LWVS COMMUNITY BOOK GROUPS
The League seasonally chooses a book that is interesting, timely, and thought-provoking as the subject of a community book discussion. Open to all and typically held at a member’s home, these discussions are casual and collegial, honest and lively. Leave with new knowledge and insight, and maybe a few new friends!
UPCOMING BOOK DISCUSSIONS
Spring Book Selection: Master Slave Husband Wife (2023)
by Ilyon Woo
Friday, April 25, 2025
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
Private Home
Please RSVP using the form below to let us know you will be participating. The address for the meeting location will be sent via email.
Bronx River Books in Scarsdale Village is offering a 10% discount on the purchase of the book when you mention you are participating in the League of Women Voters of Scarsdale Book Club.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine and Oprah Daily, this biography is about Ellen and William Craft, “an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class and disability to hide in public on their journey to the North, where they became famous abolitionists while evading bounty hunters.” — The Pulitzer Prizes
Fall Book Selection: James (2024)
by Percival Everett
Sunday, October 27, 2024
7:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Private Home
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award, James reimages Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, the enslaved runaway in the tale. Dwight Garner’s book review that appeared in The New York Times in March 2024 was entitled “Huck Finn Is a Masterpiece. This Retelling Just Might Be Too,” and stated “This is Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful.”
James raises numerous opportunities for discussion about racial identity, the power of language and the written word, and the simultaneously humorous and harrowing journey that Huck and Jim take down the river. Please note that you do not need to read Huckleberry Finn to enjoy and discuss James.
PAST LWVS BOOK SELECTIONS
- Fall 2024 – James (2024) by Percival Everett
- Spring 2024 – North Woods (2023) by Daniel Mason
- Fall 2023 – Small Things Like These (2021) by Claire Keegan
- Spring 2023 – Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships (2022) by Nina Totenberg
- Spring 2021 – Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson; joining the discussion was Richard Westmoreland, retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel and former F/A-18 pilot, mentioned in the book for his participation in the Confederate monument debate in New Orleans from 2015 to 2017 as a vocal proponent of removal
- Winter 2020 – Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli and Melting Pot or Civil War: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders by Reihan Salam
- Spring 2019 – How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley
- Fall 2018 – One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Democracy by Carol Anderson
- Spring 2018 – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
- Fall 2017 – Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirschman
- Fall 2016 – Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
- Spring 2016 – Dark Money, The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
- Fall 2015 – The Prize: Who’s In Charge of America’s Schools by Dale Russakoff
- Spring 2015 – The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
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