The Public Affairs book group is a long-running community book group that reads and discusses a wide variety of books and issues in public affairs, politics, society and economy, broadly construed.  All points of view are welcome in the group.  We strive for an open, engaged, and respectful dialogue, in the belief that our civic life is strengthened with we can meet one another around a table and share ideas and learn from others.  Occasionally authors are invited to attend and discuss their work with us.

The group meets the 4th Monday of every month, from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm (except in December and August).  Meetings are completely informal; no special preparation is required to attend, though generally people have read the book, sometimes quite carefully.  Discussions are thoughtful, entertaining, and vigorous.  Everyone is welcome, even if you can only attend infrequently.

We meet in the reading room adjacent to the Coffee House, on the basement level of the store.  Group members receive a 20 percent discount on books discussed, though members also bring library or borrowed copies to our meetings.

Address

The Politics and Prose Bookstore is located at 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, in Washington, near the intersection of Connecticut and Nebraska Avenues.  Free parking is available at the rear of the building, accessible from Nebraska Ave. and from 36th St. NW.

Readings

The group's complete reading list since 1999 is listed below.  Please scroll down to the current month.  Information about the bookstore and current events and activities, including the current book selection is also available on the Politics and Prose website at http://www.politics-prose.com

Members are always encouraged to suggest new and topical books.  Just let me know:  t.laporte *at* verizon.net

Click here to jump to books the we have read or plan to read in 2000 , 2001 , 2002, 2003, 2004, and Suggestions for future meetings

October
Stanley Aronowitz, "From the Ashes of Old"

November
Francis Fukuyama, "The Great Disruption"

February 28
Stephen Skowronek, "The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton"

March 27
Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities"

April 24
Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies"

May 22
Elizabeth Pond, "The Rebirth of Europe"

June 26
Susan Tolchin, "The Angry American : How Voter Rage Is Changing the Nation"

July 24
Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, "It Didn't Happen Here:  Why Socialism Failed in the United States"

September 25
Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone:  The Collapse and Revival of American Community"

October 23
Leonard Dinnerstein and David Reimers, "Ethnic Americans:  A History of Immigration"

November 27
Martin Mardy, "Politics, Religion and the Common Good"

February 26
Anthony Giddens, "The Third Way:  Renewal of Social Democracy"

March 26
Benjamin Barber, "Jihad vs. McWorld:  How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World"

April 24
Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy:  Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War"

May 21
Eric Schlosser, "Fast Food Nation"

June 25
Robert Rorosage and Roger Hickey, eds., "The Next Agenda:  Blueprint for a New Progressive Movement"  See also The American Prospect on "The Democrats' Next Step": http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/8/penn-m.html

July 24 (if we decide to meet)
Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine:  Technophilia and Its Discontents"

August 24
Friedrich von Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom"

September 24
Roundtable discussion on the events of September 11, 2001

October 22
John McWhorter, "Losing the Race:  Self-Sabotage in Black America"

November 26
Thomas Frank, "One Market, Under God:  Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy"

February 25
Stephen L. Carter, "Civility:  Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy"

March 25
"Civilizations and Fundamentalisms":  selected readings

Samuel P. Huntington, "A Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, vo. 72, no. 3,
http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.html

Robert D. Kaplan , "Looking the World in the Eye," The Atlantic Monthly, December 2001, vol. 288, no. 5, http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/kaplan.htm

Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," The Atlantic Monthly, September 1990,
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm part 1 and
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage2.htm part 2

Benjamin R. Barber, "Fantasy of Fear," Harvard International Review, Winter 1997-1998, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 66-71.

William Pfaff, "The Reality of Human Affairs," World Policy Journal, Summer 1997, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 89-96.

