book discussion

Book Discussion: The Forever War

Join us for a discussion of The Forever War by Pulitzer Prize winning author Dexter Filkins. This book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Time magazine. Copies of the book are available at the Cybrary for borrowing.

Book Description:
From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filkins’s narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night’s sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero. We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son.

Like no other book, The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today’s battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America’s wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.

Starred Review from Publisher's Weekly:
Filkins, a New York Times prize–winning reporter, is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book is based on his work in Afghanistan and Iraq since 1998. It begins with a Taliban-staged execution in Kabul. It ends with Filkins musing on the names in a WWI British cemetery in Baghdad. In between, the work is a vivid kaleidoscope of vignettes. Individually, the strength of each story is its immediacy; together they portray a theater of the absurd, in which Filkins, an extraordinarily brave man, moves as both participant and observer. Filkins does not editorialize—a welcome change from the punditry that shapes most writing from these war zones. This book also differs essentially from traditional war correspondence because of its universal empathy, feelings enhanced by Filkins's spare prose. Saudi women in Kabul airport, clad in burqas and stylish shoes, bemoan their husbands' devotion to jihad. An Iraqi casually says to his friend, Let's go kill some Americans. A marine is shot dead escorting Filkins on a photo opportunity. Iraqi soldiers are disconcerted when he appears in running shorts (They looked at [my legs] in horror, as if I were naked). Carl von Clausewitz said war is a chameleon. In vividly illustrating the varied ways people in Afghanistan and Iraq have been affected by ongoing war, Filkins demonstrates that truth in prose.

"Already a classic–it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. Dexter Filkins’s combination of courage and sensitivity is so rare that books like his come along only once every major war. This one is ours." ~ George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq

“Filkins confronts the absurdity of war head-on. . . . This is a page-turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq.” ~ Time

“The best war reportage you are apt to read in a lifetime.”
~ The Washington Times

Date: 

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 2:00pm

Location: 

Carrboro Cybrary, 100 N. Greensboro St.

County-wide book club to discuss homelessness

I usually try to discourage wholesale posting of press releases - as I'm about to do - but this just sounds like a great idea and I don't have anything to add to it.

Orange County’s Partnership to End Homelessness would like to invite the public to participate in a “Community Read” of the book The Soloist by Steve Lopez.  The event is the first in a series of community education activities that will explore the issues of homelessness.

Community Book Forum: The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature

The Carrboro Cybrary and Carrboro Recreation and Parks invite the community to celebrate Black History Month with a discussion of The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature led by the editor, UNC-Chapel Hill Distinguished Professor of English, William L. Andrews.  Copies of the anthology can be borrowed from the Carrboro Cybrary.

"The first African American to publish a book in the South, the author of the first female slave narrative in the United States, the father of black nationalism in America--these and other founders of African American literature have a surprising connection to one another: they all hailed from the state of North Carolina.

This collection of poetry, fiction, autobiography, and essays showcases some of the best work of eight influential African American writers from North Carolina during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his introduction, William L. Andrews explores the reasons why black North Carolinians made such a disproportionate contribution (in quantity and lasting quality) to African American literature as compared to that of other southern states with larger African American populations. The authors in this anthology parlayed both the advantages and disadvantages of their North Carolina beginnings into sophisticated perspectives on the best and the worst of which humanity, in both the South and the North, was capable. They created an African American literary tradition unrivaled by that of any other state in the South.

Writers included here are Charles W. Chesnutt, Anna Julia Cooper, David Bryant Fulton, George Moses Horton, Harriet Jacobs, Lunsford Lane, Moses Roper, and David Walker."  ~ Book Description from UNC Press

"This important anthology shows that North Carolina produced a remarkable, indeed unmatched record of black authorship throughout the nineteenth century. . . . Even if these eight writers were not North Carolinians, a collection of their writings makes for a compelling display of diverse African American literary expression during the first decades after slavery. The fact that these writers were all North Carolinians makes the volume even more impressive, as it points to the fact that they were all shaped by the cultural forces of this particular state during a time of tremendous political and social upheaval."  ~ Lucinda H. MacKethan, North Carolina State University

Date: 

Friday, February 20, 2009 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Location: 

Carrboro Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro St.

Community Book Forum: Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights

The Carrboro Cybrary and Carrboro Recreation and Parks invite the community to read the UNC Summer Reading selection, Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino, and join us for a discussion with a panel of local experts.

Panelists:

Lydia Lavelle, Carrboro Alderman and NCCU Professor of "Sexual Identity and the Law"

Ian Palmquist, Director, Equality NC

Yuri Yamamoto, NCSU Professor

 

“In Covering, Yoshino deftly blends autobiography and legal reasoning to make a case for the profound importance of individualism, autonomy, and self-expression in our conceptualization of civil and political rights. By introducing sociologist Erving Goffman's notion of "covering" — how people are formally or informally coerced into toning down stigmatized identities, even when such identities are known — into the legal lexicon, Yoshino has both broadened and calibrated more finely the way we think and talk about identity politics and civil rights.

Yoshino, who is Japanese-American and gay, draws much on his own identity markers in Covering, but the overall thesis is applicable to any and all people whose identities, for one reason or another, are subject to stigma and who, as a result, are prone to "covering" behaviors. In Yoshino's view, such behaviors — based on differences in race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, etc. — are not only harmful psychologically to those forced to cover, but also morally impoverishing to socially-dominant groups, and threatening to the civil rights of us all. In calling for broad social acceptance of individuality and self-expression, Yoshino challenges us to think more clearly about who we are and about what constitutes true equality, social justice, and human dignity.”

— Peter A. Coclanis
Chair, Carolina Summer Reading Program Committee

Contact:

918-7387, cybrary@co.orange.nc.us

Date: 

Monday, September 22, 2008 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Location: 

Century Hall, Carrboro Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro St.

Book Discussion: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

Join our discussion of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. This geographer recounts why past societies have failed and what we need to do to keep our society going. The Seattle Times writes, “Diamond’s most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don’t just educate and provoke, but entertain.”

Book Description:

Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe—one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.

Date: 

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm

Location: 

Carrboro Cybrary, 100 N. Greensboro St., Carrboro
 

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