For June we are reading The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, by Harlow Giles Unger. We will meet on Tuesday, June 14, 6:30 PM at the Toadstool Bookstore.

For August, we will read Sarah Vowell’s new book, Unfamiliar Fishes, which is about U.S. expansionism in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines.

I hope you can join us on June 14.

We appreciate your book recommendations, please keep them coming.

We had a good meeting this week and a fascinating discussion of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam, by Elizabeth Griswold. If you haven’t read this book yet, it’s one that we would highly recommend.

For May we will be reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. We will meet on Tuesday, May 10, 6:30 PM at the Toadstool Bookshop. Here’s the review from Amazon:

From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive–even thrive–in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution–and her cells’ strange survival–left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? –Tom Nissley

Planning ahead, for June we will read The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, by Harlow Giles Unger. The June meeting will be on Tuesday, June 14th.

And planning even further ahead, for August we are considering Sarah Vowell’s new book, Unfamiliar Fishes, which is about U.S. expansionism in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines.

I hope you can join us on May 10th.

If you have any book recommendations, please let me know.

Linda Cates lindacates@mindspring.com

For April we will be reading The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold (2010). This book, “about the latitude line in Africa and Asia where Christianity and Islam often meet and clash”, got an excellent review by the NY Times. The review said it is “a beautifully written book, full of arresting stories woven around a provocative issue – whether fundamentalism leads to violence.” We will meet on Tuesday, April 12, 6:30 PM at the Toadstool Book Shop in Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope to see you there.

We are always looking for suggestions for that next good book. Members of the book group or others, please email me with your ideas at lindacates@mindspring.com

Linda Cates lindacates@mindspring.com

Here’s a description of the book from Booklist: Could the U.S. be on the brink of becoming a Third World nation? Syndicated columnist Huffington argues that overspending on war at the expense of domestic issues and the alarming decline of the middle class are troubling signals that the U.S. is losing its economic, political, and social stability—a stability that has always been maintained by the middle class. She pinpoints the beginning of the decline to the Reagan era, with its denigration of a government safety net. But she is nonpartisan in assigning responsibility to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for supporting monied interests over those of the middle class; she then takes aim at Obama for expending more money to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. She also points to loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, and globalization, all with emphasis on corporate profits at the expense of workers. Although the U.S. has faced similarly fearful times during the late 1800s and the Great Depression, the middle class was not threatened, as it is today. She offers possible solutions for the decline, including creating jobs to rebuild national infrastructure, reforms in home and credit lending, and tighter restrictions on Wall Street. An engaging analysis of troubling economic and political trends.

Our next book is Third World America: How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, by Arianna Huffington. We will not meet in February, but will meet again on Tuesday, March 15, 6:30 PM, upstairs at the Toadstool Book Shop in Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope that you can join us.

Linda Cates lindacates@mindspring.com

Here’s a description of the book from Booklist: Could the U.S. be on the brink of becoming a Third World nation? Syndicated columnist Huffington argues that overspending on war at the expense of domestic issues and the alarming decline of the middle class are troubling signals that the U.S. is losing its economic, political, and social stability—a stability that has always been maintained by the middle class. She pinpoints the beginning of the decline to the Reagan era, with its denigration of a government safety net. But she is nonpartisan in assigning responsibility to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton for supporting monied interests over those of the middle class; she then takes aim at Obama for expending more money to bail out Wall Street than Main Street. She also points to loss of manufacturing jobs, outsourcing, and globalization, all with emphasis on corporate profits at the expense of workers. Although the U.S. has faced similarly fearful times during the late 1800s and the Great Depression, the middle class was not threatened, as it is today. She offers possible solutions for the decline, including creating jobs to rebuild national infrastructure, reforms in home and credit lending, and tighter restrictions on Wall Street. An engaging analysis of troubling economic and political trends.

We had a good meeting last night and an interesting discussion of Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, by James Fallows. I think we all came away with a better understanding of China today, and perhaps a feeling that we don’t know as much about Chinese history as we should.

For January, the Book Group will be reading Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents, by Ian Buruma. Here’s how one of the reader reviews on Amazon describes the book. “The three essays contained within discuss secularism versus belief in the public space. The first is on the separation of state and church in the West, the second on religious authority in China and Japan and the third deals with the Islamic challenge in Europe.” The book is short, only 124 pages, so there’s plenty of time to get this one read and join us for the meeting on Wednesday, January 26, 6:30 PM, at the Toadstool Book Shop, upstairs at Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope to see you then.

If anyone (Book Group regular or not) has a suggestion for the next good book to read, please email me at lindacates@mindspring.com. Thanks. Linda

For December we will be reading Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China, by James Fallows. This is a recommendation from Chris Angel and gets very good reviews on Amazon. I’m looking forward to reading it. We are going to meet on Wednesday, December 15 at Colony Mill Marketplace.