Moving Train Bookclub

Books recommended for upcoming meetings are usually given here. Vote for the one you want to read next.  

This is a progressive bookclub focusing on non-fiction books with a progressive slant introduced by the Newport DFA chapter to encourage public awareness and discussion of contemporary progressive issues. If you want to be informed about the doing of the MTBC, you can subscribe to this work group, and/or you can subscribe to the MTBC email list to receive news and announcements.

 

The club takes its name from Howard Zinn's autobiography which in turn alludes to the aphorism that life is like a moving train; nobody can be neutral.

 

If there are any significant changes in venue or schedule they will be posted here. Heed the Third Chimp here for updates. Accept no substitutes.

Where:

Centro de Ayuda
410 SW 9th St

Newport, OR

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The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

A bookclub selection!

Initially a supporter of the contemporary movement to reform/improve public education, Dr. Ravitch's experiences with actual instances of attempts to implement those strategies turned her into an opponent of them. The singleminded drive to have children pass testing to standards in reading and math while otherwise ignoring curriculum and what, if anything, is actually learned, was in fact undermining education, not advancing it.

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life

 So far the Moving Train Book Club has covered two of Geoghegan's books, "The Law in Shambles," and "The Secret Lives of Citizens."  Both are among my favorites.

Corporate Liberalism: The Origins of Modern American Political Theory, 1890-1920

"Lustig has not only mastered the fundamental tendency of American political theory but has succeeded in placing the ideological and theoretical debates in the context of the development of the U.S

MTBC: Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt


This is the regular meeting of the Moving Train Book Club, for September, 2010.


 From editorial reviews abstracted on Amazon: 

 

"Part journalism, part history, part call to action, John Gibler's book chronicles not only the continuing colonization of Mexico, but also the continuity of resistance to it. Revealing those forces of resistance, which sometimes take the form of mass explosions, and other times take the form of individual expressions of indignation and defiance, Gibler helps us see Mexico with new eyes--a Mexico that has always been constituted by revolutionary dreams of freedom and equality."
When: September 8, 2010 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Where:
Centro de Ayuda
410 SW 9th St

Newport, OR

MTBC: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free


This is the regular meeting of the Moving Train Book Club, for August, 2010.


From Publishers Weekly (Amazon)

Journalist Pierce delivers a rapier-sharp rant on how the America of Franklin and Edison, Fulton and Ford has devolved into America the Uninformed, where citizens hostile to science are exchanging fact for fiction, and faith for reason, and glutting themselves on reality TV and conspiracy theories.

When: August 11, 2010 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Where:
Centro de Ayuda
410 SW 9th St

Newport, OR

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