In our current information/manipulation deluge, selective focus and independent thought are more challenging than ever.

This selection of nonfiction books supports our ability to comprehend our divided society, recognize and counteract divisive agendas, and to feel more grounded within the fear-promoting “noise”. This is the fourth iteration of what has been referred to as the “hot topic nonfiction” or “social justice” reading group.

This group will meet on the 2nd Wednesday of the month in the mezzanine-level Art Room at the Athenæum, 5:30-7pm. This smaller room limits participants to 17 instead of the previous 30.

Wed, September 10 | Focus in the Midst of Constant, Rapid Change
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari

Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, his chapters attempt to untangle political, technological, social, and existential issues and to offer advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in.

Wed, October 8 | Rage Against The Thinking Machine
Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines, Joy Buolamwini

“The conscience of the AI revolution” (Fortune) explains how we’ve arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls.

Wed, November 12 – Legalities of the First Amendment
Free Speech: What Everyone Needs to Know, Nadine Strossen

Strossen lays out and responds to the twelve most important and difficult arguments that are commonly raised by members of the public, press, and politicians to challenge speech-protective principles of modern First Amendment law, while describing the Supreme Court’s many disparate–even inconsistent–free speech rulings.

Wed, December 10 | Women Take on Trump-Era Discrimination
Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, Dahlia Lithwick

“Lithwick, one of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency-and won.”

Also worth perusal: The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It, Corey Brett Schneider (Brown professor of constitutional law and politics).

Wed, January 14 | Skeptical Optimism to Save Your Sanity
Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Jamil Zaki

Cynicism is a perfectly understandable response to a world full of injustice and inequality. But in many cases, cynicism is misplaced. Dozens of studies find that people fail to realize how kind, generous, and open-minded others really are.

Wed, February 11 | U.S. Latinos Are Not Homogeneous
LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority, Marie Arana

A sweeping yet personal overview of the Latino population of America, drawn from hundreds of interviews and prodigious research that emphasizes the diversity and little-known history of our largest and fastest-growing minority.

Wed, March 11 | TV’s Lost Chance to Broaden Inclusive Democracy
The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist, Carol A. Stabile

At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. These women—among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee—were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to white patriarchal domination of U.S. culture and politics.

Wed, April 8 | A Misuse Of Science
Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails, Sharyl Attkisson

Follow the Science recounts, in exacting detail, how far the pharmaceutical industry and its supporters in medicine, media, and government will go to protect their profits. And she explains, in a graphic sense, how some of the most trusted within our society are willing to commit life-threatening ethics violations.

Wed, May 13 | Anti-Democracy Lobbyists
Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, Casey Michel

For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they’ve not only entrenched dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they’ve secretly guided U.S. policy without the rest of America even being aware.

Samanthe Sheffer finds challenges to her perceptions stimulating and expansive. She is excited by new discoveries that alter well-established ideas, and believes in the health of – and need for – discussing “controversial” topics; learning about viewpoints and experiences different from her own. Primarily a New Englander, for decades she was a director and public speaker/educator for large social and environmental non-profits in NYC and Seattle, tasked with “thinking outside the box”. Since the pandemic began, she has been making up for her myth-education by seriously studying true American history and institutions with an amazing group of anti-racist allies. Her favorite question is, “Why?” followed by, “What can an ordinary person do?’ She has thoroughly enjoyed the thoughtful, lively participation in her three previous reading groups: What’s Going On?; Challenges and Change Agents; Through Their Eyes, In Their Shoes.