Global Issues Book Group
The Global Issues Book Group, reads and discusses books on the vital Political, Economic, Environmental and Social issues that challenge humankind in the 21st Century.
August 2018
A Fine Mess
The U.S. tax code is a total write-off. Crammed with loopholes and special interest provisions, it works for no one except tax lawyers, accountants, and corporations. Not for the first time, we have to tear it up and start over. But what should be in this new tax code? Can we make the U.S. tax system simpler, fairer, and more efficient? Yes, yes and yes. Can we cut tax rates and still bring in more revenue? Yes.
In A Fine Mess, T.R. Reid crisscrosses the globe in search of the exact solutions to these urgent problems. With an uncanny knack for making a complex subject not just accessible but gripping, he investigates what makes good taxation (no, that's not an oxymoron) and brings that knowledge home where it is needed most. Doing our taxes will never be America's favorite pastime, but it can and should be so much easier and fairer.
Tuesday, August 14th at 6:30 PM
September 2018
The Color of Law
Heralded as a "masterful" (Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis. The Color of Law is as groundbreaking investigation into how U.S. governments in the Twentieth century deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide. With painstaking research, The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.
Tuesday, September 11th at 6:30 PM
October 2018
The Strange Death of Europe
The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth-rates, mass immigration and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive change as a society. This book is not only an analysis of demographic and political realities, but also an eyewitness account of a continent in self-destruct mode. It includes reporting from across the entire continent, from the places where migrants land to the places they end up, from the people who appear to welcome them in to the places which cannot accept them.
Told from this first-hand perspective, and backed with impressive research and evidence, the book addresses the disappointing failure of multiculturalism, Angela Merkel's U-turn on migration, the lack of repatriation and the Western fixation on guilt. Murray travels to Berlin, Paris, Scandinavia, Lampedusa and Greece to uncover the malaise at the very heart of the European culture, and to hear the stories of those who have arrived in Europe from far away. In each chapter he also takes a step back to look at the bigger issues which lie behind a continent's death-wish, answering the question of why anyone, let alone an entire civilisation, would do this to themselves? He ends with two visions of Europe – one hopeful, one pessimistic – which paint a picture of Europe in crisis and offer a choice as to what, if anything, we can do next.Tuesday, October 9th at 6:30 PM
