TOPICS
OFFERED FOR SPRING
2021
Classes
start January 4th and end April
30th.
Holiday
periods are adapted to by individual
class voting.
1. (BYE) BYE
BYE, STRESS
Do you feel
like we’re living in
catastrophic times? It’s fair to say that if you’re not
stressed, you probably
haven’t been paying attention. But Omnilore’s got a cure for
that (or at least
some relief), and there’s no alcohol involved.
To address
stress and help people build
resilience and mental strength, more than 720 hospitals,
clinics and medical
programs use a program called mindfulness-based stress
reduction (MBSR).
MBSR is based on our recommended text, “Full Catastrophe
Living,”
written by and used for decades by the head of the Stress
Reduction Clinic at
the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. The
MBSR program also
comes recommended by the Veterans Administration’s head of the
psychology
department.
Our text
articulates the transformative
potential of cultivating mindfulness in one’s own life in the
face of stress,
pain, and illness. Today, there is a vibrant and growing
science of mindfulness
which has documented a number of positive effects on brain
structure and
function, on gene expression, on cellular factors associated
with aging, and on
the immune system, as well as on our own mind and its habitual
patterns. The
practice of mindfulness can dramatically influence our
relationship to our
thoughts and emotions, with great benefits in terms of
anxiety, depression, and
other mental afflictions.
Beyond
enlightening us on the scientific
basis for MBSR, this book provides a friendly guide and
support if you wish to
begin or to deepen a daily practice of mindfulness in your own
life, especially
in the face of stress, pain, or a chronic illness.
Other
presentation topics could be:
·
How
the practice of mindfulness is applied in medical clinics
today.
·
What
science proves about the effect of mindfulness practice
on us.
·
Different
mindfulness practices and methodologies throughout the world.
·
Mindfulness retreats
(boot
camps for the mind).
Common
Reading: Full
Catastrophe Living
(Revised Edition): Using theWisdom
of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, by Jon
Kabat-Zinn (September
2013)
2. (CAS)
CASTE: THE ORIGINS
OF OUR DISCONTENT
“Like Martin
Luther King, Jr. before
her, Isabel Wilkerson has traveled the world to study
the caste system and has returned to show us more
clearly than ever
before how caste is permanently embedded in the
foundation and unseen
structural beams of America.”
The text for
this S/DG, from the author
of “The Warmth of Other Suns” (a Pulitzer prize winner and
previous S/DG),
presents a new framework for examining how caste (rather than
race per se)
plays out in America. It describes in detail how caste has
functioned in other
countries, like India and Germany, and analyzes the
similarities to American
society.
We will learn
about and discuss how castes
can be organized around religion, race or cultural
differences, and compare
them to our own system. These discussions will cover much of
what is coming to
our attention today in America, regarding, e.g., police
interactions; the idea
that “weathering”—the constant struggle of blacks and other
groups—has
contributed to the excessive COVID-19 deaths within the
African American
community; the general history of racism; how Hitler used the
Jim Crow model in
his antisemitism.
Whether or not you are persuaded by
Wilkerson’s arguments, in
this year of social unrest this is a book worth discussing. Our
S/DG doesn’t promise to be comfortable – but it provides an
opportunity for
serious, perhaps even soul-searching, discussion. If you’re an
Omnilorean,
you’ll enjoy the challenge!
Presentations
might
include Black Lives Matter, prison and social justice
inequalities, the history
of immigration in this country, the impact of cultural
attitudes toward
education, reparation
demands in South Africa or the US, political polarization, and the
disparate
effect of COVID-19 on various groups (castes).
Common Reading: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent,
by Isabel
Wilkerson (August
4,
2020)
3. (CSD) CAPITALISM,
SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY
This could
be
the antidote for any confirmation bias one might have on all
three of the title
“isms”. With dry humor and exhaustive parsing, Schumpeter
takes all three apart
and puts them together again. He does it so well that one
gets the feeling
that, if one were queen, one could create a system that
would work — except
that the author has in the process laid bare the flaws of
one-person rule.
Economy is
known as the dismal science, but Schumpeter writes more like
a philosopher than
an economist. There are no formulas here, just analysis of
every conceivable
mutation of each system in turn, including all the ways they
might be combined.
