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Book Club

To get email updates about Book Club, please email lkwdohdemclub@gmail.com

 

Tuesday, March 21, 2022 at 7:00pm at Bottlehouse Brewery in Lakewood. 
 

For March, we will read the second half of Jon Meacham's And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle 

 

Synopsis: A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations. 

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At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right. 

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This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln’s story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.

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We will also watch and discuss the documentary film All That Breathes on HBO: Two brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised in New Delhi, looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites.

Past Books & Documentaries

  • March 2023

    • Book: And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham​

    • Film: All That Breathes (HBO)

  • February 2023

    • Book: And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham​

    • Film: Slay the Dragon: End Gerrymandering or Democracy Dies, We Can Stop It. (Hulu)

  • January 2023

    • Book: The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall​

    • Podcast: Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra (MSNBC)

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  • December 2022

    • Film: Our Great National Parks (Netflix)​

  • November 2022

    • Book: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah​

    • Film: The Pilgrims: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns (PBS American Experience)

  • October 2022

    • Book: Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew​​

    • Film: The Janes (HBO)

  • September 2022

    • Book: Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew​

    • Film: Navalny (HBO)

  • August 2022

    • Book: Nemesis by Matt Kuhns​

    • Film: Attica

  • July 2022

    • Book: Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum​​

    • Film: January 6 Committee public hearings

  • June 2022

    • Book: Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum​

    • Film: The Abortion Divide (PBS Frontline: Season 37, Episode 17)

  • May 2022

    • Book: Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath by Bill Browder​

    • Film: Benjamin Franklin: A Ken Burns Film (PBS)

  • April 2022

    • Book (continued): Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy by US Representative Jamie Raskin​

    • Film: Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom (Netflix)

  • March 2022

    • Book: ​Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy by US Representative Jamie Raskin

    • Film: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (HBO)

  • February 2022

    • Book: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter​

    • Film: In the Same Breath (HBO)

  • January 2022

    • Book: The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio​

    • Film: 137 Shots (Netflix)

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  • December 2021

    • Film 1: The Way We Shopped (PBS/YouTube)​

    • Film 2: Amazon Empire: The Rise & Reign of Jeff Bezos (PBS Frontline/YouTube)

  • November 2021

    • Book: AI 2041: Ten Visions of our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan​

    • Film: Coded Bias (Netflix)

  • October 2021

    • Book: AI 2041: Ten Visions of our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan

    • Film: Knife Skills (YouTube)

  • September 2021

    • Book: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson​

    • Film: 

  • July 2021

    • Book: ​Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

    • Film: Judas and the Black Messiah

  • June 2021

    • Book: Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum​

    • Film: Disclosure (Netflix)

  • May 2021

    • Book: Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy by Adam Jentleson.​

    • Film: The White Tiger (Netflix)

  • April 2021

    • Book: A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by David Attenborough​

    • Film: David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (Netflix)

  • March 2021

    • Film: Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Netflix)​

    • Book: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

  • February 2021

    • Film: All In: The Fight for Democracy (Amazon)

    • Book: A Promised Land by Barack Obama​

  • January 2021

    • Film: Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)

    • Book: A Promised Land by Barack Obama

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  • December 2020

    • ​Film: Capital in the 21st Century (Netflix)

  • November 2020

    • Book: Pelosi by Molly Ball​

  • October 2020

    • Book: Democracy in One Book or Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier than You Think by David Litt​

    • Film: The Great Hack (Netflix)

  • September 2020

    • Book: Democracy in One book of Less: How It Works, Why It Doesn't, and Why Fixing It Is Easier than You Think by David Litt​

    • Film: The Sapphires (Netflix)

  • August 2020

    • Book: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander​

    • Film: The Vote (PBS American Experience)

  • July 2020

    • Book: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale​

    • Films: I am Not Your Negro (YouTube) and Just Mercy (Amazon)

    • Podcast: The Wilderness Season 2 Episodes 5 & 6 (Crooked Media)

  • June 2020

    • Book: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry​

    • Film: Becoming (Netflix)

    • Podcast: The Wilderness Season 2 Episodes 1-4 (Crooked Media)

  • May 2020

    • Book: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry​

    • Film: Influenza 1918 (PBS)

  • April 2020

    • Book: Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America by Sherrod Brown​

    • Film: American Factory (Netflix)

  • February 2020

    • ​Book: Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America by Sherrod Brown

  • January 2020​

    • Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas

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  • November 2019​

    • Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell​

  • October 2019

    • This America: The Case for the Nation by Jill Lepore​

  • September 2019​

    • The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben

  • August 2019​

    • Humans: A Brief History of How We F*ed It All Up by Tom Phillips​

  • June-July 2019​

    • The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson​

  • May 2019

    • ​War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow​

  • April 2019​

    • Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World by Paul Shapiro​

  • March 2019​

    • Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover​

  • January 2019​

    • 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari​

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  • November 2018​​

    • The Soul of America: the Battle for Our Better Angels by John Meacham​

  • September 2018

    • Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright​

  • July 2018

    • The United States Constitution​

  • June 2018​

    • Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years by David Litt​

  • May 2018

    • The Common Good by Robert B. Reich​

  • March 2018​

    • Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff​

  • February 2018​

    • Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari​

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  • November 2017

    • The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert​

  • September 2017​

    • The All New Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff​

  • August 2017​

    • Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low Carbon Living by James Eckhouse​

  • May-June 2017

    • This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein​​

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