Manzoni's THE BETROTHED (I Promessi Sposi, 1824) is a cornerstone of Italian culture, language and literature and, arguably, the best Italian novel ever written. In this historical novel, set in Northern Italy, 1628-30, Manzoni takes us on a journey, following two star-crossed lovers, through the Spanish occupation of Milan, the ravages of war, class conflicts, social injustice, religious faith, and a plague that devastates the country. As Jhumpa Lahiri has said, "Manzoni's novel - both emotionally gripping and coolly objective, both extremely spirited and deadly serious - will enthrall you and sober you in turns." In Michael Moore's dynamic new translation, we will hear powerful echoes of our own age.

In an industry replete with Jewish executives and creators, a number of important movies reflected on the American Jewish experience.  We will view all of these films and discuss the era in which they were made, what issues were dealt with, and the changes in attitudes they reflect. Some of the films do not even refer to their characters as Jews, yet they are proto-typically Jewish.

Certainly, they reflect a self-consciousness of their creators and of the studios which funded their production. One does not need a Jewish background to analyze and discuss these provocative films.  Just a willingness to view, to research, and to discuss not only the quality of each film, but its intrinsic observations of its time and reflections on our own.our own.                                                                 ( Please Note: There are no  films about European life or the Holocaust.)

In this 14 week SDG, we will embark on a literary adventure! We'll begin in the first week with the classic film (1935) adaptation of Charles Dickens' beloved autobiographical novel, David Copperfield. Immerse yourself in a world populated by unforgettable characters like the scheming Uriah Heep, the eccentric Miss Betsey Trotwood, the perpetually optimistic Mr. Micawber, and the warmhearted Peggotty family, all alongside the young David himself.

Then for the remaining 13 weeks, prepare to be captivated by Barbara Kingsolver's brilliant reimagining. At only 43 pages per week, in her novel Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver takes the heart of Dickens' story and transplants it to modern-day Appalachia, ravaged by the opioid crisis. We meet Demon, a young foster child facing abuse and hardship. Yet, his wit, compassion, and unwavering spirit for survival echo the strength of David Copperfield. Prepare to be as enthralled by Kingsolver's Demon as you were by Dickens' classic, together we will compare and contrast these works

Every four years our nation goes through a political paroxysm of (pick one or all): furious activity, anxiety, fear, or loathing. The Presidential election -- this year may be the worst ever. The nation has gone through a grueling time since the 2020 election. Now, not only must we choose our president & vice-president, 1/3 of all Senators, all members of the House of Representatives, countless governors and state legislators – we are faced with two very different philosophies of governance. 

This SDG proposes to study Election 2024 in each of the three terms in 2024. While we will focus on the Presidential race, we’ll also discuss important local and national trends & issues as they emerge.

This 14-week SDG, at Gayley.

Barbara Klein Coordinator; Ed Markarian Co-coordinator.

Elon Musk is the world's richest man and one of the most powerful.  He led the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, artificial intelligence, and took over Twitter (now X).   He has Aspergers, had an abusive father, and fathered ten children with four women.  For two years, journalist, professor and bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson followed the billionaire entrepreneur through his SpaceX and Tesla factories and board meetings, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. Isaacson concluded, “He’s the most interesting person on the planet right now doing the most interesting things and driving people crazy in the process.”  Find out how he thinks, how he became who he is, and what he is likely to do in the future. 

Although the German state did not exist until 1870 when Bismarck unified the various German states under Prussian leadership, we begin our study of “Germany History” in 1500 as it was then that people began to refer routinely to the Holy Roman Empire as the German Nation. This is also when a common form of the language emerged. Equally important, this was the time when humanists began to write about a place called “Germany” inhabited by people called “Germans.”

Using Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000 by David Blackbourn, we will approach our subject by looking at Germany in a global context. Far from being a landlocked country interested in its own affairs, we will see Germans as involved in the expanding worlds of Europe. We will find German soldiers, ship gunners, merchants, surgeons, and scientists on the ships of European exploration. Germans helped shape the Atlantic world. However, with no German state, there was no German Empire, and we will see how this fact influenced how Germans viewed themselves and their culture. By looking at German history from a global view, we will see familiar events, such as the Reformation, in a new light. Likewise we will study the rise of German nationalism, as a failure in 1848 and finally a success in 1870, as part of a worldwide nation building during a large shift that reset the global order in the last half of the 19th century.

Join us for lively discussions as we look at German history with fresh eyes and a new view.

