Book Discussion - Houston Nonfiction - Feb 15th 7pm - Central Market Community Room - THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by Galbraith
Alice Aman
Next Wednesday, February 15th at 7pm, we will be meeting for the first
time to discuss THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith. The
meeting room is upstairs at Houston Central Market, 3815 Westheimer
(at Weslayan). The door on the room is a glass door so if you aren't
sure if you've found the right place, look for a relatively large room
with tables and chairs. "Community Room" is painted above the door
way.
After we share initial information about expectations for the group,
we will focus mainly on the book during the discussion. Anyone with a
schedule that allows for a bit of socializing afterwards is welcome to
join us downstairs in the cafe at 9pm (Central Market closes at 10pm).
Except for this first meeting, we will not usually be reading a full
book per month. Detailed schedule of how books will be partitioned
(100 or 200 pages or so) for upcoming monthly discussions is available
at http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/HoustonNonfiction/ .
See you next week!
---Alice
===UPCOMING TITLES =====================
--THE GREAT CRASH 1929: The classic account of financial disaster by
John Kenneth Galbraith (publ 1954) 240 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."
--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.
--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.
--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.
--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.
--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, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar
Schacht of the Reichsbank.