Books and movies may be found online, in libraries, or your favorite book store.

The book discussion group usually meets the first Sunday of every month.  The movie discussion dates vary.

For updates about our book or movie discussion groups, please join our Meet-Up page: https://www.meetup.com/humanistbookgroup/

We look forward to your participation!

Lots of great movies on our watch and discuss list.

MOVIES:

Some Like It Hot: January 7, 2025,  Bicycle Thieves, Resurrection, Contact, Lenny, Chicago, All that Jazz, Marathon Man, The Graduate, Sunset Boulevard, 12 Angry Men, The Godfather, The Sea Wolf, Lincoln, A Simple Plan, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Nosferatu, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Mighty Aphrodity, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Little Big Man, Wings of Desire, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Wife, The Lives of Others, The Killing, Detour (1945), Lucky Grandma, The Great Beauty, Loving Vincent, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Happiness, Up, Frida, Beanpole, Amadeus, In Search of Beethoven, Notorious, 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Certified Copy, City Lights, Casablanca AND Play It Again Sam, Waking Life, Inception, F for Fake, Aliens, Sleeper, Gattaca, Arrival, Man From Earth, The Big Lebowski, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, Midnight in Paris, Duck Soup, The Big Chill, Nomadland, Ruling Class, Water, Cabaret, Eagle Eye, On the Road to Berlin, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Unforgiven, Dirty Dancing, Death of Stalin, Whiplash, Do the Right Thing, The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, The Human Resources Manager, Babette’s Feast, Gods and Monsters, Thank you for smoking, Moonlight, In the Heat of the Night, Fences, Paul, 8 1/2, Tokyo Story, Into the Wild, The Pawnbroker, Yesterday, Runaway Jury, Seven Samurai, Magnificent Seven, Artifice Girl, Francis Ha, Amélie, The Conversation, Intouchables, Shaun of the Dead, Network, Galaxy Quest