The history of capitalism is examined with due appreciation
of the progress it
has achieved in industrialized states, but Schumpeter says
that at a certain
point, capitalism becomes its own worst enemy. Socialism is
shown to be not
incompatible with democracy, but then again, democracy
cannot be counted upon
to fix inefficient socialist management.
Possible
presentations: Disproving his arguments that capitalism is
doomed, that
socialism is not unworkable, or that democratic divisions
aside it is still, as
Churchill said, better than all those other forms that have
been tried from time
to time.
Common
Reading: Capitalism,
Socialism, and
Democracy, by Joseph Schumpeter (November 2008,
paperback; 4 stars,
$4-9 paper, $1 ebook)
4. (DAN)
THE HISTORY
OF
DANCE
The History
of Dance will prove to be a
thorough and accurate study of various forms of dance
throughout the ages. The
class will analyze everything from social dance and ballet to
modern dance,
tap, jazz, theatrical and contemporary dance.
Presentations
will include biographies
of notable dancers and choreographers and incorporate the use
of YouTube videos
to expand the enjoyment of their work. Performances by
well-known dancers such
as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene
Kelly, Marge and
Gower Champion, Misty Copeland, and Derek Hough, in addition
to the works of
Martha Graham, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse
and Broadway dance
showstoppers will be the highlights of this class. The
required book includes
discussion questions after each chapter.
The choice of
presentations will be
endless and the appreciation of dance as an art form will be
guaranteed. We may
even do a little dancing ourselves. So
get your dance
shoes handy, because we're going to jive and have a good time!
Common
Reading: Appreciating Dance – A Guide to the World's Liveliest
Art,
by Harriet Libs – (A Dance Horizons Book, fifth edition; June
2018)
5. (DOE) THE DEATH OF
EXPERTISE
People
are
now exposed to more information than ever before, provided
both by technology
and by increasing access to every level of education. These
societal gains,
however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and
misguided
intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates
on any number of
issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick
trip through WebMD
or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an
equal
intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices,
even the most
ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any
claim to the
contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.
This
rejection of experts has occurred
for many reasons, including the openness of the Internet, the
emergence of a
customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the
transformation of the
news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine.
Paradoxically, the
increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather
than producing an
educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed
and angry citizens
who denounce intellectual achievement.
Tom Nichols, the author,
is Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War
College, an
adjunct professor at the Harvard Extension School, and a
former aide in the
U.S. Senate. He is also the author of several works on foreign
policy and
international security affairs.
Nichols
has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise
and learning,
noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows
more than anyone
else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of
falling either to
populism or to technocracy--or in the worst case, a
combination of both. The Death
of Expertise is
not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a
warning about the
stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information
Age.
There are a myriad
of areas for presentations--including COVID-19, climate
change, the
anti-vaccine movement, politics, and journalism--that should
make for
interesting discussions.
Common Reading: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, by Tom Nichols (March 2017)
Supplementary Material:
The
following YouTube video of Tom Nichols talking about his book
(at a bookshop in
Washington, DC) is an outstanding introduction to the subject,
the book and the
author:
·
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRZYTaCPX8s
6.
(FLM) THE CROSS AND THE
CINEMA:
FILMS BANNED
BY THE LEGION
OF DECENCY
From 1933 to
1978, the National Legion
of Decency, which was a Catholic organization, had a rating
system by which
films were given an A, B, or C rating.
Those given a C rating were “condemned” for American
Catholics. Legion-organized boycotts made a C rating harmful to a
film's distribution and
profitability. In some periods the Legion's aim was to
threaten producers with
a C rating, demand revisions, and then award a revised B
rating. At other times
the Legion, preferring to avoid the notoriety and publicity
that films gained
from having a C rating revised to B, refused to remove their
original rating,
which resulted in industry self-censorship that achieved the
Legion's aims with
less public conflict. Still,
many films
that received a C rating are now considered classics (or are
otherwise
well-known). Some
of them are Reefer
Madness, 8 ½, The Outlaw, The Moon is Blue, The Last
Picture Show, A Clockwork
Orange, and
Bob and Carol and
Ted and Alice.
