The author signings, in-house book clubs and other events shown below are free and open to the public.
The Bookworm offers in-house book clubs that you can attend when the featured books fit your interests and schedule. Readers receive a 20% book club discount on the books selected for discussion. The Bookworm provides facilitators to help lead the discussions for many of the in-house book clubs. If you have suggestions for groups, or are willing to facilitate discussions, please let us know.
Why buy books in your local independent bookstore?
- You may be about to make a purchase you'll value for the rest of your life
- You'll be shopping where you live
- You'll be helping create local jobs
- You might just find a book you never knew existed
- You'll find great gifts for friends and family
- You can talk to real people about books they know and love
- You'll be part of your local book-loving community
Monday, June 18 / 6:30 | The Droids and Dragons Book Club's selection is Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill (Voyager, $15.99). It's been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI--One World Intelligence--the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality--their personality--for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories--and nearly unbearable guilt.
Wednesday, June 20 / 6 p.m. | Julija Sukys will sign Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter's Reckoning University of Nebraska Press, $24.95). Julija Sukys was taught her family's story: that of a proud people forced from their Lithuanian homeland. In 1941, three Red Army soldiers arrested Ona, her grandmother, and sent her east to Siberia, where she spent seventeen years working on a collective farm. The family story maintained that it was all a mistake. Seventy years after these events, Sukys sat down to write about her grandparents and their survival of a twenty-five-year forced separation and subsequent reunion. Piecing the story together her research revealed a Holocaust-era secret--a family connection to the killing of seven hundred Jews in a small Lithuanian border town. According to KGB documents, the man in charge when those massacres took place was Anthony, Ona's husband. In Siberian Exile Sukys weaves together the two narratives: the story of Ona, noble exile and innocent victim, and that of Anthony, accused war criminal. She examines the stories that communities tell themselves and considers what happens when the stories we've been told all our lives suddenly and irrevocably change, and how forgiveness or grace operate across generations and across the barriers of life and death.
Thursday, June 21 / 10 a.m. | Spanish Language Story Time with author and teacher Julie Pospishil. Enjoy lots of activities, Hispanic snacks and a free mini coloring chatbook with each session; registration fee per session is $10 per child. The June 21 session will center on greetings from Spain. Call The Bookworm at (402)392-2877 to register.
Thursday, June 21 / 6 p.m. | The World War II At Night Group will discuss All the Gallant Men: An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor by Donald Stratton and Ken Gire (Morrow, $15.99). At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan's surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don hauedl himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a neighboring vessel. In the only memoir written by a survivor of the USS Arizona--ninety-five-year-old veteran Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to return to the fight. Stratton would sail back to the Pacific War in 1944, where he would participate in the invasion of Okinawa and other major battles.
Thursday, June 21 / 6:30 p.m. | The As the Worm Turns Book Group will discuss The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (Harper, $16.99). Editor Susan Ryeland has worked with bestselling crime writer Alan Conway for years, so she has no reason to think his latest novel will be much different from his others. Readers love his detective, Atticus Pünd, a celebrated solver of crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder. Masterful, clever and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a doubly devilish take on vintage English crime fiction, in which the reader becomes the detective.
Saturday, June 23 / 10 a.m. | The American History Book Club will discuss The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln's General, Master Builder of the Union Army by Robert O’Harrow ( Simon & Schuster, $18.00). Montgomery C. Meigs graduated from West Point, helped build America's forts and served under Lt. Robert E. Lee to make navigation improvements on the Mississippi River. He designed the Washington aqueducts in a city where people were dying from contaminated water, and built the spectacular wings and the massive dome of the new U.S. Capitol. During the Civil War Meigs became Lincoln's Quartermaster, in charge of supplies. He commanded Ulysses S. Grant's base of supplies that made Union victories, including Gettysburg, possible. He sustained Sherman's army in Georgia, and the March to the Sea. After the war, Meigs built Arlington Cemetery (on land that had been Robert E. Lee's home).