“I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It’s a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you.” --Haruki Murakami

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s work is often philosophical and haunting, touching on themes of sexual identity and love, loss and detachment, nostalgia and memory. As a young writer, Murakami was greatly influenced by the Western canon of writers that he admired; so much so that his fresh, direct and raw style changed the face of Japanese fiction writing that followed. He counts such diverse writers as Kafka, Dostoevsky, Raymond Chandler and Kurt Vonnegut as major influences. Murakami is that rare literary writer who revels in telling an exciting story without sacrificing his unique, singular vision. His use of magic realism, surrealism, the fantastic and a sly sense of humor are all signs of his fearlessness as a writer. Murakami has won numerous literary awards including the coveted Kafka Prize, and his legions of international fans wait expectantly year after year for the esteemed 74-year old writer to be awarded the Noble Prize in Literature.

In this 10-week SDG, we will be visiting stories from one of Murakami’s earliest collections,  as well as two of his latest compilations. We will also watch two highly acclaimed films based on two of his short stories, Burning (2018) from Korean director, Lee Chang-dong and Drive My Car (2021) from Japanese director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Expect the usual mesmerizing atmosphere and a wry sensibility that might leave you with more questions, perhaps, than answers.

THIS IS A REVISED PROPOSAL, PLEASE RE-RATE IT, thanks Mark Farber

“In 1939, …, the leading moviemakers of Hollywood could … regard themselves as conquering heroes. The assorted film studios, …, had by now become the nation’s eleventh-largest industry. They created some four hundred new films every year, attracted more than fifty million Americans to the theater every week, and grossed nearly $700 million annually. Just a decade later, Hollywood was in shambles, its biggest studios losing money, its celebrities embroiled in charges of Communist influence, its audiences turning to television.” Our core book, CITY OF NETS/A PORTRAIT OF HOLLYWOOD IN THE 1940’S (1986), looks at whether it was always “Golden” in Hollywood’s Golden Era and behind the Silver Screen in an effort to answer the question: What happened to cause this change of fortune? Its author, Otto Friedrich, was not a “Hollywood Insider.” He was the Managing Editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a senior editor at Time Magazine and a well regarded national journalist and cultural historian who took a distanced view of Hollywood. Together we will explore the era, Hollywood’s movers and shakers, Hays Office Code censorship, famed directors, movie stars, labor troubles, publicity scandals, antitrust problems, “black list” problems. And, oh yes, back stories to some beloved movies - such as GONE WITH THE WIND, CITIZEN KANE, THE MALTESE FALCON, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, ALL ABOUT EVE, CASABLANCA, SUNSET BOULEVARD and others.  

The Nation's founders - the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality - owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior.  America was founded with contradicting ideals, with the ideas of liberty, equality, and opportunity on one hand, and slavery and hierarchy on the other.  This is the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and white male domination that were woven into the nation’s fabric from the beginning.  United States victory in the American Civil War should have settled that tension forever, but at the same time that the Civil War was fought, Americans also started moving into the West. In the West, Americans found, and expanded upon, deep racial hierarchies. Those traditions—a rejection of democracy, an embrace of entrenched wealth, the marginalization of women and people of color—have found a home in modern conservative politics.

We will supplement our core book,  How the South Won the Civil War with writings from Jubal Early, a southern war general and key figure in the creation of the Lost Cause myth; with the highly influential Conscience of a Conservative, ghost-written by L. Brent Bozell; with an oft-cited 2016 essay from a prominent conservative intellectual arguing the critical importance of a Trump win over Hillary Clinton; and finally with selected readings from recent Richardson publications.  

Our core book author Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College.  She publishes Letters from an American, a nightly online newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger context of American history, with over one million subscribers.

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.  

The poet W. H. Auden called Kafka "the Dante of the twentieth century". The novelist Vladimir Nabokov placed him among the greatest writers of the 20th century. Gabriel García Márquez noted the reading of Kafka's The Metamorphosis showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way".  Others, such as Thomas Mann, see Kafka's work as allegorical: a quest, metaphysical in nature, for God

In this SDG, we will start with reading Kafka’s Letter to his Father and then  Dostoevsky’s Notes from The Underground in order to start getting to know him and keep Dostoevsky in mind who heavily influenced him - Kafka called him his blood relative.  We will then dive in reading his work starting with Metamorphosis while  comparing and discussing similarities and influences and analyzing and trying to understand his role in existentialism and absurdism of life,

In little more than a decade during the 1920's and 1930's a new generation of African-American writers, artists, musicians and intellectuals burst through the conventions of the time, determined to describe their own lives and their own world frankly and without compromise.  The Harlem Renaissance was born.  The purpose of this SDG is to educate, entertain and open a window into the life and times of African-Americans in the 1920's and 1930's.

