Book Club
Previous Posts
Random Reads
The Money Kings, by Daniel Schulman
The saga of the German-Jewish immigrants — with now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Kuhn and Loeb, Warburg and Schiff, Lehman and Seligman — who influenced the rise of modern finance. These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world. Schulman chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as they navigated the deeply antisemitic upper class of the Gilded Age, and the complexities that tested their empires and identities as Americans, Germans and Jews.
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue, by Julie Satow
Here, journalist Julie Satow draws back the curtain on the 20th-century American department store and the three visionary women who took great risks, forging new paths for the women who followed in their footsteps: Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller, Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, and Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel. This stylish account, rich with personal drama and trade secrets, captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.
Is Jewish Life In The South Different? The Book Circle Wants To Know.
In its examination of Jewish Life in the South, the Book Circle’s selection for June evokes the rhythms and heartbeat of Jewish life in the Bible Belt. In the re-release of his book, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, Eli Evan weaves together personal recollections while taking readers inside the nexus of southern and Jewish histories, from the earliest immigrants to present day. He offers stories of communities, individuals, and events in this landscape that reveals the intertwined strands of what he calls a unique “Southern Jewish consciousness.”
The meeting will be held on Thursday, June 20, at 3 p.m., either on Zoom or in Andrew Levin Park, depending on the availability of the group’s members. The Book Circle meets monthly to discuss books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish writers.
For more information, email Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator, at ctigreenport@gmail.com/.
Book Circle To Discuss “Maus 1,” A Graphic Novel About The Holocaust
The Book Circle has chosen a graphic novel as its selection for the Thursday, May 16 meeting. The bookies will gather at 3 p.m. on Zoom for a look at Art Spiegleman’s Maus 1: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, a “brutally moving work of art,” Amazon says.
This is the bestselling first installment of the graphic novel acclaimed as “the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust,” said The Wall Street Journal, and “the first masterpiece in comic book history,” according to The New Yorker.
Maus recounts the chilling experiences of the author’s father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as mice and Nazis as menacing cats. It is a story of survival, and a look at the legacy of trauma.
The Book Circle meets monthly to discuss books on Jewish topics and/or by Jewish writers.
For more information, email Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator, at ctigreenport@gmail.com/.
Get Social