Saturday, June 23 / 1 to 3 p.m. | Queen Victoria Tea for fans of English Royalty, Downton Abbey and The Crown. Please join Ellen Scott and Janet Grojean for Tea with Queen Victoria. Beginning with a book discussion at The Bookworm and ending with Tea and a light luncheon at The Market Basket, this will be an interesting afternoon focused on the remarkable English Sovereign who gave her name to an era. For a $40.00 fee you will receive a copy of Daisy Godwin’s book, Victoria, and lunch with gratuity included. Seating will be limited, and the deadline for registration is Wednesday, June 20. Appropriate dress is encouraged. Register and prepay at The Bookworm.
Monday, June 25 / 2 p.m. | The World War II Book Group will discuss The Wrong Stuff: The Adventures and Misadventures of an 8th Air Force Aviator by Truman Smith (University of Oklahoma Press, $19.95). Between April and July 1944, Truman Smith flew thirty-five bombing missions over France and Germany. He was only twenty years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime's worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith's gripping memoir of that time. In a new preface, the author comments with equal honesty and humor on the impact this book has had on his life.
Monday, June 25 / 6 p.m. | Ian Stansel will sign The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Mariner, $14.99). When Silas Van Loy flees home on horseback to avoid capture for his brother's murder, he is followed by both the police and his brother's wife, Lena, who is intent on exacting revenge. She reluctantly lets her trusted stable assistant join her in a journey across the wilds of Northern California in the hopes of catching Silas for one final showdown. Stansel follows the chase and shares the story of the brothers' rise from hardscrabble childhood to their reign as the region's preeminent horse trainers, tracking the tense sibling rivalry that ultimately leads to the elder's death.
Sarah Anne Strickley, Ian’s wife, will sign Fall Together ($15.95). The sensibility overseeing these powerful stories is quirky and playful; Strickley is a connoisseur of a myriad of source materials, from contemporary tabloid fodder to age-old literature and legend. In each piece, a wholly human character comes to life to delight and instruct the reader, to make her revisit what she thought was the familiar world and find it, somehow, faintly shifted and newly fresh.
Monday, June 25 / 6:30 p.m. | The Books To Die For Group will discuss Cape Fear by John D. McDonald (Random House, $16.00). Sam Bowden has it all: a successful law career, a devoted wife, and three children. But a terrifying figure from Bowden's past looms in the shadows, waiting to shatter his pristine existence. Fourteen years ago, Bowden's testimony put Max Cady behind bars. Ever since, the convicted rapist has been nursing a grudge into an unrelenting passion for revenge. Cady has been counting the days until he is set free, desperate to destroy the man he blames for all his troubles. Now that time has come.
Tuesday, June 26 / 6:30 p.m. | The Crime Through Time Book Group will discuss The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia (Morrow, $15.99). The Fifth Servant carries readers back to 16th century Prague in the shadow of the Papal Inquisition--and introduces a uniquely unforgettable protagonist, a young Talmudic scholar who has three days to solve a heinous murder before official reprisals decimate the city's Jewish community. A richly atmospheric tale of religion, mystery, and intrigue, The Fifth Servant recreates life in the era when Emperor Rudolph II occupied the throne--a time of uncertainty and fear viewed through the eyes of an intrepid rabbinical student on a quest for truth and justice.
Wednesday, June 27 / 6 p.m. | The Mysterious Readers Book Group will discuss Breaking Creed by Alex Kava (Putnam, $9.99). Ryder Creed and his dogs have intercepted several major drug stashes smuggled through Atlanta's airport. But their newfound celebrity has also garnered some unwanted attention. When Creed and one of his dogs are called in to search a commercial fishing vessel off the coast of Pensacola Beach, they discover a secret compartment. But the Colombian cartel's latest shipment isn't drugs. It's human. Meanwhile, FBI agent Maggie O'Dell is investigating a series of murders she suspects to be the work of a brutal assassin. By the time she uncovers a hit list with Creed's name on it, it might be too late to help him. For someone is already on the way.
