The core book is Andrew Ross Sorkin's   1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation. The book provides  a riveting narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history—one with ripple effects that still shape our society today. The world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes  another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin. With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin  takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster.  

The SDG will be held on Zoom and consist of 7 sessions, but run over the course of 9 weeks.  See Weekly topics for associated dates.

   These novels, that in some way trace the Eastern European experience from the late 19th century to the post-communist times, are particularly interesting to many of us in Plato with roots in that part of Europe.

 The Magician of Lublin, written by Isaac Bashevis Singer in 1960, is an absorbing story of lust, ambition and redemption, that takes place at the end of 19th century in Poland and gives us insight into the lives of Jews in that period. In 1978, Singer became the first and only Yiddish writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski takes us into the dangerous period in Poland right after WWII. A microcosm of the Polish nation--communists, socialists, fervent nationalists, fading aristocrats, black marketeers, and ex-Nazi collaborators attend a banquet of unity. But there appear two uninvited guests with an irreversible mission. Their arrival changes the trajectory for many of the participants. What will happen?

 The Master and Margarita by Michael Bulgakov is a biting parody of life under the Soviet system. He worked on the book from 1928 until just before his death in 1940. The Devil with his entourage pays the citizens of Moscow a brief but unforgettable visit. Moscow is an officially atheistic city, and Bulgakov shows the hypocrisy and moral absurdities of the new “homo Sovieticus.
Bulgakov was outraged by Soviet anti-religious propaganda, especially the caricatured portrayals of Christ, which he answered by constructing a vivid narrative of Pontius Pilate and Yeshua that runs parallel to the Moscow plot. 
It was first published posthumously in censored form in the mid 1960s. Today he is widely regarded as one of the major Russian prose writers of the twentieth century, with The Master and Margarita considered his masterpiece.

Olga Tokarczuk, born in 1962, wrote Flights, which is a fragmentary novel about travel, bodies, and motion. It won Poland’s Nike Award in 2008. In 2018 she became the first Polish writer to win the Man Booker International Prize for Flights. Also in 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy highlighting her boundary-crossing, encyclopedic narrative imagination.

We are living, it may be said, in a golden age of stupidity. Mindless voters elect boneheaded, lying politicians who work against their interests. Social media influencers corrupt witless followers with conspiracy theories, and promote foolish takedowns of scientific expertise - all on their smart phones, of course!

Journalist and author Stuart Jeffries analyzes how we got here. Are the stupid, like the poor, always with us? Or, is stupidity like Japanese knotweed---difficult to root out, and requiring extermination with extreme prejudice?

What do some of our great minds — Socrates, Buddha, Voltaire, Arendt —  say about stupidity's slippery nature? From ancient Greece to artificial intelligence, we'll meet heroes of stupidity including Flaubert's double act:  Bouvard and Pécuchet. We will cast skeptical eyes on IQ tests, eugenics, gene editing, and racist education policies.

Is each attempt to root out stupidity more stupid than the stupidity it was devised to eradicate?

Please come and help us to respectfully investigate whether our species can learn anything from its rich history of folly.

Plato SDG Proposal -- An Empire of Food

We are what we eat, so says the adage; so it is too with the insatiable economic organism of empire. In a culinary journey across the centuries, historian and food scholar Lizzie Collingsworth reveals the hidden history of how the British Empire shaped our modern diet, to show how an expanding colonial empire harnessed the world's edible resources and, through trade, transformed what we consume and how we think about food. It is an epic of appetites served by imperial ambition, enlivened for readers by examples of recipes drawn from popular dishes served over the past 450 years. Collingsworth sets the scene for each chapter with a meal comprising diverse characters, foods, and cooking methods, highlighting the transformative social economics of food. She transports the reader from Newfoundland to Ireland, to the West Indies and West Africa, to New Zealand and British Columbia, and onward, from cod fish and salt beef to spices, tea and sugar. The glamorous daughter of an African chief shares a pineapple with a slave trader; rum-drinking Americans raise a toast to liberty in a Boston tavern; diamond prospectors in Guyana prepare an iguana curry; the royal chef makes the King's Christmas pudding with ingredients from a dozen nations. Taken together, her scholarly  mosaic of menus guides us through a larger story about global conflict and culture, economics and politics. It's food for thought and nourishing discussions.

