Chicago Columbia Alumni Association Book Club Introductions

My alumni association has a book club where everyone takes turns recommending a book that everyone else reads, and then we meet to discuss it. Usually the first 10 or so minutes of every discussion is taken up by an introduction to the book, given by the person who recommended it.

In order to free up more time for the discussion, when one of my recommendations is discussed, rather than present my introduction in person, I usually put my introductions here, where people can read them in advance, before we meet (in one case, I put something here after the discussion, because there had been things that I had wanted to say during the discussion, that I didn't get a chance to say).

Here are the books that I've recommended:

    How We Know What Isn't So

    Less Than Words Can Say

    Just Six Numbers

    A Canticle For Leibowitz

    The Federalist Papers

    The Periodic Table (Il Systema Periodico)

    When Prophecy Fails

    The Medicalization Of Everyday Life

    Job


One of my friends recommended All Who Go Do Not Return, by Shulem Dean, even though I begged him not to. Since I wasn't going to be at the discussion, but there were a lot of things that I wanted to say about Dean's treatment of love, marriage and sex, I put them here, so people could read my remarks in lieu of hearing them from me:

    All Who Go Do Not Return