Stephen Walt, "Building Up New Bogeymen," Foreign Policy, Spring 1997,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~.swalt.csia.ksg/files/bogeymen.pdf

May 20
Tom Segev, "One Palestine Complete:  Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate"

June 24
Laurie Kaye Abraham, "Mama Might Be Better Off Dead:  The Failure of Health Care in Urban America"

July 22
Stuart Ewen, "PR!  A Social History of Spin"

September 23
Albert Borgmann, "Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life:  A Philosophical Inquiry"

October 28
Ken Alibek, "Biohazard"

November 25
Meeting postponed to January

December, 2002
No meeting

January 27, 2003
Joan Didion, "Political Fictions"

February 24
Chalmers Johnson, "Blowback:  The Cost and Consequences of the American Empire"

March 24
Alex Marshall, "How Cities Work"

April 28
Roots of Current American Foreign Policy

Thomas Donnelly, "Rebuiliding America's Defenses," Project for the New American Century, Sept 2000,
http://www.newamericancentury.org/rebuildingamericasdefenses.pdf

Tom Barry and Jim Lobe "The Men Who Stole the Show," Foreign Policy in Focus, Oct 2002,
http://www.fpif.org/papers/02men/index_body.html

Kenneth Pollack, "Next Stop Baghdad?" Foreign Affairs, March-April, 2002, vol. 81, issue 2, pp. 32-ff,
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020301faessay7970/kenneth-m-pollack/next-stop-baghdad.html

Brian Whittacker, "Playing Skittles with Saddam," The Guardian, September 3, 2002,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,785394,00.html

Jay Bookman, "The President's Real Goal in Iraq," Atlanta Journal Constitution, September 29, 2002,
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0902/29bookman.html

May 26
Neal Gabler, "Life The Movie:  How Entertainment Conquered Reality"

June 23
Roots of Current American Foreign Policy, continued from April 28

William Kristol and Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996,
http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/foreignaffairs.asp?from=pubauthor

"The National Security Strategy of the United States," the policy statement of the United States Government, September 2002,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html

John Lewis Gaddis, "A Grand Strategy of Transformation," Foreign Policy, November/December 2002,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_novdec_2002/gaddis.html

Joshua Muravchik, "The Bush Manifesto," Commentary, December 2002,
http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.14538/news_detail.asp

Arundhati Roy, "Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)" address to Center for Economic and Social Rights, Riverside Church, New York,
http://www.cesr.org/Roy/royspeech.htm

Stanley Hoffmann, "American Goes Backward," New York Review of Books, 12 June 2003,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16350

Andrew J. Bacevich, "Bush's Grand Strategy," American Conservative, 4 November 2002,
http://www.amconmag.com/11_4/bushs_grand_strategy.html

July 28
William Easterly, "The Elusive Quest for Growth"

August , 2003
No meeting

September 22
Laurie Garrett and Steven Wolinsky, "Betrayal of Trust:  The Collapse of Global Public Health"

and/or

Thomas Homer-Dixon, "The Ingenuity Gap:  Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable World"

Due to the long summer break, some members may be interested in reading both of these books.  Others may only wish to read one or the other.  We will discuss both at our this meeting, but it is not necessary to read both to participate.  

October 27
Amatai Etzioni, "The Limits of Privacy"

November 24
Jorge Ramos and Patricia J. Duncan, "The Other Face of America: Chronicles of the Immigrants Shaping Our Future"

December, 2003
No meeting

January 26, 2004
Stephen Seager, "Street Crazy:  America’s Mental Health Tragedy"

February 23
Francis Fukuyama, "Our Posthuman Future"

March 22
James Kunstler, "The Geography of Nowhere : The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape"

April 26
Barbara Ehrenreich‚ "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America"

May 24
Elliott Currie, "Crime and Punishment in America"

June 28
Glenn McGee, "The Perfect Baby:  Parenthood in the New World of Cloning and Genetics"

July 26
John C. Stauber, Sheldon Rampton, "Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future"

August, 2004
No meeting

September 27
Charles Lindblom, "The Market System" and
Kevin Phillips, "Wealth and Democracy"

October 25
Andres Duany, "Suburban Nation : The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream"

November 22
Paul Findley, "They Dare to Speak Out : People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby"
 
 
 

Amitai Etzioni, "The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society"

Theodore Lowi, "The End of Liberalism"

Frances Fitzgerald, "Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War"

Richard Sclove, "Democracy and Technology"

James B. Steele, Donald L. Barlett. "Great American Tax Dodge : How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You"

Ken Silverstein, "Washington on $10 Million a Day : How Lobbyists Plunder the Nation"

Charles Sykes,  "The End of Privacy"

Aaron Wildavsky, "Searching for Safety

James Kunstler, "The City in Mind"

Ray Oldenburg, "The Great Good Place"

William Fulton, "The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles" (paperback)

John C. Stauber, Sheldon Rampton,
"Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!:  Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry" (paperback)