UPCOMING BOOK DISCUSSIONS
Past Book Discussion Choices
Book Discussion
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MONTHLY DISCUSSION
April 7
Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
On a late summer morning in 1974 activity in the streets of lower Manhattan stops as people stare upward at a figure poised on one of the Twin Towers. The figure seems to suddenly launch into space, but instead of falling, remains suspended on a wire, running, dancing, leaping. This image of the fearless performer is the background for the stories of people who saw him or heard about his audacious “artistic crime of the century.” Among them are a group of mothers of sons killed in Vietnam, an Irish monk working among prostitutes in the Bronx, a young artist involved in a hit-and-run accident, and the judge who must determine whether the tightrope walker has committed a crime. How will their lives intersect? McCann’s novel won the National Book Award in 2009.
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Questions
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NONFICTION DISCUSSION
May 10
Waking Giant
by David S. Reynolds
 Jacksonian America was an optimistic time. The election of Andrew Jackson was evidence of the ascendency of the common man. This president was not descended from educated or wealthy stock; he was born in the backwoods of North Carolina to Irish immigrant parents. It was a lively, brawling, boisterous time. The Erie Canal proved that Americans were ingenious and industrious. Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne published their greatest works. P.T. Barnum and minstrel shows entertained the masses. It was also an era of human tragedy. Westward expansion came at the expense of Native Americans, and prosperity in some areas of the U.S. through the labor of slaves. “It is an extraordinary era in which we live,” Daniel Webster is quoted as saying. “The progress of the age has almost outstripped human belief; the future is know only to Omniscience.”
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