Vienna to the neoliberal economists of the Austrian School. This is the panoramic account of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.

Jim will be moderating this month. Hope you can join us for some thoughtful discussion.

Upcoming books: (March is the next book selection month.)
February: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption Paperback by Bryan Stevenson (Kevin)
March: We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality by Jill Elaine Hasday (Steve)
April: Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir by Marsha M. Linehan (Veronica)

Not selected this time:
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds by Paul Farmer
Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people by Tracy Kidder
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley
Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches by Jennifer Welch