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