History Book Club

Meetings are held on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at 11.00 am. Everyone is welcome! Please contact Bratton deLoach at bdeloach@bcgov.net or 843.255.6524 with questions.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick.
From the author of the Mayflower- a new history of the famous battle fought in 1876

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein .
Here is a timeline of the financial crisis and its origins

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux.
The author retraces the route he took 35 years earlier, travelling by train from London to Tokyo

Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - Snack and Share - join the party and tell about a favorite book What biography or history is on your nightstand? What have you read recently that interested you? Come and share your thoughts and exchange ideas on other good reads.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 - Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrant.
The roots of Prohibition and its era (1919-1933).

Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
Ethics, race, and science collide.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - War by Sebastian Junger.
“Over the course of a year, Junger embedded himself with Second Platoon, Battle Company, operating out of the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan, an inhospitable terrain inhabited by people inhospitable to American forces, where some of the heaviest combat has been fought. Junger took five trips to the valley in 2007 and 2008 to follow Second Platoon through much of their 15-month deployment. He experiences combat firsthand; witnesses firefights, ambushes, and casualties; and survives an IED that blew up the Humvee he was riding in. Second Platoon, considered “the best-trained and . . . worst-disciplined,” is known for their brawling as much as for their bravery. Junger examines the mind-set of the soldiers who exist on “the tip of the spear,” the nearly superhuman traits they embody, the challenges they face when they engage with the enemy and interact with locals, the boredom between battles, and the difficulties they have when they return to civilian life….” (Source: Booklist, accessed at amazon.com, Editorial reviews)

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
“…A year after Roosevelt lost a third-party bid for the White House in 1912, he decided to chase away his blues by accepting an invitation for a South American trip that quickly evolved into an ill-prepared journey down an unexplored tributary of the Amazon known as the River of Doubt. The small group, including T.R.’s son Kermit, was hampered by the failure to pack enough supplies and the absence of canoes sturdy enough for the river's rapids. An injury Roosevelt sustained became infected with flesh-eating bacteria and left the ex-president so weak that, at his lowest moment, he told Kermit to leave him to die in the rainforest….” (Source: Publishers Weekly, accessed at amazon.com, Editorial Reviews)  

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
“…After an astonishing but losing race at the 1936 Olympics, Louie [Zamperini] was hoping for gold in the 1940 games. But war ended those dreams forever. In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific … [and was] captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist who never killed his victims outright--his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment….When Naoetsu was liberated in mid- August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. Even as, returning stateside, he impulsively married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life, Louie remained…haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. In one of several sections where Hillenbrand steps back for a larger view, she writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers… It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed (one man was exhibited naked in a Tokyo zoo for the Japanese to "gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body") against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs, who made attempts on Watanabe's life, committed sabotage, and risked their own lives to save others.” (Source: Publishers Weekly, accessed at amazon.com, Editorial Reviews)