In fact, in
2017, Turner Classic Movies organized a film festival of 27
movies banned by
the Legion of Decency.
The
complete list of condemned movies (including some for which
edits were made)
can be found at
·
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_condemned_by_the_Legion_of_Decency
As
with
most Omnilore movie S/DGs, each class member will be
responsible for selecting
one movie from the list and will present background
information about the
movie, director, cast, etc., as well as prepare discussion
questions for the
class to consider. Other
class members
will watch the movie at home prior to class.
Most films will be readily available via DVD or
streaming service; those
that are not, should not be selected.
No Common
Reading.
7.
(FMU) FINDING MEANING
IN THE EVOLVING UNIVERSE
This
S/DG will consider and discuss humanity’s place in a
universe
when everything is governed by unwavering physical laws,
to which
man is no exception.
Brian Greene,
director of the Center for
Theoretical Physics at Columbia University, is the author of
the book
identified for the common reading. In a
little over 300 pages (plus extensive notes), he takes the
reader on a journey across
time, from our most refined understanding of the universe’s
beginning, to the
closest science can take us to the very end. He explores how
life and mind
emerged from the initial chaos, and how our minds, in coming
to understand
their own impermanence, seek in different ways to give meaning
to experience:
in narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science,
the quest for
truth, and our longing for the eternal.
Presentations
can lean toward the pure
science of physics, entrophy, and
mathematics as
discussed in the book or along the philosophical ideas of how
the cosmos and
the beginning of man are reflected in art, stories, and
religion.
Common Reading: Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe, by Brian Greene (February 2020)
8.
(GIG) THE
NEW
ECONOMY
“Anybody
can have financial security doing what they love when they
want to do it. This
ends unemployment.” Uber has created a new business
theory that has taken
business by storm. People and companies have been endorsing
this new theory but
over the past decade the reality appears to be different. The
book used in this
S/DG follows a few people and companies in this new economy
and reveals the
triumphs and disasters. For some people it has given them
their dream job while
for others it has been filled with broken promises. For
companies some were
successful while others failed and still others went back to
the old business
model. The book concludes that while the Uber concept is good
for some
businesses and people, it’s not good for others. Just like the
Industrial Revolution 200 years
ago, the gig economy requires changes to our culture and laws.
Discussion
can be anything connected
with the new business theory. Possible discussions are:
successful and failed
Unicorns, deceitful practices and promises, work-at-home,
portable benefits,
globalization or labor law changes.
Common Reading: Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work, by Sarah Kessler (June 2018)
9. (HMW) HOW MUSIC WORKS
In this S/DG
we will study and discuss
the form and influence of music as an art form.
A summary of
our text, authored by a
member of the band The Talking Heads:
“A
remarkable and buoyant celebration of
a subject Byrne has spent a lifetime thinking about…He
explores how profoundly
music is shaped by its time and place, and he explains how
the advent of
recording technology in the twentieth century forever
changed our relationship
to playing, performing, and listening to music.
Acting as
historian and anthropologist,
raconteur and social scientist, he searches for patterns—and
shows how those
patterns have affected his own work over the years with
Talking Heads and his
many collaborators. Byrne sees music as part of a larger,
almost Darwinian
pattern of adaptations and responses to its cultural and
physical context. His
range is panoptic, taking us from Wagnerian opera houses to
African villages,
from his earliest high school reel-to-reel recordings to his
latest work in a
home music studio (and all the big studios in between).
Touching on
the joy, the physics, and
even the business of making music, How Music Works is a brainy,
irresistible
adventure and an impassioned argument about music’s
liberating, life-affirming
power.”
Join us as we
take music apart and put
it back together again.
Possible
presentation topics:
·
Classical
music
·
Pop
music and culture
·
Music
publishing
·
The
Talking Heads
·
Music
in the age of downloads
·
Music
theory
·
Life
as a musician
Common Reading: How Music Works, by David Byrne (September 2012)
10. (IAL) ISABEL ALLENDE
Isabel
Allende, a Chilean-American
writer, is noted for several novels in the magic realism
genre, and is
considered one of the first successful woman novelists
from Latin America.
