This month's book is: Cheap Speech: how disinformation poisons our politics―and how to cure it (2022) by Richard Hasen

“As Rick Hasen says of the moment we’re in, ‘the matter is urgent, and the stakes could not be higher.’ He’s right. Hasen’s book could not be timelier and more salient. If you want to understand the problems we face at the intersection of speech and elections, this is the book to read.”

 Tera is working on the list of books to read in 2024 so if you have recommendations please send them to tlcmoon [at] gmail.com. Books should have a publication date a year or more old to ensure that copies will be widely available. 

 

The group meets every other month. Members can come and go as needed - no prior attendance or experience is necessary. Books are selected by LWVOA member (and librarian!) Tera Moon. Members are responsible for getting their own copy of the book (try your local public library). Read the book prior to the meeting and show up ready to discuss it. 

 

All meetings will take place in Meeting Room 3 at Bloomfield Township Public Library at 7pm on the date listed. A Zoom option is available. 

 

Below is the list of books for the year:  

 

• Inflamed : deep medicine and the anatomy of injustice (2021) by Raj Patel and Rupa Marya      Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Inflamed is a subversive political analysis, broken into sections that locate “the causal origin of disease in the multifunctional spaces around and beyond the individual body – in histories, ecologies, narratives, and dynamics of power.

 

• The Sum of Us: what racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together (2021) by Heather McGhee     Thursday, March 30, 2023

 “If everyone in America read this book, we’d be, not only a more just country, but a more powerful, successful, and loving one. A vital, urgent, stirring, beautifully written book that offers a compassionate roadmap out of our present troubled  moment.”

• Electable : why America hasn't put a woman in the White House... yet (2022) by Ali Vitali 2022     Tuesday, May 30, 2023

       “In this hopeful and well-documented study, Vitali clearly shows the importance of a truly level playing field. ‘It’s the job of the candidates to run,’ she writes, ‘but it’s on  us to ensure the track is uniformly flat for all of them’ ... Intelligent and engaging political analysis.

 

• The Day The World Stops Shopping : how ending consumerism saves the environment and ourselves (2021) by J B Mackinnon     Thursday, July 27, 2023

Journalist MacKinnon delivers an intriguing report on the “consumer dilemma”: in order to prevent ecological disaster, humans must significantly reduce their consumption of the planet’s natural resources, yet doing so would be disastrous for the world economy as it’s currently structured.

• Miles from Motown (2021) by Lisa Sukenic     Thursday, October 5, 2023

Miles From Motown is an engaging and lyrical novel in verse that introduces contemporary middle graders a compelling story handling universal issues of transitions, pursuing their dreams, changing relationships with friends and family, and discovery of oneself during tween and young adolescent years, and opens a window to historical events and social issues in 1967 America.

• Cheap Speech : how disinformation poisons our politics―and how to cure it (2022) by Richard Hasen     Wednesday, November 29, 2023

“As Rick Hasen says of the moment we’re in, ‘the matter is urgent, and the stakes could not be higher.’ He’s right. Hasen’s book could not be timelier and more salient. If you want to understand the problems we face at the intersection of speech and elections, this is the book to read.”