Before the end of the 19th Century the exploration and development of the world depended in significant part on the ability of countries and civilizations to develop what they believed were accurate and convincing maps. This SDG will review and discuss approximately sixty of the most important maps prepared by and often purloined from the most important cartographers in the world. Each SDG will discuss the map, its maker(s), the era and the reasons maps were created. Some maps had a significant impact upon the world during that era in terms of global trade, colonization and the settlement of geo-political boundaries. Other maps were created to curry favor of their sponsors, rulers or the Church. For some maps, the Church and State provided an influence, often negative, upon the mapmakers and their craft. Our discussion will review how astronomy, mathematics, science and information supplied by that era’s explorers and navigators impacted map development. Mapmakers became the technology leaders of their era, opening new vistas and opportunities for their sponsors and users. Copies of all maps not in the core books will be provided by the Class Coordinator. 

This is the story of Sen. Frank Church, who exposed the dirty laundry of the CIA and the FBI nearly 50 years ago, and inspired congressional oversight of intelligence agencies. The Last Honest Man also doubles as a guide to high-stakes politics.  In this book, James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, examines Senator Frank Church, the man at the center of numerous investigations into abuses of power within the American government.

We live in a world today where it is understood that The United States has a powerful array of intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and others. And while much of what they do is classified, it's also understood that they're ultimately accountable to Congress and the American people for what they spend and what they do. But this was not always the case in Senator Church’s time and some politicians contend it is not the case now.

After helping conduct the Watergate inquiries, he formed a Senate committee that exposed the nefarious activities of the intelligence community, including the CIA’s alliance with the Mafia in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro.

For 16 months, Church and his committee scrutinized the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and their many abuses. Church also examined presidents’ use of emergency powers to advance their agendas.

As a result of the discoveries of his committee, Church arrived at a difficult question: was the disgraced Richard Nixon really that different from his predecessors in the White House? We can ask: Was Trump really that different from his predecessors in the White House (with regard to intelligence agencies)?

In the author's view assassinations and coups carry a bipartisan legacy. It wasn't just Eisenhower and Nixon, Iran and Chile. It was also Kennedy, Cuba and Vietnam. Then we had Iran, Afghanistan, et al.

Iran and its aftermath still reverberate. But for that debacle, would Trumpism have attained the purchase it still possesses? Would our national divide be as deep - or intractable? We will bring the recent past to bear on the present in our discussions about U.S. intelligence agencies in this SDG

Several hundred million years ago, Earth's continents fit together snugly in the supercontinent Pangea. The jigsaw puzzle-like parts separated and move along Earth’s surface as tectonic plates. On world maps, the bulge of South America fits Africa's concave Gulf of Guinea, because their plates were apposed in Pangea. The Himalayan mountains are the buckling of the crashing Indian and Eurasian plates.  In 200 million years, our continents will again form a single land mass in the ongoing supercontinent cycle.

Geophysicist Mitchell’s engaging core book explains the stories of Pangea; its predecessor supercontinents, Rodinia and Columbia; and the next supercontinent, Amasia. Dr. Mitchell clearly explains paleomagnetism; the structure and dynamics of our planet; seismology; rock cycles and dating; and much more.

This SDG will examine the issue of poverty in America, what it is, what the extent of it is, contributing factors to it and the solutions that have been proposed to cure it. It will make use of two core books including that of  Princeton Professor Matthew Desmond's best seller Poverty by America which argues that poverty in the US is the product not only of larger economic shifts, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans. It also will use Professors Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard and Heather E. Bullock's book,  Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty. The SDG will then look at numerous other sources to learn  how many other factors may have an impact including race, deindustrialization, housing, health care, the decline in unionization, social programs,  and the ascendance of neoliberalism.  Finally the class will  look at  the many proposals for reducing poverty not only from the two core books but from conservative, to liberal to socialist thinkers. 

The Amazing Films of the Cohen Brothers EDITED VERSION.

Yes, we have no popcorn,*** but fun is us in our SDG as we discuss the Coen Brothers’ films of imaginative stories, twists and unpredictable noir U-turns aplenty provided by these highly acclaimed, multi-talented filmmakers. Collaborating on both scripting and direction, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have produced some of the most distinctive films in contemporary American cinema, including Fargo, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and True Grit. Join us as we journey with the Coens across a mythical American landscape that is the realm of tales tall and strange, yet full of truths about the human condition. 

Meet or get reacquainted with some unforgettable characters like Fargo’s Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, The Big Lebowski’s Jeff Bridges as The Dude, as well as John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Julienne Moore and William H. Macy; Raising Arizona’s Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter; Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin featured in True Grit, and Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin illuminating No Country for Old Men.Many more familiar characters and those as yet unknown.

