Non-Fiction Book Club

New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba's moving biography of Ethel Rosenberg, the wife and mother whose execution for espionage-related crimes defined the Cold War and horrified the world.

In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a couple with two young sons, were led separately from their prison cells on Death Row and electrocuted moments apart. Both had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the US government was aware that the evidence against Ethel was shaky at best and based on the perjury of her own brother.

This book is the first to focus on one half of that couple in more than thirty years, and much new evidence has surfaced since then. Ethel was a bright girl who might have fulfilled her personal dream of becoming an opera singer, but instead found herself struggling with the social mores of the 1950’s. She longed to be a good wife and perfect mother, while battling the political paranoia of the McCarthy era, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and a mother who never valued her. Because of her profound love for and loyalty to her husband, she refused to incriminate him, despite government pressure on her to do so. Instead, she courageously faced the death penalty for a crime she hadn’t committed, orphaning her children.

Seventy years after her trial, this is the first time Ethel’s story has been told with the full use of the dramatic and tragic prison letters she exchanged with her husband, her lawyer and her psychotherapist over a three-year period, two of them in solitary confinement. Hers is the resonant story of what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.

A Non Fiction Book Club Bonus Event! Katherine Stewart is an investigative journalist with several top selling books to her credit. She specializes in church/state relations and the Non- Fiction Book Club has featured two of her books: Money, Lies, and God, which was our book selection for our July 22, 2025 Meetup; and The Power Worshippers, which was our featured selection for the September 19, 2022 Meetup. For those who attended our Meetup events, you will recall that the two books were well- received and highly regarded, with most every member present rating them both 5 stars out of 5.

On Friday, September 25, we have an opportunity to meet Katherine Stewart in person and hear more commentary on her book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. The Meetup is being sponsored by the Houston chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State; Houston Oasis; and Secular Houston. The event will take place at The Montrose Center, 401 Branard St, Room 107, Houston 77006. This free event is open to all. It starts at 7pm, so there will be plenty of time to get there after work.

Church state separation is under attack, as we all know, and Stewart is one of the best investigative journalists around who specializes in church/state relations. I hope to see you there, on Friday, September 25 at 7pm for an evening of candid, frank discussion on one of the greatest threats of our time.

To learn more and/or make an Amazon purchase of Stewart's books, go to:

Instant New York Times Bestseller!

New York Times Editors' Choice
One of People's 15 Most Anticipated Books of Summer
The Next Big Idea Club's July 2026 Must-Read Books
One of the New York Times Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer
Sunset Magazine's 15 New Books You Don't Want to Miss

From Annie Jacobsen, the author of the bestselling Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book on a subject that has long orbited her reporting: biological warfare.

A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. In this essential new book, based on dozens of new interviews with experts with high-level political, governmental, medical, and military responsibility, Annie Jacobsen examines this very scenario. It would be only a matter of days from such a global infection before the infrastructure built to handle this gravest of situations would be in a battle for human existence.

The fallout: mass death, total societal breakdown, widespread insurrection, anarchy, and a plague-ravaged wasteland that no longer resembles modern civilization. In other words: dystopia.

Following the gripping narrative style that launched Nuclear War to the New York Times bestseller list, Jacobsen looks deeply at a situation that is in some ways the opposite of a nuclear bomb: There is no mushroom cloud, no shock wave or blast. Instead, the scenario that could end the world as we know it begins with something so small, and something so malicious, that when used for evil, only evil can result.

This is what could happen; a ticking-clock roadmap to the hours, days, and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as the most essential, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.