LWV-RMA Book Club
The LWV-RMA book club reads both fiction and non-fiction books relating to advocacy positions our League has adopted. Anyone who has read the book is welcome to participate in the discussion.
Meetings are the third Thursday of every other month from 4:30 to 5:30pm. Meetings are held on zoom until further notice.
For more information, call the League at 585.262.3730 or email to bookclub@LWV-RMA.org.
Books for 2024-2025
| Date | discussion leader | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 9/19/24 | Elaine Schmidt |  Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson |
| 11/21/24 | Judy Wadsworth |  The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America by Christopher Gorham |
| 1/16/25 | Karen Funk |  Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer |
| 3/20/25 | Georgia DeGregorio |  Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison's Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation |
| 5/15/25 | Patricia Partridge |  The Art of Power by Nancy Pelosi |
| 7/17/25 | Carolyn O'Neil |  Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral Collegeand Why It Matters Today by Carolyn Renée Dupont |
Books for 2023-2024
| Date | discussion leader | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 9/21/23 | Elaine Schmidt |  The Second Amendment: a Biography by Michael Waldman |
| 11/16/23 | Mary Hussong-Kallen |  The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, by Tom Nichols |
| 1/18/23 | Karen Funk |  Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South |
| 3/21/23 | Barbara Grosh |  Poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond |
| 5/16/23 | Judy Wadsworth |  American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild |
| 7/18/23 | Deb Gordon |  Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson |
Books for 2022-2023
| Date | discussion leader | Title | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/15/22 | Judy Wadsworth | Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid by Thor Hanson |  |
| 10/20/22 | Karen Funk | Our Time is Now by Stacey Abrams |  |
| 11/17/22 | Alicia Alvorado | Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that explain everything about the world by Tim Marshall |  |
| 12/15/22 | Mary Hussong-Kallen | Fulfillment: Winning & Losing in 1-Click America by Alec MacGillis |  |
| 1/19/23 | Judy Weinstein | The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich |  |
| 2/16/23 | Chris Pryor | How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith |  |
| 3/16/23 | Deb Gordon | Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’ by Kim Todd |  |
| 4/20/23 | Elaine Schmidt | Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal |  |
| 5/18/23 | Georgia DeGregorio | The Avoidable War by Kenneth Rudd |  |
| 6/15/23 | Karen Funk | The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by John Meacham. |  |
Books for 2021-2022
Sept. 23, 2021 | Caste by Isobel Wilkerson |  |
October 28, 2021 | Strike the Hammer by Laura Warren Hill |  |
November 18, 2021 | First Principles by Thomas E. Ricks |  |
December 16, 2021 | However Long the Night by Aimee Molloy |  |
January 20, 2022 | The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee |  |
February 17. 2022 | How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox |  |
March 17, 2022 | The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt |  |
April 21, 2022 | The 1619 Project by Nicole Hannah Jones (Part 1) |  |
May 19, 2022 | The 1619 Project by Nicole Hannah Jones (Part 2) | |
June 16, 2022 | The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale |  |
Archive of past years' reads
Books Read 2020-2021
Thursday, | Stamped: racism, antiracism, and you (2020) by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi |  |
Thursday, | How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt |  |
Thursday, | The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (640 pages) |  |
Thursday, | The untold story of women of color in the League of Women Voters by Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins |  |
Thursday, | Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keishan N. Blain |  |
Thursday, | The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer |  |
Thursday, | Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. |  |
Thursday, | How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi |  |
Thursday, | Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis |  |
Thursday, | Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn |  |
Books Read 2019-2020
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean |  |
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan |  |
Beloved by Toni Morrison |  |
The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss |  |
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein |  |
Educated: a memoir by Tara Westover |  |
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan |  |
Books Read 2018-2019
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools by Diane Ravitch |  |
The Hellfire Club by Jake Tapper |  |
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob Riis |  |
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis |  |
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn |  |
Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright |  |
Sex Wars: A Novel of Gilded Age New York by Marge Piercy |  |
Books Read 2017-2018
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild |  |
The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman |  |
The Generals by Thomas Ricks |  |
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore |  |
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair |  |
The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott |  |
Books Read 2016-2017
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem |  |
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 by Carlotta Gall |  |
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson |  |
Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress by William Lee Miller |  |
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer |  |
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt |  |
Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck by Adam Cohen |  |
Books read 2015-2016
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr |  |
The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing |  |
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore |  |
The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos |  |
Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire |  |
Between the World and Me by Ta Nehisi Coates |  |
Books read 2014-2015
A Mercy by Toni Morrison |  |
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston |  |
Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters by Diane Jacobs |  |
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander and Cornell West |  |
Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Bill McKibben |  |
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali |  |
Books read 2013-2014
Girls like us : fighting for a world where girls are not for sale, an activist finds her calling and heals herself by Rachel Lloyd |  |
Miracle at Philadelphia; the story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September, 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen |  |
The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt |  |
Negro President: Jefferson and the slave power by Gary Wills |  |
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland boys, and the dawn of a new America by Gilbert King |  |
Darwin and the Beagle by Alan Moorehead |  |
The Roberts Court by Marcia Coyle |  |
Books Read Spring 2013
Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig |  |
On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder |  |
The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones |  |