Fort Collins Book Club

This month we will be discussing "His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope" by Jon Meacham.

John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope.

Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

DETAILS ABOUT OUR MEETING: We are starting at 6:00 PM for a general greetings and a potluck supper. The book discussion will begin at about 6:45 PM. At the conclusion of the discussion, we will elect the next Non-Fiction book to discuss at the January 2025 meetup. The candidate books will be:

1. Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency, and Trust by James Comey
2. Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel by Stephen Budiansky
3. Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv

Hope to see you there!

This month we will be discussing "The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream" by Paulo Coelho.

Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

DETAILS ABOUT OUR MEETING: We are starting at 6:00 PM for a general greetings and a potluck supper. The book discussion will begin at about 6:45 PM. At the conclusion of the discussion, we will elect the next Fiction book to discuss at the February 2025 meetup. The candidate books will be:

1. The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
2. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
3. Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Hope to see you there!