We are pleased to announce the schedule for the 2012/2013 FOL Book Discussions. This is the 11th season, and once again we invite our Friends and other interested community members to join us as we discuss books from past and present. Each discussion will be led by a UNCG faculty member. To reserve a spot at one or more discussion, please register on our website, or contact Kimberly Lutz at 336-256-8598 or by email.
All book discussions will meet on Mondays in the Hodges Reading Room
click on book covers for more information about each title
Monday, September 17 at 7:00 pm: Persuasion by Jane Austen.
Faculty Leader: Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly, English.
Persuasion, the last novel that Jane Austen completed, "participates in the revolutionary spirit of its age through Austen's penetrating critique of the sacred ideals of the British class system and her documentation and support of the changes that were emerging at the end of the Age of Reason. Through her characterization of her heroine, Anne Elliot, she presents a wise and sympathetic portrait of one woman's shifting perspective of her relation to society and her understanding of herself." (Wendy Perkins in Novels for Students edited by Jennifer Smith)
Monday, October 29 at 7:00 pm: The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White. Faculty Leader: Dr. David Olson, Political Science.
This "is the book that revolutionized—even created—modern political journalism. Granted intimate access to all parties involved, Theodore White crafted an almost mythic story of the battle that pitted Senator John F. Kennedy against Vice-President Richard M. Nixon—from the decisive primary battles to the history-making televised debates, the first of their kind. . . . The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction . . . this classic account remains the keystone of American political journalism." (excerpted from back cover)
"With [one] family's dramatic and emotional story as an entry point, Whitehouse delves head-on into the murky bioethics surrounding [preimplantation genetic diagnosis] PGD: Is it ethical to create a life for the purpose of saving another? Who will protect the medical interests of the 'savior sibling' created by scientific manipulation? And who will object if the child is later called upon to donate, say, an organ? Whitehouse asks these questions and many others, seeking answers from doctors and ethicists who deal with such matters daily." (excerpted from the book's website).
Monday, January 28 at 4:00 pm: When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T. M. Luhrmann. Faculty Leader: Dr. Bennett Ramsey, Religious Studies. “How can one live a life at once wholly modern and fully engaged with the supernatural realm? Many books aim to explain how American evangelicals pull this off, but this is the one that will actually change the way you think about religion going forward. Writing elegantly and sympathetically about evangelical lives while at the same time developing a profound theory of the learning processes by which human beings come to inhabit religious worlds, Lurhmann has produced the book all of us – believers and nonbelievers alike - need to put our debates about religion and contemporary society on a truly productive footing." (Joel Robbins, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego)
Monday, February 25 at 7:00 pm: Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. Faculty Leader: Dr. Keith Cushman, English."At last a publisher in one of the English-speaking countries has dared to bring out the full text of one of our century's greatest romance, which has for too long been a smugglers' trophy. . . . In the novels of contemporary writers of a stature comparable to Lawrence's, love is usually treated shabbily, as something perverse, ironic, or merely annoying. But his book dealing with love as a serious, major, and sacred theme has been taboo here and in his native England for the thirty-on years of its existence. . . Only a reading of the book can reveal its power, its depth of complication, its psychological and social intricacy, all of which contribute to the effectiveness of the long slow process which the gamekeeper and the lady of the manor go through in order to find enrichment in love." (Harry Moore,New York Times,1959)
"As the events leading up to World War II go, Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 appointment of a naïve history professor as ambassador to Germany — and the professor's decision to take his adventurous adult daughter with him — rank pretty low in importance. But in these lives, Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City, finds a terrific storytelling vehicle, as William E. Dodd and his daughter, Martha, are initially taken with Adolf Hitler and his reinvigoration of Germany, and then slowly come to realize that nothing would stop Hitler from waging war and seeking to wipe out Europe's Jews." (Los Angeles Times)
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