Season's greetings from the Aurora Free Library. This month I've asked board member Cameron Taylor, who facilitates our Nonfiction Book Club to share news with you about a new initiative this fall at the Aurora Free Library.
Book club members are a small, but growing, group of enthusiasts who enjoy reading a good book and discussing what we have learned from it as well as the questions it raises.
The first two books we read were both historiographies, Doris Kearns Goodwin's #“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's #“A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785-1812.#”
Goodwin's study of Lincoln and his cabinet contains an excellent discussion of how Lincoln and William Seward became such close friends and colleagues during the Civil War. This relationship was just one example of how Lincoln brought his rivals for the Republican party's presidential nomination into his cabinet after the election and made that seemingly tenuous situation work to his advantage. Goodwin shows how effective Lincoln was at winning people over and getting them to work together, even when they disagreed with his policies. This was, I think, a particularly interesting book, to consider the contrast between Lincoln's leadership style and the very different style of our current president.
Ulrich's biography of a midwife in Maine won the Pulitzer Prize in history and brings to life the many challenges and changes encountered by women in post-Revolutionary America. Martha Ballard attended more than 800 births during her many years as a midwife, raised a large family of her own, and was respected as a knowledgeable healer by her neighbors. Ulrich shows how important midwives were both before and after the professionalization of medicine and the medicalization of childbirth. Also, by keeping a diary for so long (a rare practice for a woman of the time), Martha Ballard opens up a new way of looking at the history of a community, namely of the importance of women in keeping it functioning.
It is easy to overlook how crucial women were to early American life because most records list only men's names, as they were the ones who participated in the cash economy. However, women bartered goods and services in a less formal way, but one that was equally crucial for the welfare of families and the society at large.
The book we read most recently was “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” by Thomas Ricks. It was a departure from our previous books, as it covered the contemporary topic of the background of the current military situation in Iraq. Ricks covers military issues at the Washington Post and his book provides a thorough treatment of why our civilian and military leaders were unprepared for the situation in Iraq after the initial invasion.
The Aurora Free Library's Nonfiction Book Club will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17 at the library, Main Street, Aurora. We will discuss #“The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright, a writer for the New Yorker. We would be pleased to have you join us.
Sandra Groth is a librarian at the Aurora Free Library
The first two books we read were both historiographies, Doris Kearns Goodwin's #“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's #“A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785-1812.#”
Goodwin's study of Lincoln and his cabinet contains an excellent discussion of how Lincoln and William Seward became such close friends and colleagues during the Civil War. This relationship was just one example of how Lincoln brought his rivals for the Republican party's presidential nomination into his cabinet after the election and made that seemingly tenuous situation work to his advantage. Goodwin shows how effective Lincoln was at winning people over and getting them to work together, even when they disagreed with his policies. This was, I think, a particularly interesting book, to consider the contrast between Lincoln's leadership style and the very different style of our current president.
Ulrich's biography of a midwife in Maine won the Pulitzer Prize in history and brings to life the many challenges and changes encountered by women in post-Revolutionary America. Martha Ballard attended more than 800 births during her many years as a midwife, raised a large family of her own, and was respected as a knowledgeable healer by her neighbors. Ulrich shows how important midwives were both before and after the professionalization of medicine and the medicalization of childbirth. Also, by keeping a diary for so long (a rare practice for a woman of the time), Martha Ballard opens up a new way of looking at the history of a community, namely of the importance of women in keeping it functioning.
It is easy to overlook how crucial women were to early American life because most records list only men's names, as they were the ones who participated in the cash economy. However, women bartered goods and services in a less formal way, but one that was equally crucial for the welfare of families and the society at large.
The book we read most recently was “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” by Thomas Ricks. It was a departure from our previous books, as it covered the contemporary topic of the background of the current military situation in Iraq. Ricks covers military issues at the Washington Post and his book provides a thorough treatment of why our civilian and military leaders were unprepared for the situation in Iraq after the initial invasion.
The Aurora Free Library's Nonfiction Book Club will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17 at the library, Main Street, Aurora. We will discuss #“The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright, a writer for the New Yorker. We would be pleased to have you join us.
Sandra Groth is a librarian at the Aurora Free Library
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