Currently, she is the best-selling author in the Spanish
language. She was
awarded the Chilean National Prize in Literature in 2010 and
the U.S.
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.
Some of the
subjects her novels deal
with could easily be developed into Presentation topics for
Omnilore, for
example:
1.
Politics in
South America -
Allende's uncle was Chilean President Salvador Allende,
the first
socialist president of Chile. Isabel was forced to flee to
Venezuela after the
1973 coup that overthrew Allende's government.
She wrote of this
self-imposed exile in her memoir, My Invented
Country.
2.
Several of
her novels--from her first, The
House of the Spirits, to her most recent, A
Long Petal of the Sea--deal
with the role of women in a patriarchal society,
feminism, and gender
equality in Latin America.
3.
The main
character in Daughter of
Fortune leaves Chile for the California Gold Rush of
1848-1849. The novel
also speaks to issue of Chinese immigrants and their
treatment in the U.S.
4.
In her latest
novel, A Long Petal of
the Sea, (selected for the Omnilore Book-Sellers SIG
for August 2020), the
main characters become refugees from the Spanish Civil
War and emigrate to
Chile on a ship chartered by poet Pablo Neruda. Another
topic worthy of
discussion would be the comparison of the political rhetoric
regarding
immigration and political refugees between 1939 Chile and 2020
United
States.
5.
Allende moved
to the United
States in the 1990s. In My Invented Country, she
shares her
feelings about her adopted country after the September 11
attacks.
6.
A more
light-hearted presentation could
focus on Allende's Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses,
in which the
author recounts her personal knowledge of aphrodisiacs and
treasured family
recipes.
7.
The theme of
passion in her novels,
as well as in her own personal life. Several YouTube
videos address this.
8.
Using the
profits from the sales of her
book, Paula, about her daughter who died from a
hereditary blood
disease, our author funded the Isabel Allende
Foundation which supports
non-profit organizations dealing with issues faced by women
and girls in Chile
and the San Francisco Bay area, where the author resides.
9.
An
explanation of magic realism and
other noted authors, such as Gabriel Garcia Maquez,
Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rusdie,
Franz Kafka, Alice
Hoffman and Toni Morrison, who write in this
literary genre.
You’ll notice
that one particular text
is not offered as the basis for this course. Instead, the
class
participants will decide at the pre-meeting which Allende
novels
we'd like to read and discuss. In addition to her books, there
are numerous
YouTube videos featuring Allende with noted celebrity
interviewers, where she
elaborates on several of the themes outlined above. An
hour-long documentary is
also available online.
Common Reading: TBD
11. (LAG) LIFE
AFTER GOOGLE
Our common
reading is a Financial
Times Book of the Month. From the
Wall Street Journal: “Nothing Mr. Gilder
says or writes is
ever delivered at anything less than the fullest philosophical
decibel... He sounds less like a tech guru than a poet.”
“Google’s
algorithms assume the world’s
future is nothing more than the next moment in a random
process. George Gilder
shows how deep this assumption goes, what motivates people to
make it, and why
it’s wrong: the future depends on human action.” — Peter
Thiel.
Everything
Google offers is based on
free services, but requires users to submit to advertising, in
the process opening
themselves up. But the Internet firewalls supposedly
protecting all those
passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly
permeable. And a
market without prices strangles entrepreneurship. The crisis
cannot be solved
within the current computer and network architecture. The
future lies with the
“cryptocosm”—the new architecture
of the blockchain
and its derivatives.
Possible
presentations include: Who will
be the new FANG: Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google? How will
Blockchain help in
business, politics, daily life? Can a Blockchain used by seven
billion people
and another billion businesses have a database that is
manageable?
Common Reading: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain
Economy, by
George Gilder (July 2018)
12. (NUC) WHAT
ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
History’s
worst nuclear accident was in
Russia in 1986. Chernobyl has become shorthand for what
can happen when a
dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own
citizens, but those far
beyond its own borders.
Admiral Hyman
Rickover was the
flamboyant maverick naval hero who developed the first nuclear
submarine and
aircraft carrier, and the first commercial U.S. nuclear power
plant. But left
unconsidered was the nuclear waste that would pile up, and the
possible theft
and weaponization of nuclear material. Rickover’s nuclear
plants eclipsed the
concept of breeder reactors, which might have solved both
problems and possibly
averted global warming and wars over fossil fuels as well.
