The Books We've Read and Discussed

2024

June   The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy

May    The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

Mar    Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner

Feb    A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

2023

Dec     The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir by Karen Cheung

Nov    The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Sept    Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa Sevigny

Aug    Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World by Wil Haygood

June   Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway’s Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises by Lesley M. M. Blume

April   Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World by Lesley M. M. Blume

Mar   An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us  by Ed Yong

Jan    Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War  by Deborah Cohen

2022

Nov    Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King

Sept  The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold by Sam Knight

July    The River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard

May     The Imposter's War: The Press, Propaganda, and the Newsman Who Battled for the Minds of America by Marc Arsenault

April    There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

Feb     The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage by Mara Hvistendahl

Jan   Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

2021

Jan  The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreams, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch by Miles Harvey

Feb  The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pepin 

March  Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning by Tom Vanderbilt 

May  Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz

June  Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back by Janice Nimura

August  Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness by Katie Booth

Sept  Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain

Nov  Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease by Jason Dearen

2020

Jan  Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

Feb  Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Last Year of the American Civil War by S.C. Gwynne

April  Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis by Sam Anderson

May  Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves by Frans de Waal

June  Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl

Aug  First Bite: How We Learn to Eat by Bee Wilson

Sept  Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife by Ariel Sabar

Oct  No One Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb

Dec  Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz

2019

Jan  The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs

Feb The Library Book by Susan Orlean

March The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson

May  Being Mortal: Medicine and What Happens in the End by Atul Gawande

June The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers

Aug  Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

Sept  H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Nov  A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan

2018

Jan On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt

Feb The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness  by Sy Montgomery

April  Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard

May  Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Graham

July  Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Sept  The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantom, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost by Peter Manseau 

Nov  Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein

2017

Jan The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dana Sobel

Mar High Notes: Selected Writings by Gay Talese

May Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge by John Gimlette

June The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott

Aug Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust by Richard Reeves

Oct  Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Selby and Greg Campbell

Nov The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone

2016

Jan  The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal behind the World's Favorite Board Game by Mary Pilon

Feb  Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield

April  Hope: A School, a Team, a Dream by Bill Reynolds

June  Notorious RBG  by Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik

July  Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

Sept  The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics by Daniel James Brown

Oct  Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on the Entebbe Airport, the Most Audacious Hostage Rescue Mission in History by Saul David

Dec  Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

2015

April  How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson 

May  The Rush: America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848 - 1853 by Edward Dolnick

July  Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis by Timothy Egan

Oct  The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Nov  The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Familiy's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal 

Dec  The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools? by Dale Russakoff

2014

Jan  Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley

Feb  In the Shadow of Memory by Floyd Skoot

April  The Big Fix: The Hunt for the Match-Fixers Bringing Down Soccer by Brett Forrest

June  The Snowden Files by Luke Harding

July  Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis

Aug  The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David Kertzer

Oct  Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

2013

Jan  River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard

March  Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

April  The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King

June  Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis by Robert Edsel

July  Vodka: A Global History by Patricia Herlihy

Sept  Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman

Oct The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

Nov  Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

2012

February 8  Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff

March 21  Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry

May 24  Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer

July 10   Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution by Charles Rappleye

August 21  Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

October 15  The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean

December 6  The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

2011

February 10  You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall by Colin Ellard

March 23  The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

May 4  Just Kids by Patti Smith

July 13  The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession by Andrea Wulf

Sept 7  The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg

Nov 30  In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

2010

Jan 27  My Father’s Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar

April 6  Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein

June 16  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

July 27  The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

Sept 21  Fifty-nine in ‘84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had by Edward Achorn

Dec. 7  Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne

2009

Jan. 22  Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns

March 5  Sweet: An Eight-Ball Odyssey by Heather Byer

April 29  The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It by Robert Zimmerman

June 17  Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner

Aug 12  Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America by Stephen Johnson

Sept 30   The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Nov 17   Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy by Dyana Furmansky

2008

Jan 23   Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder by Kenn Kaufman

April 9   Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound by Robert Whitcomb and Wendy Williams

May 28   Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America by Steven Waldman

July 16   Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee

Sept. 17   This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin

Nov. 19   Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt

2007

Jan. 24  Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick

Mar 22  The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland by Hugh Thomson

May 29  The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World by  Randall E. Stross

July 12  The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard

Sept 26  A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester

Nov 20  An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect by Sharman Russell

2006

Jan 24  The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry

March 28  Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America by Philip Dray

May 2   Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson

June 29  Pets in America: A History by Katherine Grier

Oct 11  Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond

Nov 20  Double Eagle: The Epic Story of the World's Most Valuable Coin by Alison Frankel

2005

First Meeting  – November 29, 2005

First book:   Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century & the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution by Gavin Weightman