Thursday, June 28 / 10 a.m. | Spanish Language Story Time with author and teacher Julie Pospishil. Enjoy lots of activities, Hispanic snacks and a free mini coloring chatbook with each session; registration fee per session is $10 per child. The June 28 session will center on foods from Mexico and Central America. Call The Bookworm at (402)392-2877 to register.
Thursday, June 28 / 2 p.m. | Cather and Friends reads and discusses the work of Willa Cather, her contemporaries, and fellow Nebraskans. Tea will be served, so bring your favorite cup. Please call 402-392-2877 to register or sign up at the store. The book for June discussion will be The Professor's House (Vintage, $16.00). Professor Godfrey St. Peter is a man in his fifties who has devoted his life to his work, his wife, his garden, and his daughters, and achieved success with all of them. But when St. Peter is called on to move to a new, more comfortable house, something in him rebels. And although at first that rebellion consists of nothing more than mild resistance to his family's wishes, it imperceptibly comes to encompass the entire order of his life. The Professor's House combines a delightful grasp of the social and domestic rituals of a Midwestern university town in the 1920s with profound spiritual and psychological introspection.
Thursday, June 28 / 6 p.m. | The Philosophy Book Discussion Group will continue their discussion of The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction by Terry Eagleton (Oxford University Press, $11.95). Eagleton examines how centuries of thinkers and writers have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests that it is only in modern times that the question has become problematic. Eagleton notes many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living
Monday, July 2 / 6:30 p.m. | The Lit Wits Group will discuss The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle (Ace, $16.00). The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. So she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch--and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction.
Tuesday, July 3 / 6:30 p.m. | The Killing Time Book Group will discuss The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (Mariner, $14.95). Forensic archeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties. She lives happily alone with her two cats in a bleak, remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants--not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine days of digging up bones and other ancient objects are harshly upended when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Galloway for help, believing they are the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor continues to taunt him with bizarre letters containing references to ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter--exactly like the ones about Lucy. Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth's remote home?
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Thursday, July 5 / 6:30 p.m. | The Notable Novellas group will discuss The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Murial Spark (Harper, $14.99). At the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, in Edinburgh, Scotland, teacher Miss Jean Brodie is unmistakably, and outspokenly, in her prime. She is passionate in the application of her unorthodox teaching methods, in her attraction to the married art master, Teddy Lloyd, in her affair with the bachelor music master, Gordon Lowther, and--most important--in her dedication to "her girls," the students she selects to be her crème de la crème. Fanatically devoted, each member of the Brodie set is "famous for something," and Miss Brodie strives to bring out the best in each one. Determined to instill in them independence, passion, and ambition, Miss Brodie advises her girls, "Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth, and Beauty come first. Follow me." And they do. But one of them will betray her.
Sunday, July 8 / 11 a.m. | The Books and Bagels book group will discuss Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (Norton, $16.95). Lewis argues that post-crisis Wall Street continues to be controlled by large banks and explains how a small, diverse group of Wall Street men have banded together to reform the financial markets. A report on a high-tech predator stalking the equity markets, this book is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post-financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks.
Sunday, July 8 / 2 p.m. | Ted Kooser will speak and sign his latest book, Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, $30.00). Four decades of poetry--and a generous selection of new work--make up this extraordinary collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser. Firmly rooted in the landscapes of the Midwest, Kooser's poetry succeeds in finding the emotional resonances within the ordinary. Kooser's language of quiet intensity trains itself on the intricacies of human relationships, as well as the animals and objects that make up our days. As Poetry magazine said of his work, "Kooser documents the dignities, habits, and small griefs of daily life, our hunger for connection, our struggle to find balance."
