The book club selects books once per year from nominations suggested by the participants. The club alternates between fiction and non-fiction, published within the last two years. Our meetings are now Zoom only. Any U of M Alumni or significant others who would like to participate can register here and they will be provided with the Zoom link.
Selections for the upcoming year:
September 30, 2024 @ 6:30 : Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
Matthew Desmond is a sociologist at Princeton University. His book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” was published in 2016, won the Pulitzer Prize and was named one of Times top ten nonfiction books of the decade. He has a website with more information and where you can sign up to be a Poverty Abolitionist. Matthew Desmond Books
“Poverty, by America” is a thought provoking book that should spur a lot of discussion. For further information and to request the zoom link, register here.
December 2024: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard.
February 2025: The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism and the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledges, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink.