Wednesday Night Discussion Group Archive
Summer of 2010
- 24 August 2010: When Good People Do Evil by Philip Zimbardo
- 17 August 2010: Telling Tails by Tim O’Brien
- 10 August 2010: Science Turns Authoritarian by Kenneth Green
- 03 August 2010: Letting Go by Atul Gawande
- 27 July 2010: The End of Men by Hana Rosin
- 20 July 2010: Win or Lose by Anthony Gottlieb
- 13 July 2010: How Facts Backfire by Joe Keohane
- 07 July 2010: Why Not Nuclear Disarmament? by Christopher Ford
- 30 June 2010: Are Fathers Necessary? by Pamela Paul
- 23 June 2010: Are Liberals Smarter than Conservatives? by Jason Richwine
- 16 June 2010: Does the Internet Make You Dumber? by Nicholas Carr and Mind Over Mass Media by Steven Pinker
- 09 June 2010: Dead Dogs (only print the first six pages)by Colin Dayan
2009-10 School Year
- 02 June 2010: Sympathy Deferred by Theodore Dalrympe
- 26 May 2010: Watching TV Makes You Smarter by Steven Johnson
- 19 May 2010: Delimiting Death by Nature Editors and Presumptuous Consent by Wesley Smith
- 12 May 2010: Video Games Can Never Be Art by Roger Ebert and Why Video Games are Works of Art by Kyle Chayka
- 05 May 2010: The Data Driven Life by Gary Wolf
- 28 April 2010: National Honor Society Induction (no meeting)
- 21 April 2010: Into Teen Air by Bruce Barcott
- 14 April 2010: Million Dollar Murray by Malcolm Gladwell
- 07 April 2010: Can’t Wait ‘Til Tax Day by Ethan Porter
- SPRING BREAK
- 24 March 2010: Resistance Resisters by Derrick Jensen
- 17 March 2010: To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes by Michael Seringhaus
- 10 March 2010: What Happened to Women? by Katha Pollitt
- March 3 2010: Tillikum: The Slave Whale Who Chose to Fight Back by Alexander Cockburn
- 24 February 2010: Mothers in Combat Boots by Mary Eberstadt
- 17 February 2010: The Serfdom of Crowds by Jaron Lanier
- 10 February 2010: Why Are Liberals So Condescending? by Gerard Alexander and Condescending Liberals by Michael Kinsley
- 03 February 2010: Whole Foods Healthcare
- 27 January 2010: Why Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny by John Cloud
- 20 Janurary 2010: Finals Week
- 13 January 2010: Green Guilt by Stephen Asma
- 06 January 2010: Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom by Henry Giroux
- 30 December 2009: No Discussion Group
- 23 December 2009: A Just Cause Does Not Equal a Just War by Howard Zinn
- 16 December 2009: Time for a Smarter Approach to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg
- 09 December 2009: German Lessons by Clay Risen
- 02 December 2009: The Puzzle of Boys by Thomas Bartlett
- 25 November 2009: Do the Right Thing by Sarah Sewall
- 18 November 2009: a brief story will be provided at the discussion group on Wed. night
- 11 November 2009: Death is Different by Carol Miller
- 04 November 2009: One week vacation. 🙂
- 28 October 2009: The Geek Defense by Erica Westly
- 21 October 2009: Mad Men 2.0 by David Sirota
- 14 Oct 2009: No meeting (MEA)
- 07 October 2009: Animal Liberation at 30 by Peter Singer
- 30 September 2009: Interview with Philip Zimbardo
- 23 September 2009: The Specter of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy by Henry Giroux
- 16 September 2009: The Age of Enhancement by David Edmonds
- 09 September 2009: Try to watch Obama’s speech and then read Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care by Sarah Palin
- 02 September 2009: Is It Now a Crime to be Poor? by Barbara Ehrehnreich
- 26 August 2009: The Omnivore’s Delusion by Blake Hurst
Summer 2009
- 12 August: What you don’t know about your friends by Drake Bennett
- July 29: Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood by Michael Chabon
- July 22: Sued by the Forest by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
- July 15: Universal Health Care Isn’t Worth Our Freedom by Thomas Szasz
- July 8: Beauty and Desecration by Roger Scruton
- July 1: The conclusion of The Left Hand of Darkness and selection of a new book
- June 24: The first ten chapters of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
- June 17: Sex Selection: Nobody’s Business? by William Saletan
2008-09 School Year
- June 10: The Consolations of Pessimism by Alain de Botton and determing our reading schedule for summer.
- June 3: Why Girls Are So Mean to Each Other by Jesse Bering
- May 27: Parents’ Rights, Judges’ Rules by Kate Dailey
- May 20: Don’t! by Jonah Lehrer
- May 13: There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
- May 06: Week Off (AP Exam Week)
- April 29: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz
- April 22: Life, Liberty, and Abortion Reduction by James Kerian
- April 15: Duped by Eric Adelman
- April 8: Fiction and Faction by Andrew McCarthy
- April 1: Duped by Eric Adelman (not meeting due to Teen Board tonight)
- March 23: How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad by Stephen Webb
- March 16: Growing up on Facebook by Peggy Orenstein
- March 11: Rethinking Race in the Classroom by Allison Samuels
- March 4: Why Can’t A Woman Write the Great American Novel? by Laura Miller (at Fireside)
- February 25: Should scientists study possible links between race and IQ? (Yes) and (No)
- February 18: My Drug Problem by Virginia Postrel
- February 11: A Quibble by Mark Slouka
- February 4: When Altruisim Isn’t Moral by Sally Satel (Room 14 at HHS)
- January 28: Thieves by Richard Yates
- January 14: Not Your Father’s Censorship by Harry Lewis
- January 7: Most Likely to Succeed by Malcolm Gladwell (yes, this article, and yes, at Fireside)
- Thursday, Jan 1: General Chit Chat and Discussion
- December 17: Twenty Years On: Internalising the Fatwa by Kenan Malik (Meeting in Pogreba’s room at HHS this week)
- December 10: Love, Hunger, Money by Sherman Alexie
- December 3: Moral Fiction by Mary Gordon
- November 26: First Person Plural by Paul Bloom
- November 19: No Discussion Group (Great Conversations)
- November 12: How To Tell a True War Story by Tim O’Brien
- November 5: Citizen Gore Vidal by David Barsamian
- October 29: A Boy’s Life by Hanna Rosin
- October 22: The Secrets of Storytelling by Jeremy Hsu
- October 15: Viewing Presidential Debate (6:30) Room 14 at HHS
- October 8: In Defense of Prejudice by Jonathan Rauch
- October 1: Are Too Many People Going to College? by Charles Murray
- September 24: The Professional Panhandling Plague by Steven Malanga
- September 17: As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen by John Tierney (some of the linked research is great, if you have time to look)
- September 10: D.C. Tries Cash as Motivator by Dion Haynes
Summer of 2008
- Aug 20: The Gospel of Consumption by Jeffrey Kaplan
- Aug 13: The Color-Coded Campaign by John Heilemann
- Aug 6: Discuss the end of The Satanic Verses and the story of Christian the Lion (ignoring the music)
- July 30: The Satanic Verses, pg. 369
- July 23: Sections I and II of The Satanic Verses
- July 16:Hollywood’s Hero Deficit by James Bowman and distribution of The Satanic Verses. If you would like a copy, please let me know right away.
- July 9: The conclusion of Snow
- July 2: Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicolas Carr
- June 25: The first 24 chapters of Snow
- June 18: Camp Justice
- June 11: The Kindergarchy by Joseph Epstein and assigning reading pages in Snow
- June 4: Norms and Deviations: Who’s to Say? by Stanley Fish and selection of summer reading.
- We are reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk first. If you were not there tonight and would like me to order you a copy, let me know.
2007-08 School Year
- September 12: Are We Failing Our Geniuses ?
- September 19: Why We Need a Draft by Corporal Mark Finelli
- September 26: Is ‘Do Unto Other’ Written into our Genes ? by Nicholas Wade
- October 3: Bed-Wetter Nation by Rick Perlstein and Hear, Hear by Peggy Noonan
- October 10: Has Artificial Beauty Become the New Feminism? by Jennifer Cognard-Black
- October 17: Generation Q by Thomas Friedman
- October 24: Finding Time by Rebecca Solnit
- October 31: Killing the Consumer by Anna Quindlen
- November 7: American Kids: Dumber than Dirt by Mark Moford
- November 14:
- November 21:Soldiering Ahead by Holly Yeager
- November 28: Apologies All Around by Gordon Beauchamp
- December 5: Crime, Drugs and Welfare–and Other Good News by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin
- December 12: Mormon in America by Peggy Noonan and Romney’s speech
- December 19: Bonfire of the Disney Princesses by Barbara Ehrenreich
- December 26: A Death in the Family by Christopher Hitchens
- January 2: Excerpt from ‘Freedom Manifesto ‘ by Tom Hodgkinson
- January 9: Women are Never Front-Runners by Gloria Steinem
- January 16: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric Wilson
- January 23: The Future of Marriage by Stephanie Coontz and The Marriage Gap by Kay Hymowitz
- January 30: The Truth About Jenna by Amy Waldman
- February 6: Is A New Dark Age at Hand? by Lawrence Murray
- February 13: Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
- February 20: The Dilettante by Edith Wharton
- February 27: Cathedral by Raymond Carver
- March 05: Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man? by Christina Hoff Summers
- March 12: The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chehkov
- March 19: The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker
- March 26: Where Angels No Longer Fear to Tread
- April 2: The Case for Fitting In by David Berreby
- April 9: The Sting of Poverty by Drake Bennet
- April 16: Plains Sense by Florence Williams
- April 23: What Makes a Terrorist by Alan Krueger
- April 30: Designer Babies and the Pro-Choice Movement by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
- May 7: The Rise of the Rest by Fareed Zakaria
- May 14: The Bigot in Your Brain by Siri Carpenter
- May 21: Measure for Measure by Jonathan Gottschall
- May 28: Subsidize Families with Children, Discuss Readings for the summer
Summer of 2007
- June 06: Novel Discussion
- June 13: A Cuban Death Rehearsal by Bella Thomas
- June 27: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- July 5: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- July 11: A Reader’s Manifesto by B.R. Meyers
- July 18: Blindness by Jose Saramago
- July 25: Preface to Dangerous Ideas by Steven Pinker
- Aug 1: Atonement by Ian McEwen
- Aug 8: The Downside of Diversity by Michael Jonas
- Aug 15: Supply, Demand, and Kidney Transplants
- Aug 22: Abolish the SAT by Charles Murray
Readings for 2006-07 School Year
We will begin discussion group for the 2006-07 school year next week, on September 6th. We look forward to seeing you all there.