Beginning with the Coens’ initial 1984 neo-noir, Blood Simple, we will glide through Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis andHail, Caesar! Say “YES” to our friendly Wednesday 10am-12pm PT Zoom for stimulating movie discussion, where our core text is the excellent The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together by Adam Nayman, and where your contributions- large or small, frequent or rare- will be welcomed, respected and appreciated. B.Y.O.P.*** 

The Bully Pulpit, the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, is a multiple biography of two former Presidents, their personal sagas and their turbulent times- Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.  It is also a tale of the Progressive Era and its crusades against the trusts, corruption and the rising inequality of income, and for the working people.  It is also a tale of the famous muckrakers, the editors and writers who were indispensable allies of progressive politicians, both Republican and Democrats- Sam McClure, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Baker, William White, Upton Sinclair.  But the book is much more than this.  It is the story how two Presidents used the media they had available to get their message out to the public.  Theodore Roosevelt was an impactful speaker: while Taft was not.  Teddy was full of himself, full of boundless energy. Taft was not.  Yet the two formed a unique alliance in the history of the presidency- until it foundered.  The book also provides us with stunning parallels to our own times, and the opportunities to compare and contrast the use of presidential power, the role of political parties, the influence of the media and investigative journalism.  This study of a turning point in our history (1880-1912) will illuminate our own times as well: the balance of power between governments and corporations, conservation of natural resources, power of money in politics, concern about powerful banking and corporate interests, the interplay between labor, capitol and government, trade policy, inequitable taxation, the growing gap between rich and poor, the power of the press and the significance of personal relationships.

Burgundy is a red wine. Burgundy is a dark red color. Burgundy is a former administrative region in France. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a 2004 comedy film. But who were  the historic Burgundians?

Our core book, The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire, is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury, and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and fatally bad marriages. It's kind of a Game of Thrones but without the dragons because it really happened.

At the end of the 15th century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom during the Hundred Years' War in the Middle Ages. It was Burgundian troops who captured Joan of Arc and turned her over to the English for trial and execution. This region became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. 

Our core book also traces the remarkable cultural history of great art and architecture and music which emerged despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties. 

Rightly compared to great narrative histories written by authors like Barbara Tuchman, this work has been described as a popular and scholarly masterpiece. It has been praised in many reviews such as the following:

"A sumptuous feast of a book" The Times, Books of the Year

"Thrillingly colorful and entertaining" Sunday Times

"A history book that reads like a thriller" Le Soir.

The core book, “The Coming Wave“ by Mustafa Sulleyman was published in September, 2023. It addresses a wave of change that is driven by AI and genetic engineering. Our SDG will explore the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, and to a lesser extent  biogenetics. We will review the history of AI from its early origins, to its current state, and also the potentials for AI in the future. We will address the ethical and social implications of AI and the opportunities and risks associated with it. The author discusses why this wave of technology change will occur more rapidly than past waves, such as electricity and automobiles. He emphasizes that we may have to find a way to “contain“ AI to avoid the worst risks, and he discusses how that might be done. 

Mustafa Sulleyman is a serial entrepreneur and AI pioneer. He is best known for co-founding Deep Mind (now part of Google) and Inflection AI.  “The Coming Wave“ has already received widespread praise and review by among others: Bill Gates;  Yuval Harari;  Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google;  Elon Musk;  Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple;  and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. 

Our SDG will also feature hands-on exploration of many of the new AI applications, including: chatbots, such as Chat GTP, Bing Chat, Google’s Bard, Anthropic‘s Claude 2, and Inflection’s PI;  image generators, such as DALLE from Open AI, and Midjourney;  digital assistants like Siri and Alexa;  facial recognition technology;  and translation apps. Members will choose not only a chapter from the core book to lead a discussion on, but also will choose an AI application to report on and where possible, will have the group try out before discussing at our session. 

The Supreme Court has always had the authority to issue emergency rulings in exceptional circumstances. Since 2017 however, the Court has dramatically expanded its use of the behind-the-scenes “shadow docket,” regularly making decisions that affect millions of Americans without public hearings and without explanation, with cryptic late-night rulings that leave lawyers—and citizens—struggling to understand them.

The Court’s conservative majority has used the shadow docket to approve restrictive voting laws and bans on abortion, and to curtail immigration and COVID vaccine mandates. Stephen Vladek, the author of our core book and a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, makes the case that we, the public, should be concerned about what the increasing use of the shadow docket portends for the rule of law.

Writers Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen had a unique idea for a short story anthology--rather than selecting the stories themselves, they asked contemporary writers to pick one story that "you've got to read." The stories themselves are wonderful, but the passages that introduce each are what sets this anthology apart. Each writer explains why he or she chose a particular story, providing insights you won’t find anywhere else. Fully a third of the authors picked "the story that made me want to become a writer," and their introductory essays are as fascinating as the stories themselves. Many of the stories are classics, while others are lesser known. In this 12-week SDG, we will be encountering a diverse range of voices, time periods, experiences and styles, but all with a common devotion to story.