The core book  John Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Critics: A History From The Industrial Revolution To AI  provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism.  Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker  tells the story through the eyes of the critics from the English Luddites who rebelled against early factory automation to communists  in the early twentieth century,  the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement.  It visits  familiar names―Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polanyi, Stiglitz,  and Piketty-but also  less familiar figures, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labor union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism;  Eric Williams, the Trinidadian author of a famous thesis on slavery and capitalism; Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist and critic of the Cold War; and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the founding father of degrowth. Blending rich biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.

Kazuo Ishiguro, a British novelist and recipient of both the Booker Prize (1989) and Nobel Prize in Literature (2017), is renowned for exploring the fragile boundaries between memory and imagination.

This ten week SDG examines how Ishiguro’s understated prose reveals profound moral reflection and quiet emotional depth.

We will read three of his novels—A Pale View of Hills (his debut, exploring the unreliability of memory, trauma, and self deception); The Buried Giant (a post Arthurian meditation on forgetting and forgiveness); and The Remains of the Day  (a poignant study of duty, purpose, and self worth).

In addition, we will view the film Living, for which Ishiguro was the Oscar nominated screenwriter, and sample his short story collection Nocturnes.

Join us in discussing Ishiguro’s haunting vision of what it means to remember, to serve, and, ultimately, to live.

For thousands of years, strong men sought to become the Emperors of their realms. Many succeeded, and made history  This is true today, by those calling themselves President or Chairman.  We will explore fourteen Emperor-led states from all over the world, focusing on the role of the Emperors themselves and  their effect  on the empires over which  they ruled.  Our journey begins in the earliest Middle  East, and takes us to China and India as well as to Europe and the New World.  Some dynasties lasted for a very long time under succeeding emperors; some fell precipitously. The last dynasties fell only after World War 1. Therefore, we are the historical heirs of millennia of emperors.  Meanwhile,  many autocrats have aspired to similar status, and we shall consider them. Certain autocrats of our time aspire to act as emperors.  We will make some comparisons and contrasts.,

     George Bernard Shaw is arguably the greatest English language playwright in the past 150 years. His plays deal with the issues of modern society in ways that are witty, clever and thought-provoking. His characters are memorable. He achieves one of the most difficult and satisfying results of playwriting: making social and political points with humor and without preaching.

     Shaw’s plays deal with many issues, including capitalism and socialism, marriage, women’s issues, religious belief and hypocrisy, the folly of war, the English view of the Irish, human foibles and arrogance and the battle of the sexes. The dialogue sparkles with wit, making the plays a pleasure to read and to view. The prefaces to some of the plays spell out more of his philosophy and will be part of the weekly readings.

     We will read the plays indicated in the list of weekly topics, as well as readings on Shaw’s life and some of his non-dramatic writings.

Study of Irish history, literature and culture in advance of trip to Ireland in October

Women are now outperforming men in education and later in areas of the labor market. In his book, Of Boys And Men by Richard V. Reeves asks; why the modern male is struggling, why does it matter and what can we do about it

Reeves does not begrudge Women advancing. But he tells us that we are all living in one world and the problem cannot be viewed as a 0-sum game. Reeve’s book is an early call on a problem, which if unattended to will fester and rapidly grow as a social problem. It will have a negative effect on our political system.

Our last election was about many things, but mostly about dissatisfied blue collar working men and blacks lacking the means to prosper in the rapidly changing world. 

Reeves well documented book was named as Best Book of 2020 by The Economist “and “New Yorker” magazines. It was featured in 2024 in Fareed Zakaria on GPS.

The author offers many interesting solutions to the problem.

History has been taught as a linear development, stressing names, dates, and eras. However, actual human experience reflects a more nuanced development. Feminist theorist, Shulamith Firestone describes it as “the world as process, a natural flux of action, and reaction of opposites, yet inseparable, and impenetrable…history as a movie rather than a snapshot.”

Michael Bronski, Professor of Practice in Media and Activism in Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard, takes this approach in his insightful book, A Queer History of the United States. The book spans 500 years of our nation’s queer history. The Kirkus Review calls it “a lucid, cerebral treatise on gay culture from the point of view of a clever historian who maintains that ‘the heritage of LGBTQ + people is the heritage of Americans.’” Since Professor Bronski’s book ends by 1990, the SDG will continue to update queer history with films, articles, and more recent historic and political developments. 

This SDG will be intellectually rigorous, entertaining and fun and provide a cautionary reminder of the consequences of silencing history. 

