The B.I.G. Book Club is Starting up on Thursday September 21 at 3:30pm at the Bandon Library’s Sprague Room
Our book group finished up last May, with a plan to focus on different topics when we start up in September. Here’s the two areas of focus we chose, and a few sources that match each of those topics. Please note that we are now utilizing sources beyond books including articles, audio/video interviews, podcasts, TED Talks, and other media.
Topic #1: How can people blatantly lie, cheat and steal? And why do audiences get hooked on that, get suckered in, and spread the lies? What can we do about it?
Article by Amanda Marcotte on LIES http://smirkingchimp.com/
“The Brainwashing of My Dad”. The 2015 documentary film by Jen Senko is now a book.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/
“Dog Whistle Politics” by Ian Haney Lopez explains how over 50 years ago the use of racism became a way to win elections. Also by this author is Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving American.
Check out Lopez’s discussion with Alicia Garza here:
https://ianhaneylopez.com/
Topic #2: Creating the “other” as a mechanism used to split the nation and glean all the power and wealth. What can we do about it?
Jedediah Purdy – “Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy is Flawed, Frightening and Our Best Hope”. One of the country’s most astute legal scholars explains how American political culture disempowers ordinary citizens and makes the case for a reinvigorated democracy
https://www.goodreads.com/
Heather Cox Richardson – “How the South Won The Civil War”, https://www.theguardian.
Henry Louis Gates also wrote on this topic: https://www.newyorker.
Heather Cox Richardson – “To Make Men Free: the History of the Republican Party” – here’s a link to an article about the book which includes a link to watch a YouTube video of an interview with the author about this book
https://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/
Matthew Desmond – “Poverty, By America” Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom. Published March 2023. (also Fresh Air Podcast – interview with him.)
or (info from Wikipedia)
“Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” is a 2016 non-fiction book by American author Matthew Desmond. Set in the poorest areas of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the book follows eight families struggling to pay rent to their landlords during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
To join in, please contact us at info@BandonInclusivityGroup.