Wednesday, July 11 / 6:30 p.m. | The Wednesday Bookworms will discuss Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Vintage, $16.95). After oil was discovered beneath their land in the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
Wednesday, July 11 / Noon - 1 p.m. | What Are You Reading? book chat. Join us to chat about favorite reads, books that changed your life, or the book you just couldn’t put down. No need to make reservations--just come and enjoy a little conversation about books. Carol Lynch facilitates the discussions.
Thursday, July 12 / 10 a.m. | Spanish Language Story Time with author and teacher Julie Pospishil. Enjoy lots of activities, Hispanic snacks and a free mini coloring chatbook with each session; registration fee per session is $10 per child. The July 12 session will center on sports from Central and South America. Call The Bookworm at (402)392-2877 to register.
Thursday, July 12 / 6 p.m. | Amiable Adult Readers Discussing Books Almost Always Read by Kids (Aardbaark) will discuss The Girl in the Well Is Me by Karen Rivers (Algonquin, $6.95). Sixth-grader Kammie Summers's plan to be one of the popular girls at school hasn't gone the way she hoped. She's fallen into a well during a (fake) initiation into the Girls' club. Now she's trapped in the dark, counting the hours, hoping to be rescued. As the hours go by, Kammie's real-life trouble mixes with memories of the best and worst moments of her life so far, including the awful reasons her family moved to this new town in the first place. And as she begins to feel hungry and thirsty and dizzy, Kammie discovers she does have visitors, including a French-speaking coyote and goats that just might be zombies. But they can't get her out of the well.
Thursday, July 12 / 6 p.m. | The Philosophy Book Discussion Group will continue their discussion of The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction by Terry Eagleton (Oxford University Press, $11.95). Eagleton examines how centuries of thinkers and writers have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests that it is only in modern times that the question has become problematic. Eagleton notes many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life.
Saturday, July 14 / 1 p.m. | Robert Hunter will sign Relapse: A Love Story ($15.95). Rob Wildhide will become a celebrated novelist; he just knows it. But first, he'll have to overcome writer's block and survive a wayward trip to the North Woods of Maine with his new bride, Annie, and her treacherous friends (raft guides are not to be trusted!). A love story at its best and wild ride at its drunkest, ''Relapse'' careens through shaman-led weddings, car heists that lead to strange prophesies, and the inner workings of a mind rife with possibility and absolutely unaffected by the moonshine, thank you very much. Is it relapse, or is it revival? Rob Wildhide will try just about anything to find out where this story goes.
Monday, July 16 / 6:30 | The Droids and Dragons Book Club will discuss Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft (Orbit, $15.99). The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants. Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he'll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the illusions of the Tower. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure.
Thursday, July 19 / 6 p.m. | The World War II At Night Group will discuss Finland At War, 1939-1945 by Phillip Jowett (Osprey, $18.95). Finland's fight to defend her independence earned this tiny nation of just 3 million people a distinct place in history. Invaded by Stalin before World War II, Finland held out for months and inflicted huge losses on the invaders, but she was eventually crushed by the weight of Soviet numbers. When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941 the Finns fought alongside the Wehrmacht on the northern Russian Front, with great skill and courage in an attempt to regain their lost territories. When the German armies were forced to retreat in 1944, Finland managed to conclude a separate peace with the USSR - uniquely, without being forced to accept renewed Russian occupation. This book details the organisation, uniforms and equipment of this remarkable force.
Thursday, July 19 / 6:30 p.m. | The As the Worm Turns Book Group will discuss An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi (Experiment, $14.95). Have you stumbled into one too many irrational debates? This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic. Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short--plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn't believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn't like the result (the argument from consequences). Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere -which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions. Lee Myers will facilitate the discussion.
Saturday, July 21 / 3 p.m. | The Literature by People of Color Group will discuss The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Mariner, $8.95). Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
Saturday, July 21 / 10 a.m. | The Biography Discussion Group will discuss The Einstein File: The FBI’s Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist by Fred Jerome (Independent Publishers Group, $29.95). Einstein arrived in the United States in 1933, the year the Nazis rose to power in Germany. From that moment until he died in 1955, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI--with other agencies-- collected information about him. Jerome reveals the depth of, and the reasons for, this Einstein campaign. He also uncovers Einstein's strong political commitments that have been conveniently buried under the image of the absent-minded icon genius. Whereas Einstein said on several occasions, "My life is divided between equations and politics," Jerome delves into his little-known political half-life.