The best book on the Red Scare, highly recommended and well-reviewed in 2025, is "Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America" by Clay Risen. This narrative non-fiction book provides a detailed, vivid, and thoroughly researched account of the anti-Communist witch hunts in the U.S. after World War II during the Red Scare. It covers the origins of McCarthyism, the political hysteria it created, and its lasting impact on American culture and democracy, drawing on newly declassified sources and offering both historical depth and relevance to today's political climate. It has received praise from major publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times, highlighting its compelling storytelling and insightful analysis 

The best book on the Red Scare, highly recommended and well-reviewed in 2025, is "Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America" by Clay Risen. This narrative non-fiction book provides a detailed, vivid, and thoroughly researched account of the anti-Communist witch hunts in the U.S. after World War II during the Red Scare. It covers the origins of McCarthyism, the political hysteria it created, and its lasting impact on American culture and democracy, drawing on newly declassified sources and offering both historical depth and relevance to today's political climate. It has received praise from major publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times, highlighting its compelling storytelling and insightful analysis 

In August 1945, a handful of people raised a homemade cotton flag and, on behalf of 68 million compatriots, announced the birth of a new nation. With the fourth largest population in the world, inhabiting islands that span an eighth of the globe, Indonesia became the first country to rid itself of colonial rule after World War II. This will be our fascinating SDG topic, known by our core book’s title “Revolusi”.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and eyewitness testimonies, renowned scholar and celebrated author David Van Reybrouck captures a period of extraordinary tumult and chaos to tell the story of Indonesia’s momentous revolution. Encompassing several hundred years of history, he details the formation of the Dutch East Indies, the Japanese invasion that followed, and the young rebels who engaged in armed resistance once the occupation ended. British and Dutch troops were sent to restore order and keep peace but instead ignited the first modern war of decolonization. America, too, became embroiled with the Indonesians’ fierce struggle for freedom. That struggle inspired independence movements in Asia, Africa, and the Arab world.

Our SDG will explore this vivid history of a nation that most will probably know little about. The reading is fast moving and captivating. And we expect the discussion to be equally lively when we explore this most interesting Indonesian history.

Henrik Ibsen once said “A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.”  Murder is the deed that will leave the darkest, deepest impression. And it leaves a darker, deeper impression in Scandinavia than it does here.

First, it's rare. The murder rate in Norway is one eighth the rate in the USA. No wise cracking cops eating doughnuts while they go over the mayhem of another crime scene there.  They haven't gotten used to it.  Every murder is still shocking.

 Second, the community is closer. They live in towns where everybody knows everybody. They know the victim.  It’s not a case of whodunnit, it’s more ”how could this happen here? How could this happen to us?”

And of course, in the land of stoic depression, there’s lots of psychology. A place where summers are brief and winters are dark and non-ending, is going to have lots of introspection about everything. American crime readers often complain Nordic novels are too slow, too cerebral - too “Seventh Seal” and not enough “Seven.” I say it’s an acquired taste, like Lutefisk. C’mon, try it. Take a bite. It's not like it's going to kill you.

The SDG will meet seven times (every other week) over fourteen weeks.

Russian, and then Soviet, cinema is distinguished by its epic scale, philosophical depth, and innovative visual language. It often explores history, ideology, and the human psyche, with a tradition of psychological realism and artistic experimentation. It has contributed revolutionary theories of editing and, later, a spiritual approach to film language. It remains known for combining formal experimentation with profound explorations of endurance and belief.

The films we will study also offer insight into Soviet life both explicitly (through depiction of daily life in interiors and landscapes) and implicitly (through what is and isn’t shown and how the effects of state censorship can or cannot be felt). One potential throughline will be to address the question of what picture we get of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the late 1980s in these films? Do the films demonstrate the role played by the “State Committee for Cinematography” (in its various iterations), which had jurisdiction over production?

This SDG will be a serious film study course that explores ground-breaking films by Vertov and Eisenstein in the 1920’s up to the brilliance of Tarkovsky and creativity of many others through the 1960 - 80’s. Many will be Russian, but we may expand broader in the USSR. Our discussion will include storyline, cultural significance, and cinematic elements, and we will share selected excerpts of the films for discussion in class.

Russian, and then Soviet, cinema is distinguished by its epic scale, philosophical depth, and innovative visual language. It often explores history, ideology, and the human psyche, with a tradition of psychological realism and artistic experimentation. It has contributed revolutionary theories of editing and, later, a spiritual approach to film language. It remains known for combining formal experimentation with profound explorations of endurance and belief.

