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Citizen: An American Lyric

This month’s book is both poetry and criticism, Citizen: An American Lyric. Rankine’s piece is a revolution. A political, a poetic, complex revolution in 169 pages. We look at it through an unusual lens – what should we take away from works of art as we think about governance in America?

The Nine

The Nine is Jeffrey Toobin’s reveals the lives of post-WWII Supreme Court Justices. He explores the notion of ideology and politics within the role of the judicial branch. We’ve chosen this 2007 title as a general look at the Supreme Court in order to discuss rule of law, personal politics, and the judicial branch more broadly.

The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies

Michael Storper, co-author of our latest book club pick, The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies said recently in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times: “To succeed in the new economy … Southern California has to face its mistakes over the last 30 years.” The claim is that the Bay Area has been “better” at doing business than we have in SoCal.

Evicted

Evicted is written by Harvard sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Award winner Matthew Desmond. It is being hailed as a “landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America.”

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist imagines what it means to be empathetic within the institutional violence of our system and the violence humans can commit against each other. Listen to our discussion about power and the necessity of protest within our democratic structure, and how protests should, and can, peacefully engage to solve the world’s “wicked problems.”

The Great Inversion

Alan Ehrenhalt argues that the demographics of the urban and suburban landscape are in the midst of a grand change in the book The Great Inversion. After the great sprawl of the 50s, the affluent are reclaiming urban spaces while minorities and immigrants are moving to the edges. New urbanism is winning and Ehrenhalt uses several examples to prove his point. Find out if our readers agreed with the thesis.

Rez Life

In Rez Life David Treuer spirals in and out of personal story, interviews, and historical narrative to paint a full picture of life as an Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation. An important book about the power of individual and collective action, the power of place, and how history lives on in our (collective) lives today.

What I Saw at the Revolution

What I Saw at the Revolution is a political memoir for those who don’t usually read political memoirs, a testimony to the power of language in politics. Noonan was a speechwriter for President Reagan, in both of his terms. Join us for a conversation on the power of language in politics and for a look at how our Federal government works.

The New Jim Crow

The US has used the War on drugs to create a racial caste system: a successor to the Jim Crow days we thought we left behind. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is one of the most important American books in the last decade. Alexander systematically explores the policy changes from the days of Nixon through the present – exploring how each decision has created and allowed a system which criminalizes blackness, brownness, otherness in way that both creates new racial biases and confirms them by incarcerating millions of young black and brown men (and to a lesser extent, black and brown women).

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Written in 1968, Do Androids Dream of ElectricSheep is set in a near-future San Francisco amid vast desertion to off-world colonies. Those remaining on Earth contend with nuclear fallout dust and other dangers. Dick asks fundamental questions in the novel and our discussion touches on just a few of these.

On Such a Full Sea

On Such a Full Sea follows Fan, a young woman from one of the labor communities, as she leaves her home in search of her love. In a corporatized future world – where the wealthy fly in helicopters, workers try to compete with robots, and the really poor live in favelas – what becomes of social mobility and the notions of resilience and hope and equality?

Reproducing Racism

Giving new language to the ongoing dialogue of racial inequality in America, Reproducing Racism distills research from different fields into a highly readable argument that historical actions matter more than current prejudices in locking in inequality.

Beyond the University

In this edition of the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast, we discuss Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, by Michael S. Roth. The book has been getting a lot of  media attention in the higher ed circles, and we think it’s a decidedly important topic, one that impacts governance dramatically. Roth takes an historic look at thought on education in America.

To listen to the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast discussion of Enforcing Order, click the orange arrow in the Soundcloud player above or download it on Soundcloud, iTunes U, iTunes Podcasts

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