While reading
this bleak perspective on
nuclear power, one might consider making presentations that
show modern
alternatives, championed by Bill Gates among others.
Possible
presentations: Hidden costs of
current nuclear plants; modern reactor designs; the terrorism
factor; the
global warming factor; fossil fuel war games; nuclear vs other
alternative
fuels; fusion power.
Common
Reading: Midnight in Chernobyl, by
Adam Higginbotham
(February 2020)
13. (PAR) AMERICANS
IN PARIS
In the 1800s, many prominent Americans traveled to Paris. Let’s find out what they were doing there!
Did you know
that before he invented the
telegraph, Samuel Morse was an exceptional painter? Yes, in
Paris! One of his
famous works included a portrait of American writer James
Fenimore Cooper, who
was also living in…Paris! Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and
America’s first female
physician Elizabeth Blackwell also came to Paris to enhance
their medical
skills, as France’s medical practices during the period were
cutting edge.
Renowned American artists John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassat
were there. Sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose works stand
in the Boston
Commons, Chicago’s Grant Park and NYC’s Central Park studied
as a young man
in…you guessed it, Paris. Something magical was happening
there in the 1800s
that helped spark generations of American genius.
Our text, by
well-loved author and
Pulitzer Prize recipient David McCullough, rests on a
foundation of staggering
research. It follows the many Americans who picked up and
sailed to France to
enrich their lives, advance their learning, and soak up the
knowledge, the
culture, the atmosphere, and the beauty of the world's center
for arts,
science, and medicine. Won’t you come along with us on this
journey?
Presentations:
·
Other
notable people who lived in Paris during the period
·
The
Exposition Universelle of 1889
·
Specific
masterpieces of artists who appear in the text
·
What
cities today may act as similar incubators of ideas
Common Reading: The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, by David McCullough (May 2012)
14. (POE) POEMS EXPLORING
UNCERTAINTY
When
major parts of our lives seem to change in a flash, we are
reminded that poetry
can help us to cope with new realities and assess the unknowns
ahead. When we
are stepping out into uncharted terrain, alone or together,
poetry can capture
our emotions. It can share our vulnerabilities and scars,
along with our
strengths.
Poets are
seekers and questioners. They explore the unknown and help to
give it shape.
The insights and wisdom in the [collection to be studied] are
hard-won; more
often, it is simply the naming of the fear—personal,
spiritual, or
political—that offers solace, reminding us that people are
connected by our
worries and doubts as well as our joys. By resisting closure
and easy answers
and sounding out the darkness, we will discuss and study poems
that remind us
that poetry has always been able to cope with uncertainties,
ambiguities, and
shades of gray.
Here
is a link to a free collection of poetry:
·
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101584/poems-of-anxiety-and-uncertainty
No Common Reading.
15. (RGS)
REEXAMINING
THE GREAT SOCIETY
How can
Government get rid of
poverty? When
some of us think of the
Great Society, we have sentimental reminiscences of the
liberals’ attempts in
the 1960s to banish poverty in the U.S.
Many were raised out of poverty but at some cost both
in resources and
in shackling millions of American families in permanent
government
dependence. This
is one example of the
“mystical belief” in America’s potential and the government’s
attempts to
achieve it. The
author of the text
provides an indictment of the consequences of thoughtless
idealism - with
striking relevance for today.
Still she
credits leaders like Sargent Shriver and Walter Reuther as
basically good
people brimming over with good intentions.
There are clearly other opinions on the value and the
lasting results of
the Great Society and these provide ample presentation topics,
such as the
impacts of leaders like Shriver and Reuther, the success or
failure of specific
Great Society programs, as well as significant studies like
Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s
famous 1965 report on the breakdown of black families.
Common Reading: Great Society: A New History, by Amity Shlaes (November 2019)
16. (SEA) SEA
FED CIVILIZATION
Early humans
foraged for food, animals,
plants and fish. Transition to agriculture and culture
enabled and required settling
for some and roaming herding for others. Fishing has until
recently remained
our only form of hunter-gatherer search for sustenance. We are
rapidly
approaching various crises regarding aquatic sources of our
food. Many areas
are seriously overfished, some types of fishing are seriously
damaging the
marine environment, and warming water temperatures and rising
ocean acidity are
producing dramatic and irreversible changes. The drops in
salmon populations in
eastern Russia are resulting in serious political instability
in that country.