The films we will study also offer insight into Soviet life both explicitly (through depiction of daily life in interiors and landscapes) and implicitly (through what is and isn’t shown and how the effects of state censorship can or cannot be felt). One potential throughline will be to address the question of what picture we get of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the late 1980s in these films? Do the films demonstrate the role played by the “State Committee for Cinematography” (in its various iterations), which had jurisdiction over production?

This SDG will be a serious film study course that explores ground-breaking films by Vertov and Eisenstein in the 1920’s up to the brilliance of Tarkovsky and creativity of many others through the 1960 - 80’s. Many will be Russian, but we may expand broader in the USSR. Our discussion will include storyline, cultural significance, and cinematic elements, and we will share selected excerpts of the films for discussion in class.

If you want to dive into the "why" behind the "what," this is your next SDG. The Big Questions is essentially a series of high-level provocations designed to dismantle "common sense" and spark spirited debate.  It provides the intellectual scaffolding needed to discuss life’s most profound uncertainties—God, freedom, and morality—without getting bogged down in impenetrable jargon. It’s less of a textbook and more of a map for self-discovery, perfect for Plato members who value deep, transformative conversation over casual reading. Expect to walk away not just knowing more about Philosophy but knowing more about yourselves. 

Our core text, Solomon and Higgins’ The Big Questions : A Short Introduction to Philosophy (9th Edition), eschews the traditional, dry "history of ideas" approach in favor of a thematic, inquiry-based immersion into the discipline. Instead of merely cataloging the tenets of historical figures, the authors challenge readers to engage directly with the foundational puzzles of human existence: the nature of reality (metaphysics), the limits of knowledge (epistemology), and the criteria for a meaningful life (ethics).

The text is celebrated for its conversational yet rigorous tone, treating philosophy as an active "doing" rather than a passive "knowing." By framing complex theories within the context of personal "worldviews," it bridges the gap between academic abstraction and the lived experience. See the weekly topics listing for all the essential questions with which we will challenge ourselves.

If you want to dive into the "why" behind the "what," this is your next SDG. The Big Questions is essentially a series of high-level provocations designed to dismantle "common sense" and spark spirited debate. It provides the intellectual scaffolding needed to discuss life’s most profound uncertainties—God, freedom, and morality—without getting bogged down in impenetrable jargon. It’s less of a textbook and more of a map for self-discovery, perfect for Plato members who value deep, transformative conversation over casual reading. Expect to walk away not just knowing more about Philosophy but knowing more about yourselves. 

Our core text, Solomon and Higgins’ The Big Questions : A Short Introduction to Philosophy (9th Edition), eschews the traditional, dry "history of ideas" approach in favor of a thematic, inquiry-based immersion into the discipline. Instead of merely cataloging the tenets of historical figures, the authors challenge readers to engage directly with the foundational puzzles of human existence: the nature of reality (metaphysics), the limits of knowledge (epistemology), and the criteria for a meaningful life (ethics).

The text is celebrated for its conversational yet rigorous tone, treating philosophy as an active "doing" rather than a passive "knowing." By framing complex theories within the context of personal "worldviews," it bridges the gap between academic abstraction and the lived experience. See the weekly topics listing for all the essential questions with which we will challenge ourselves.

In the summer of 1846, capitalizing on the political unrest in Mexico, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe to invade Mexico's Western territories.  This movement ignited “Manifest Destiny's “ clash with the Navajo stewards of the vast desert wilderness that now is New Mexico, California, Colorado, Arizona and parts of Utah.  Our gripping core book, “Blood and Thunder”,by Hampton Sides,  centers on Kit Carson—trapper, scout, and soldier whose respect for Native cultures contrasted with his role in brutal campaigns. We will explore his life, the decades-long U.S.-Navajo battles, and how 19th-century conquests echo in today's views of frontier history and Indigenous rights.

Historians have abandoned the idea that the European Middle Ages were a dark period, sandwiched between the glory of Rome and the light of the Renaissance. Using Chris Wickham’s Medieval Europe as our guide, this SDG will discover an exciting period, not just as a precursor to the modern age but in its own right. We will not limit ourselves to western and central Europe; we will include eastern Europe, Byzantium (the eastern Roman Empire), western Asia, and northern Africa, for they too are part of the story.

