[NFBV-Potomac-Announce] 2024-2025 Book Club

[John Halverson]

Hello,

I suggest our first 2024 book club meeting on Wednesday November 6.

We need to have an introductory meeting. I suggest Sunday October 13 4:00 PM if the Zoom line is available.

Last June we discussed Haben and Sandy indicated to me that we may want to finish the discussion at our first meeting this year.

I have two new book suggestions. See below. Send me  your suggestions and I will send them out.

John


The demon of unrest: a saga of hubris, heartbreak, and heroism at the dawn of the Civil War DB120675<https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/download/detail/srch/DB120675>
Larson, Erik Reading time: 17 hours, 22 minutes.
Erik Larson; Will Patton

Government and Politics
U.S. History
Biography of Heads of State and Political Figures

"On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln's election and the Confederacy's shelling of Sumter-a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were "so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them." At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter's commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable-one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink-a dark reminder that we often don't see a cataclysm coming until it's too late"-- Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

Vision: a memoir of blindness and justice. DB122023<https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/download/detail/srch/DB122023>
Tatel, David S. Reading time: 10 hours, 22 minutes.
Read by John Lescault; David S. Tatel.

Biography of Persons with Disabilities
Disability
U.S. History

"A memoir by one of America's most accomplished public servants and legal thinkers-who spent years denying and working around his blindness, before finally embracing it as an essential part of his identity. David Tatel has served nearly 30 years on America's second highest court, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where many of our most crucial cases are resolved-or teed up for the Supreme Court. He has championed equal justice for his entire adult life; decided landmark environmental and voting cases; and embodied the ideal of what a great judge should be. Yet he has been blind for the past 50 of his 80-plus years. Initially, he depended upon aides to read texts to him, and more recently, a suite of hi-tech solutions has allowed him to listen to reams of documents at high speeds. At first, he tried to hide his deteriorating vision, and for years, he denied that it had any impact on his career. Only recently, partly thanks to his first-ever guide dog, Vixen, has he come to fully accept his blindness and the role it's played in his personal and professional lives. His story of fighting for justice over many decades, with and without eyesight, is an inspiration to us all."-- Goodreads. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

Haben: the deafblind woman who conquered Harvard Law DB96188<https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/download/detail/srch/DB96188>
Girma, Haben Reading time: 7 hours, 32 minutes.
Haben Girma A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.

Biography
Disability
Legal Issues

The autobiography of the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School. Girma describes her childhood, world travels, development of a text-to-braille communication system, and time at Harvard Law, as well as the ways she uses her talents to advocate for those with disabilities. Commercial audiobook. 2019.

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