In recent years, aquatic farming has grown and is becoming more
healthy and sustainable.
This S/DG
will explore the state of
water-based food production and the prospects for achieving
healthy,
sustainable nutrition. Research/presentation topics might
include: growth and
safety of fish farming around the world; hydroponics as a
source of vegetable
food; salmon as a keystone species; the mussel farm off the
coast of Orange
County; Altasea, ocean research
and education in San
Pedro; the decline of commercial fishing in Southern
California; caviar from
Northern California; and favorite forms of water sourced
foods.
Common Reading: Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization, by Brian Fagan (September 2017)
17. (SHK) SHAKESPEARE: ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE
…
With
players standing and with a few props and costumes, we will
do reading
walk-throughs and discussions of the 3 plays to be chosen.
In
this S/DG you will learn how to research all perspectives of
Shakespeare’s
works — sources of each play upon which the Bard builds rich
characters and
enhances the plots, how to play each character “in
character,” themes, symbols,
images, motifs, commentary on issues of the day, and all
manner of rhyme and
reason. Class
members each serve on one play’s
Board of Directors, responsible for casting roles for the
repertory and leading
discussions based on the research — optionally
adding videos, music, and costumes. For
a glimpse of how we live the Bard in this S/DG, check out http://omnilore.org/members/Curriculum/SDGs/20c-SHK-Shakespeare
to view the Fall Shakespeare class’s website of links to
references relevant to
our plays and downloadable organizing artifacts.
There
are no prerequisites, theatrical or otherwise.
You will find that the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon will
teach us, just as
he’s taught others for four hundred years.
With plenty for the novice as well as the veteran, it
is a foregone
conclusion members will leave
this class with a fuller understanding of the masterful
story construction,
realistic characters with depth and humanity, and the rich,
evocative language
which have earned William Shakespeare the title of greatest
writer in the
English language.
SHK
will be limited to the first 24 enrollees and will not
split.
Common
Reading: Selected Plays
18. (SKW)
SKUNK WORKS:
A PERSONAL MEMOIR OF
MY YEARS AT
LOCKHEED
This
classic history of America's
high-stakes quest to dominate the skies is “a gripping
technothriller in which
the technology is real” (New York Times Book Review).
From the
development of the U-2 to the
Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is the true
story of America's
most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted
by Ben Rich, the
operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the
chronicle of Lockheed's
legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations
and Gulf War air
combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human
achievement against
fantastic odds.
Here are
up-close portraits of the
maverick band of scientists and engineers who made the Skunk
Works so renowned.
Filled with telling personal anecdotes and high adventure,
with narratives from
the CIA and from Air Force pilots who flew the many
classified, risky missions,
this book is a riveting portrait of the most spectacular
aviation triumphs of
the twentieth century.
Topics could
be all the aerospace
stories every Omnilorean engineer ever wanted to share...or,
they could be
developed from the book’s 16 chapters.
Common Reading:
Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at
Lockheed, by Ben R. Rich (February
1996)
19. (SSM)
SHORT STORY
MASTERS
This short
story class will focus on the
masterpieces of short story fiction from 52 of the greatest
storytellers of all
time. From Sherwood Anderson to Virginia Woolf, we will find
these 63 stories
accessible, engaging and relevant while also learning about
the lives of such
authors as: Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Conrad, Edgar Allen Poe,
John Updike,
James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood, D. H. Lawrence, and William
Faulkner--to
mention just a few. The book's unique integration of their
biographical and
critical backgrounds will bring intimate understanding of
the works of
these authors.
Presentations
will also include personal
essays found in the book that will make this class even more
valuable. Each
presenter will generate questions based on the short stories
for class
discussion that will be proof positive that these authors were
masters of their
craft - short story writing.