Monday, July 23 / 2 p.m. | The World War II Book Group will discuss The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 by Ian Toll (Norton, $19.95). This history encompasses the heart of the Pacific War--the period between mid-1942 and mid-1944--when parallel Allied counteroffensives north and south of the equator washed over Japan's far-flung island empire like a "conquering tide," concluding with Japan's irreversible strategic defeat in the Marianas. It was the largest, bloodiest, most costly, most technically innovative and logistically complicated amphibious war in history, and it fostered bitter interservice rivalries, leaving wounds that even victory could not heal.Toll also takes the reader into the wartime councils in Washington and Tokyo where politics and strategy often collided, and into the struggle to mobilize wartime production, which was the secret of Allied victory.
Monday, July 23 / 6:30 p.m. | The Books To Die For Group will discuss Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson (Mulholland, $15.00). Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows that nobody in tiny Potts County actually wants to follow the law and he is perfectly content lazing about, eating five meals a day, and sleeping with all the eligible women. Still, Nick has some very complex problems to deal with. Two local pimps have been sassing him, ruining his already tattered reputation. His girlfriend Rose is being terrorized by her husband. And then, there's his wife and her brother Lenny who won't stop troubling Nick's already stressed mind. Are they a little too close for a brother and a sister? With an election coming up, Nick needs to fix his problems and fast. Because the one thing Nick does know is that he will do anything to stay sheriff. Because, as it turns out, Sheriff Nick Corey is not nearly as dumb as he seems.
Tuesday, July 24 / 6:30 p.m. | The Crime Through Time Book Group will discuss Billy Boyle by James Benn (Soho, $9.99). Billy Boyle, a young Irish-American cop from Boston, has just made detective when World War II breaks out. His "Uncle Ike" is Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of Army forces in Europe, and he wants Billy to be his personal investigator. Accompanied by an aristocratic Polish officer in exile and a beautiful British WREN, his mission is to catch a spy who may have been planted in Beardsley Hall, where the Norwegian government in exile is in residence.
Wednesday, July 25 / 6 p.m. |The Mysterious Readers Book Group will discuss Silent Creed by Alex Kava (Putnam, $9.99). When Ryder Creed responds to a devastating mudslide in North Carolina, he knows that the difference between finding survivors and the dead is time. But most perilous are the secrets hidden under the mud and sludge--secrets someone would kill to protect. Among the buildings consumed by the landslide was a top-secret government research facility, and Creed has been hired to find what's left of it. Then rescuers recover the body of a scientist from the facility who was obviously dead before the landslide--killed by a gunshot to the head. The FBI sends Agent Maggie O'Dell to investigate, and she and Creed are soon caught in a web of lies, secrets, and murder.
Thursday, July 26 / 6 p.m. | The Philosophy Book Discussion Group will continue their discussion of The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction by Terry Eagleton (Oxford University Press, $11.95). Eagleton examines how centuries of thinkers and writers have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests that it is only in modern times that the question has become problematic. Eagleton notes many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life.
Saturday, July 28 / 10 a.m. | The American History Book Club will discuss Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War by Mark Neely Jr. (Cambridge University Press, $24.99). Lincoln and the Democrats describes the vexatious behavior of a two-party system in war and points to the sound parts of the American system which proved to be the country's salvation: local civic pride, and quiet nonpartisanship in mobilization and funding for the war, for example. While revealing that the role of a noxious 'white supremacy' in American politics of the period has been exaggerated - as has the power of the Copperheads - Neely revives the claim that the Civil War put the country on the road to 'human rights', and also uncovers a previously unnoticed tendency toward deceptive and impractical grandstanding on the Constitution during war in the United States.
