The History Book Club

[close] SIGN UP NOW - BEGINNING FEBRUARY 26TH, 2018
Link to event notification: https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

This is the next Spotlighted Read for the History Book Club beginning February 26th and ending on June 10th. The discussion will be led by Vicki Cline and the focus is on Julius Caesar and his life. This is a Roman History selection.

Here are some excerpts from a conversation with Adrian Goldsworthy about his book which you might find interesting:

A conversation with Adrian Goldsworthy

Q: What is new about your book?
A: The overall approach is new. As far as possible I have tried to write this as if it were the biography of a twentieth-century statesman, looking in as much detail as possible at every aspect of his life. One of the biggest differences with Meier—and also Gelzer, who wrote the most important biography of Caesar before Meier—is that I have tried to cover each stage of his life in equal detail. Their focus was always on the politics. Yet Caesar spent a very large part of his life at war—he was on campaign for no less than thirteen of the last fifteen years of his life. We need to understand Caesar the soldier as much as Caesar the politician because the two were so closely intertwined.

Q: What are the parallels between Ancient Rome and our own times?
A: It would be wrong to claim exact parallels between Rome in the first century B.C. and the modern world, but there are undeniable lessons to be learnt from the turbulent history of these years. One of the most important is to show the fragility of political systems. Caesar lived in the last decades of the Roman Republic, a system which was already three centuries old at the time of his birth. But less than twenty years after his death, his adopted son Octavian had turned Rome into what was a monarchy in all but name. There is perhaps a lesson for modern democracies in the danger of allowing entrenched lobby groups, political parties, and other interests to stifle real debate.

Q: Where was Caesar headed at the time of his assassination?
A: Caesar was about to set out on a series of campaigns against the Dathians and Parcians, in what is modern Iraq.

The Invite:

This event notification is for the spotlighted discussion of Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy. Vicki will be leading the discussion. This will be a multi-thread discussion and will begin on Monday, February 26th. It will run through June 10th - 15 weeks.

Synopsis:

"In the introduction to his biography of the great Roman emperor, Adrian Goldsworthy writes, “Caesar was at times many things, including a fugitive, prisoner, rising politician, army leader, legal advocate, rebel, dictator . . . as well as husband, father, lover and adulterer.” In this landmark biography, Goldsworthy examines Caesar as military leader, in all of these roles and places his subject firmly within the context of Roman society in the first century B.C."

Awards:

The Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award (2007)

Reviews:

Monumental. . . . [Goldsworthy] writes with great style."—Atlantic Monthly

About the author:

Adrian Goldsworthy read history at Oxford and is the author of The Roman Army at War, The Punic Wars, and other books about the ancient world. He lives in Wales.

We hope that you will be able to join us for this spotlighted read.

Bentley

[close] SIGN UP NOW - BEGINNING MARCH 4TH, 2018
Link to event notification: https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

This is a group selected book. This was a request from a group member and this was voted on by the membership. This is an on-going selection and open discussion.

The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles or essays advocating the ratification of the United States Constitution.

Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788. A compilation of these and eight others, called The Federalist; or, The New Constitution, was published in two volumes in 1788 by J. and A. McLean. The series' correct title is The Federalist; the title The Federalist Papers did not emerge until the twentieth century.

The Federalist remains a primary source for interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, as the essays outline a lucid and compelling version of the philosophy and motivation of the proposed system of government.

The authors of The Federalist wanted both to influence the vote in favor of ratification and to shape future interpretations of the Constitution. According to historian Richard B. Morris, they are an "incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer."

The Invite:

This event notification is for the discussion of The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison and Jay. Bentley will be leading the discussion. This will be a multi-thread discussion - one thread per Federalist Paper essay and will begin on March 4th, 2018. It will run through October 19th, 2019 - with 1 essay being discussed and read per week. 85 weeks.

Reading 1 Federalist Paper per week plus some supplementary materials will allow us time to discuss each paper in its entirety and then try to match the issues/topics discussed in each paper with current events, cases, and arguments being made by Congress, the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branches of government.

How does each paper written by our founding fathers have so much relevance for everyday Americans? And why should we be paying attention to the words of our founding fathers so many years ago?

We hope that everyone will participate/discuss these monumental papers/essays which were originally published in the newspapers of New York in order to ratify the new United States Constitution. These papers were written anonymously in 1787 and 1788 under the pen name "Publius".

We realize today the importance of the Constitution in America but what some folks do not know was that the Constitution was almost not accepted. In 1781 the states had ratified the Articles of Confederation which gave all of the powers to the states which worked for a few years; but in 1787 the young country realized that they needed a federal government which would provide the cohesiveness and support that the states needed to protect all of them "collectively"; but this was not going to be a slam dunk. New York was a hot bed for opposing ideas; to the rescue came Hamilton, Madison and Jay writing a series of essays known as The Federalist.

We hope that you will be able to join us for this spotlighted discussion of The Federalist Papers.

Bentley

[close] April Book of the Month Selection: Memoir
SIGN UP NOW - BEGINNING APRIL 9TH, 2018
Link to event notification:
https://www.goodreads.com/event/show/...

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Memoir & Autobiography (2016)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, NAMED BY THE TIMES AS ONE OF "6 BOOKS TO HELP UNDERSTAND TRUMP'S WIN"

"You will not read a more important book about America this year."—The Economist

"A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal

"Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. In HillbillyElegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.

[close] This is a high interest book
SIGN UP NOW ON THE THE BUDDY THREAD HERE: (WE KICKED OFF TODAY BUT THERE IS ALWAYS TIME WITH A BUDDY READ)
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...