Common Reading: The Art of the Short Story - 52 Great Authors, Their Best Short Fiction and Their Insights on Writing, edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Glynn (Pearson Publisher, 1st edition; September 2005)
20. (SUP) LANDMARK SUPREME COURT
DECISIONS
This S/DG
will study some of the most
important Supreme Court decisions throughout American history. Anchored by the
book, Supreme Court
Decisions, the S/DG reads about cases that cover a vast
array of issues,
from the powers of government and freedom of speech to freedom
of religion and
civil liberties. The author offers commentary on each case and
excerpts from
the opinions of the Justices that show the range of debate in
the Supreme Court
and its importance to civil society.
Possible
presentation topics:
explore backgrounds of cases studied, the concept of
judicial review,
biography of selected justices, debate over justice lifetime
appointments.
Common Reading: Supreme Court Decisions, edited by Richard Beeman (Paperback – August 2012)
21. (TPN)
UPHEAVAL: TURNING POINTS
FOR NATIONS
This study
group will consider Jared
Diamond's historical analysis of societies that failed because
the wrong
political and environmental decisions were made over many
centuries. He reveals
how successful nations recover from crises while adopting
selective changes --
a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals
recovering from
personal crises. Diamond
compares how
six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from
the forced opening
of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet
Union's attack on
Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and
Indonesia, to the
transformations of Germany and Austria after World War II.
These nations coped,
to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment
of
responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning
from models of
other nations. The text’s author also postulates a dozen
general lessons that
might realistically be gained from examining history. Presentations could
include specific aspects
of the six upheavals, other instances of upheavals and their
outcomes, and
analysis of the author’s general lessons.
Common Reading: Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, by Jared Diamond (May 2019)
22. (TRU) THE ACCIDENTAL
PRESIDENT
Heroes are often defined as ordinary
characters who get
pushed into extraordinary circumstances, and through courage
and a dash of
luck, cement their place in history. Chosen as FDR’s
fourth-term vice president
for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment, and lack of
enemies, Harry S.
Truman was the prototypical ordinary man--that is, until he
was shockingly
thrust in over his head after FDR’s sudden death. The first
four months of
Truman’s administration saw the founding of the United
Nations, the fall of
Berlin, victory at Okinawa, firebombings
in Tokyo,
the first atomic explosion, the Nazi surrender, the liberation
of concentration
camps, the mass starvation in Europe, the Potsdam Conference,
the controversial
decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of
imperial Japan, and
finally, the end of World War II and the rise of the Cold War. No other president
had ever faced so much in
such a short period of time.
The book supporting this S/DG is The
Accidental President by
A. J. Baime.
It escorts readers into the situation room with Truman
during a
tumultuous, history-making 120 days, when the stakes were high
and the
challenges even higher. Presentations
can
build on the topics covered in the book as well as Truman’s
early life; his
politics prior to the vice presidency; the status now of those
actions that
were taken; and comparisons to other presidents who faced
major issues upon
taking office.
Common Reading: The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World, by A. J. Baime (October 2018)
23. (TYR) ON TYRANNY: TWENTY LESSONS FROM THE
TWENTIETH
CENTURY
At this time,
the world order that has
endured since the end of World War II is facing unprecedented
threats from
nationalistic movements, ranging from the Brexit vote in
England, to the rise
of right-wing Marine LePen in
France, to (some would
argue) authoritarian tendencies within our own Government. The Founding Fathers
tried to protect us from
the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient
democracy. Today, our
political order faces new threats, not unlike the
totalitarianism of the
twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw
democracy yield
to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is
that we might
learn from their experience.
The author of
this slim volume is a
professor at Yale whose area of expertise is in recent Eastern
European
history. He is a
member of the Committee
on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
and a permanent
fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Whether or not you
agree with his assessment
of the current state of world affairs, his lessons provide a
roadmap for
ensuring that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Some of these
lessons, such as “Believe in
truth” or “Be a patriot,” seem obvious.
Others, such as “Make eye contact and small talk” or
“Be kind to our
language,” may be less so.
They all
will provide opportunity for spirited discussion. Presentations may
focus on how historical
tyrannical movements gained power, perhaps by ignoring these
lessons, or they
may address current perceived threats.
Common
Reading: On
Tyranny: Twenty
Lessons from the
Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder (February
2017)