The medieval period (or the Middle Ages) is generally considered to be approximately from 500 to 1500, beginning with the fall of the western Roman Empire. Our goal is not to have a detailed study of the history of the period, but instead to focus on key moments of change across time and place, while exploring the structural developments that tie these moments together. We will progress chronologically and thematically; what this means is that we will focus on moments of change such as the crisis faced by the eastern Roman Empire when it first confronted Islam in the 7th century, or the rise of the Carolingian empire in the 9th century, or the radical decentralization of political power in the west in the 11th century, while not overlooking structural developments such as the financing of wars or the impact of using writing in political culture.

Join us to discover why “the Dark Ages” does not describe the European Middle Ages.

If accepted, this SDG will be jointly coordinated by Fred McLane and Alice Lewis.

Daphne Du Maurier, storyteller extraordinaire, has long been beloved for her spellbinding twisty plots and alluring female characters. Du Maurier's fiction transformed everyday dramas--love, jealousy, loss--into the stuff of gothic nightmares. Not only are Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel page-turners, but their complex plots and ambiguous characters are crafted in indelible, elegant prose. (Rebecca  was an tt bestseller that has never gone out of print for 88 years!) Directors Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Roeg were inspired to make two of her stories into films. The Birds and Don't Look Now are cinematic masterpieces of suspense and terror. 

This SDG explores Du Maurier's most well-known novels and short fiction paired with their iconic films. Over 11 weeks, we will read two novels, two short stories, and watch four films. 

  Although American women playwrights have traditionally found it difficult to get their work produced in major venues, their plays have nonetheless been extremely influential, both on other playwrights and on our culture generally. In this SDG, we will read twelve of  their most powerful plays, in chronological order, beginning with Lorraine Hansberry and ending with Suzan-Lori Parks, Martyna Majok and Quiara Alegria Hudes. These plays deal with the full range of female experience, from domestic violence, addiction, sexism, racism, homophobia, pedophilia, and genital mutilation to motherhood, sisterhood (and brotherhood), female friendships and  the construction of female agency.

UNCOMFORTABLE WITH UNCERTAINTY IN MOVIES? BETTER CHOOSE A DIFFERENT SDG. INTRIGUED BY FILM AS ART, LOOSE ENDS AND AMBIGUITY IN MOVIES? YOU'RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE. Despite many wonderful films with neatly resolved endings, cinema has also long been celebrated for its ability to transport us, to challenge us, and to leave us pondering what we have just seen and experienced-  long after the final film credits roll. Nowhere is this more powerful than in films with ambiguous endings- works that deliberately resist neat and tidy resolution- and instead, invite audiences to wrestle with uncertainty, mystery, and multiple interpretations, all while scratching their heads. So much for us to discuss 14 weeks on Zoom!

This SDG will explore the artistry of open-ended cinema, examining how directors use ambiguity to deepen storytelling, mirror the complexity and sometimes the discomfort of real life, and spark ongoing debate. Through member-led guided discussions of notable films- easily accessible to view at home, and selected film clips to be shown during our sessions, participants will discover the joys of not having all the answers, and learn to see ambiguity as an intentional creative strength of the film makers, rather than a flaw. Only like movies with happy endings? Not willing to discuss the films below? Better choose a different SDG.

In this 7 week SDG, we will consider a revolutionary idea: that the plants all around us are not passive backdrop, but responsive beings capable of sensing, communicating, remembering, and even cooperating—adapting to their world in ways that unsettle our assumptions about mind, agency, and what it means to be alive. We will use The Light Eaters; How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth as our core book introducing us to the remarkable results of recent botanical research and to the heated debates among botanists, skeptics, and philosophers about whether the new findings suggest plant “intelligence”. The author of the core book, Zoe Schlanger, is an award-winning science writer for The Atlantic. Reviews give her high marks for making this material accessible while remaining true to the science.

Do you find yourself asking: Does my life have a purpose? Or, put another way, how can I justify my existence?  Join this SDG based on Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new book, The Mattering Instinct, to help understand these questions and to see the need to answer them not as a personal quirk or a philosophical indulgence, but as a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.

People’s capacity to “step back and survey themselves,” as the philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote, reveals a stark dissonance between our biological drive to survive and the fact that every life ends in death anyway. This realization gives rise to what Goldstein calls “the mother of all mattering questions—Do I matter?”

At the end of this SDG your adult conversation may just include why you agree or disagree with the statement: The Mattering Instinct is a testament to the idea that humans find purpose when, as the poet Rumi wrote, we “let the beauty we love be what we do.”