- September 6: After College, a Life Without Debt ? by Jeffrey Williams
- September 13: I Spy. Doesn’t Everyone? by Stephanie Rosenbloom
- September 20: Paying the Poor by Sara Klugman
- September 27: My Satirical Self by Wyatt Mason
- October 4: What If It’s (Sort Of) a Boy and (Sort Of) a Girl?
- October 11: Big Ideas and No Boundaries by Thomas Friedman and Another Open Letter to Thomas Friedman by David Sirota
- October 18: A&P by John Updike
- October 25: TV Might Cause Autism by Gregg Easterbrook
- November 1: Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade? by Brock Read
- November 8:
- November 15: Ova for Sale by Kerry Howley
- November 22: Thanksgiving Break
- November 29: The Left Has Been Infected with the Disease of Intolerance by Brendan O’Neill
- December 6: Closing the Black/White IQ Gap by Ronald Bailey
- December 13: The New, Soft Paternalism by Jim Holt
- December 20: Why Women Aren’t Funny by Christopher Hitchens
- January 3: Predator Panic: A Closer Look by Benjamin Radford
- January 10: Love’s Loopy Logic by Kaja Perina
- January 17: Finals Week
- January 24:
- January 31: This is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad by Mike Males
- February 7:
- February 14: Should Courts Ban Demeaning Speech in Schools ? by Richard Fossey
- February 21: Intelligence in the Classroom by Charles Murray
- February 28:
- March 7: Overdose on Narcissism by Clayton Collins
- March 14: The Brain on the Stand by Jeffrey Rosen
- March 21: A Pre-Birth Determination by Lynn Duke
- March 28: Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and the Religious Right by Linda Greenhouse
- April 18: Our Prejudices, Ourselves by Harvey Fierstein
- April 25: Living on a Lifeboat by Garret Hardin
- May 2: Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten
- May 9: No Discussion (Celebration of Excellence Dinner)
- May 16: Study of NBA Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls by Alan Schwarz
- May 24:
- May 31: Five Star Jails
- June 6: Meeting about Summer Discussion Group and Novel Choices
Readings 2005-06 School Year
- September 7: The Space Traders by Derreck Bell
- September 14: Who’s Next by Karen Houppert
- September 21: A Nation of Wimps by Hara Marano
- September 28: The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka
- October 5: Does Meritocracy Work? by Ross Douthat
- October 12: The Cost of Free Speech by Harvey Mansfield
- October 26: Into the Woods by James Parker
- November 2: In Bin Laden’s Words by Bruce Lawrence
- November 09: The War of the Liberals by Stephen Holmes
- November 16:
- November 23: Thanksgiving
- November 30: Organ Donation (not o nline)
- December 07: Lack of Curiousity is Curious
- December 14: Is Extreme Bias a Mental Illness?
- December 21: The Rock Star’s Burden
- January 11: The Two Faces of A.P.
- January 18:
- January 25:
- February 8:
- February 15: Letter to the American Left
- February 22: Rothschild’s Fiddle by Anton Chekhov
- March 01: Rothschild’s Fiddle by Anton Chekhov
- March 08: The Geopolitics of Sexual Frustration
- March 15: A Wrongful Birth
- March 22: Why Poor Countries are Poor
- March 29: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
- April 04: The Six Lesson Teacher
- May 03: A Sour Note o n Modern Times
- May 10: The Wrong Way to Combat Terrorism by Sadakat Kadri
- May 17: The Killing Fields of Central Africa
- May 24: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- May 31: O n the Rainy River by Tim O’Brien
- 07 June Convict Nation by Silja Talvi
- 14 June: A More Perfect Union by Jonathan Rauch
- 05 July: Meet the Malthusians Manipulating the Fear of Terror by Frank Furedi
- 12 July: At College, Women are Leaving Men in the Dust by Tamar Lewin