League_Book_Group

This book group will resume in the Fall. Look for more information on this page in late August.

Members are invited to submit titles of books they would like the group to discuss in coming months. Send your suggestions to Nancy Dahl (nkdahl66@hotmail.com). The group uses a point-based voting system to choose books nominated by group members. The next ballot will be sent out in August to choose books for the October + January meetings.

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, by Robin J. DeAngelo

League Book Group will begin a new year of lively discussions on September 5, 2019, at University Place Library Conference Room, 2:30 pm.

We will discuss the book "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Race" by Robin DiAngelo, a book selected by a vote of the group last spring.

November 1, 2018: Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, the former Executive Director and Chairman of the Sierra Club, have come together to propose a bipartisan plan for saving the planet based on action instead of procrastination and hand wringing. They lay out a powerfully persuasive argument about how cities can play an outsize role in fighting and reversing the dangerous effects of a warming planet.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Through very readable storytelling and surprising insight, Steven D. Levitt, an award-winning University of Chicago economist, and co-author Stephen J. Dubner, a journalist and radio personality, show that economics is, at its root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they explore topics that don't seem to have a relationship, but it turns out they do.

December 6, 2018: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Through heart wrenching stories, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, WI to tell the story of eight families on the edge and the landlords that control their fate. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data by the author, Matthew Desmond, a Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" recipient, this book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.

February 7, 2019: It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America By David Cay Johnson

Planned before we could get a copy of Bob Woodward's recent book, we decided to read a similar book about the impacts of the Trump administration on US democracy. David Cay Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, knows Donald Trump better than any other. Having followed him since 1988, he goes inside the administration to show how the federal agencies that touch the lives of all Americans are being undermined.

March 7, 2019: How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky

April 4, 2019: Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, by Aviva Chomsky

May 2, 2019: The Soloist,A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and the redemptive Power of Music; by Steve Lopez