Houston Nonfiction Book Club
Affiliated with
a Non-Profit Educational Organization
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Contact info for the Houston Nonfiction Book Club
Location: HEB Central Market
3815 Westheimer(at Weslayan) [map here]
2nd Floor Community Room
Schedule: Every month on the third Wednesday from 7:00pm to 9:00 pm
Contact: Alice Aman
Email: amanhaus@gmail.com
Ph:713-523-3652
Note from Alice:
Our group is free and open to the public. The group
doesn't provide the text so attendees must find a source
for obtaining a copy of the readings on their own.
(Library, web, used book store, retail book store, friend, etc.)
We are associated with the Houston Great Books Council and
always appreciate if someone wants to submit membership dues
to the council but this is not a requirement for the group.
We welcome everyone who might be interested.
We do ask if someone wants to actually participate in
the discussion (and not just listen), that they read the
book and hopefully bring any questions they might have.
The questions from attendees are what really form the basis
for our discussions.
You are invited to join our google group ( groups.google.com/group/houston-nonfiction-book-club) or meetup group (www.meetup.com/Houston-Nonfiction-Book-Club/) or just
email me and let me know you want to be on my distribution or you can
just show up at the meeting(s).
After we read and discuss the initial list of six titles listed below, we will select our readings by voting though getting suggestions on the ballot requires that the title be listed on an established list of "notable" titles. More info regarding these "established" lists as the source of our readings will be provided soon. Details are still being worked.
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Subscribe to Houston Nonfiction Book Club
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Discussion Schedule for the Houston Nonfiction Book Club
There will be no further changes to the titles on this list, but could be possible changes to the pace at which we read per month. Stay tuned.
DISCUSSIONS for 2012
- Feb 15 THE GREAT CRASH 1929: The classic account of financial disaster by John Kenneth Galbraith (publ 1954) 240 total pages
[Classic]
Full book will be discussed at this first meeting.
This concise, insightful history has never been out of print since it was first published. Why? "Every time it has been about to pass from print," Galbraith himself wrote in 1997, "another speculative bubble ... has stirred interest in the history of this, the great modern case of boom and collapse."
- Feb 15 THE GREAT CRASH by John Kenneth Galbraith
Assignment: Foreward, Intro plus Chapters 1 through 9 (about 205 pages) FINISH
- Mar 21st NONZERO: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright (publ 2001) 347 total pages
[from 75 Smartest Books We Know by Fortune Magazine]
A dazzling mix of history, theology, economics, game theory, and evolutionary biology that paints the world's increasing entwinement as a positive and possibly inevitable development.
- Mar 21 NONZERO by Robert Wright
Assignment: Introduction, Part I, Chapters 1 through 9 (about 123 pages)
- Apr 18th NONZERO by Robert Wright (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters 10 through 16 (about 119 pages)
- May 16th NONZERO by Robert Wright (cont'd)
Assignment: Part II, chapters 17 through 22, Appendix 1 and 2 (about 105 pages) - FINISH
- Jun 20th THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams (publ 1907) 420 total pages
[Top 100 Modern Library list and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1919]
Printed privately in 1907 and published to wide acclaim shortly after the author's death in 1918, The Education of Henry Adams is a brilliant, idiosyncratic blend of autobiography and history that charts the great transformation in American life during the so-called Gilded Age.
- Jun 20th THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams
Assignment: Editor's Preface, Preface, Chapters I through X (about 140 pages)
- Jul 18th THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters XI through XXI (about 140 pages)
- Aug 15th THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters XXII through XXXV (about 140 pages) - FINISH
- Sept 19th THE SHALLOWS: What the Internet Is Doing to Our >Brains by Nicholas Carr (publ 2011) 228 total pgs
[2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist]
While the author tries to ground his argument in the details of modern neuroscience, his most powerful points have nothing do with our plastic cortex. Instead, he is most successful when he sticks to cultural criticism, as he documents the losses that accompany the arrival of new technologies.
- Sept 19th THE SHALLOWS by Nicholas Carr
Assignment: Chapters One through Six (about 114 pages)
- Oct 17th THE SHALLOWS by Nicholas Carr (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters Seven through Chapter Ten. Epilogue, Afterword (about 114 pages) - FINISH
- Nov 21st THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
by Brian Greene (publ 2001) 464 total pgs
[2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist]
The author, a specialist in quantum field theory, believes that the two pillars of physics - general relativity and quantum mechanics - can be reconciled in superstring theory and gives the nonspecialist at least an illusion of understanding--or the sense of knowing what it is that you don't know. And that is traditionally the first step on the road to knowledge.
- Nov 21st THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene
Assignment: Prefaces plus Chapter 1 thru Chapter 5 (about 140 pages)
- Dec 19th THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapter 6 thru Chapter 10 (about 128 pages)
DISCUSSIONS for 2013
- Jan 16th THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE by Brian Greene (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapter 11 thru Chapter 15 (124 pages) - FINISH
- Jan 16th ELECTION of new titles for future discussions at this Jan 16 meeting
- Feb 20th LORDS OF FINANCE: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (publ 2009) 505 total pages
[2010 Pulizer Prize]
The book is about events leading up to and culminating in the Great Depression as told through the personal histories of the heads of the Central Banks of the world's four major economies at the time: Benjamin Strong Jr. of the New York Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank.
- Feb 20th LORDS OF FINANCE by Liaquat Ahamed
Assignment: Chapters 1 thru 9 (about 179 pages)
- Mar 20th LORDS OF FINANCE by Liaquat Ahamed (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters 10 thru 15 (about 128 pages)
- Apr 17th LORDS OF FINANCE by Liaquat Ahamed (cont'd)
Assignment: Chapters 16 thru 23 (about 199 pages) - FINISH
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