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