Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From a Culture or Contempt, by Arthur Brooks

See Events, June Book Talk

Democracy Awakening, by Heather Cox Richardson

Richardson, known for her Letters from an American podcast and on Substack, connects the pieces from American History, Administrations, Civil Rights Struggles, the Courts and all that has come to bring us to the point we are today, teetering on the brink of Authoritarian takeover. We are like the frog in a pot that is coming to a slow boil, and now it is the perfect storm of movements, coalescing. She also has ideas for “Reclaiming America.” We need to know what we are up against, if we are to solve it.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Synder

This pocket size book may be familiar if you saw John Lithgow read it on youtube. As the saying goes, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it!”

The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens, by Richard Haass

We have our Bill of Rights, but what about the obligations of the citizenry that go with it? As Jon Meacham says - “A vital work for a decisive time.” Comes with a reading discussion group guide at the end. Perhaps one could host one’s own and invite friends!

The Echo Machine: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America, by David Pakman

In this book, Pakman, discusses how the media has manipulated and corrupted our society. He reinforces the need for Critical Reason and Media Literacy. This is one of the books the Trump Administration tried to get Amazon to stop selling - so I read it! The administration also threatened Pakman not to leave the country, implying as a “naturalized citizen,” he might not be let back in.

Abundance, by Ezra Klein

This book has been getting rave reviews, so new I haven’t gotten to it , yet, but I think it would be a great book talk! Klein says, “This book is dedicated to a simple idea: To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.” He examines how the overabundance of the 20th century, the fights between the Left and the Right, an overwhelming consumer goods, has distracted us from a scarcity of homes and energy and infrastructure and scientific breakthroughs.

Klein focuses on the building blocks of the future (Housing, Transportation, Energy and Health).

As Naomi Klein states, “If we want to save Democracy, we need to focus on the future we want.”

It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis

Originally printed in 1935, this book stands even today, as one of the “most important books ever produced in this country.” - The New Yorker. It’s happening.

How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life & Faith, by Mariann Edgar Budde

If you are familiar with the Bishop of the Washington National Cathedral, and her stand against Trump during the Black Lives Matter March, as well as her appeal to Trump the day of his inauguration, “to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.” This book chronicles her personal journey of failures and successess, doubts and confident moments and how she had to learn to be brave, and still is. She shares stories of others, along the way. Inspirational.

Hope: The Autobiography, Pope Francis

With his recent passing, I find this book even more compelling to read as we lose a voice for the most vulnerable among us. Inspirational, as well as, and can be used as a bridge to talk within the divide of Christianity which has strayed so far from its gospel.

The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Amendents, and Selections from the Federalist Papers, by Richard Beeman

Great reference companion to our Founding Documents. Easy to engage with what is happening in this moment, as it applies to the individual documents, for oneself or in conversation.

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, by Saul D. Alinsky

This book was recommended to me, as I begin to organize with zero background in doing so! From the 70’s, of course!

Have a book you would like to recommend to the group? Write it up and I’ll check it out!