Lots of great books on our read and discuss list:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner: January 5, 2025 ● Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism by Glory M. Liu, Dec 7, 2024 ● The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre, Nov 4, 2024 ● The Wager by David Grann, October 6, 2024 ● Annabel Abbs-Streets’s Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women, Aug 4, 2024 ● The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osma, July 7, 2024 ● June 2, 2024: The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber ● May 5, 2024: A Documentary about Christian Nationalists ● April 7, 2024: The Twilight of Democracy ● March 10, 2024: Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear Ÿ February 3, 2024: The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal by William J. Burns ● January 7, 2024: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee ● December 3, 2023: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter ● November 5, 2023: One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in America by Nick Seabrook ● October 1, 2023: Starry Messenger by Neil DeGrasse Tyson ● September 3, 2023: Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World by David Robert Grimes ● August 6, 2023: Seen by Julie Delegal ● July 2, 2023: Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil ● June 4, 2023: 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith ● May 7, 2023: The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age by Danielle Keats Citron ● April 2, 2023: Upheaval by Jared Diamond ● March 5, 2023: Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy by Derek W. Black ● February 5, 2023: A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell ● January 1, 2023: The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger ● December 4, 2022: No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right by Becca Andrews ● November 6, 2022: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah ● October 2, 2022: What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill ● September 4, 2022: Songbirds by Christy Lefteri AND The Rumor: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand ● August 28, 2022: Plato’s Republic-books 2-10 ● August 7, 2022: Plato’s Republic-book one ● July 10, 2022: God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson ● June 5, 2022: The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel ● May 1, 2022: Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church ● April 3, 2022: Cultish by Amanda Montell ● March 6, 2022: The Three-Body Problem By Cixin Liu ● February 6, 2022: Accessory to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson (Zoom) ● January 2, 2022: Jason Mott’s Hell of a Boo ● December 3, 2021: Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov ● November 7, 2021: Policing the Womb by Michele Goodwin (Zoom) ● October 3, 2021: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. ● September 5, 2021: A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire ● August 1, 2021: The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon ● July 4th, 2021: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir ● June 6, 2021: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart ● May 2, 2021: Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island by Will Harland ● April 4, 2021: Break It Up: Secession, Division and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union by Richard Kreitner ● March 7, 2021: The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov ● February 7, 2021: Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne ● January 3, 2021: Grinnell by John Taliaferro ● December 6, 2020: Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari ● November 1, 2020: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich ● October 4, 2020: These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore ● September 6, 2020: Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang ● August 2, 2020: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi ● July 5, 2020: Nonsense on Stilts by Massimo Pigliucci ● June 7, 2020: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt ● May 3, 2020: Factfulness by Hans Rosling ● April 5, 2020: The Pianist from Syria — A Memoir by Aeham Ahmad ● March 1, 2020: The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American by Andrew L. Seidel ● February 2, 2020: The Impeachers–The trial of Andrew Johnson by Brenda Wineapple, ● January 5, 2020: Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner ● December 1, 2019: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead ● November 10, 2019: The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson ● October 6, 2019: Where Is Joe Merchant? by Jimmy Buffett ● September 1: Bottle of Lies by Katherine Eban ● August 4, 2019: Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum ● July 7, 2019: Mind Fixers By Anne Harrington ● June 2, 2019: Going Ape by Brandon Haught ● May 5, 2019: The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris ● April 7, 2019: Killers of the Flower Moon The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann ● March 3, 2019: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop ● February 3, 2019: The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen ● January 6, 2019: Red Notice by Bill Browders ● December 2, 2018 – Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain ● November 4, 2018 – The True Believer: Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements (2002 edition), by Eric Hoffer ● October 7, 2018 – Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, by Ari Berman ● Sember 1, 2018 – Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker (Note: This is a Saturday ) ● July 1, 2018 – The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, by Nicholas Capaldi ● June 3, 2018 – It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis ● May 6, 2018 – This is How It Begins, by Joan Dempsey ● April 1, 2018 -Aping Mankind, by Raymond Tallis; and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow ● March 4, 2018 – The Edge of Nowhere, by Elizabeth George ● February 4, 2018 – Origin: A Novel, by Dan Brown ● January 7, 2018 – The Emotional Lives of Animals, by Mark Bekoff ● December 3, 2017 – Atheist Stranger in a Strange Religious Land, by Herb Silverman ● November 5, 2017 – Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences, by Rene Descartes ● October 1, 2017 – The Book that Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation, by Randall Fuller ● September 3, 2017 – The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin’ Dixie Outta the Dark, by Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester, and Drew Morgan ● August – Note, the Aug group has been rescheduled to July 30, 2017 – Any book by sociology professor, author, and secular activist, Ryan T Cragun ● July 2, 2017 – Strangers in their Own Land, by Arlie Russell ● June 4, 2017 – White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg ● May 3, 2017 – Taking Liberties: Why Religious Freedom Doesn’t Give You The Right To Tell Other People What To Do, by Rob Boston, Director of Communications, Americans United for Separation of Church and State ● April 2, 2017 – This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein ● March 5, 2017 – 1984, by George Orwell ● February 5, 2017 – A Call to Action, by Jimmy Carter ● January 1, 2017 – Tending the Epicrean Garden, by Hiram Crespo ● December 4, 2016 – “Interpath” – An Alternative to Interfaith?” ● November 6, 2016 – Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, by Robert Reich ● October 2, 2016 – Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, by Russell Shorto ● September 4, 2016 – Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine, by Paul A Offit, MD ● August 7, 2016 – A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, by William B Irvine ● July 3, 2016 – Hope is What Remains, an article about humanist themes in music of the rock ban, Rush ● June 5, 2016 – At the Existentialist Café, by Sarah Bakewell ● May 1, 2016 – Exuberance, by Paul Kurtz ● April 3, 2016 – Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation, by Karen I Shraggs ● March 6, 2016 – The Road To and From Extreme Religious Liberty” by Marci Hamilton ● February 7, 2016 – Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, by Sam Harris ● January 3, 2016 – Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work without a Strong Middle Class, by David Madlan ● December 6, 2015 – Animal Farm, by George Orwell• November 1, 2015 – Faith vs Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, by Jerry A Coyne• October 4, 2015 – Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstruction, by Julie Ingersoll• September 6, 2015- Why Are You Atheists So Angry? by Greta Christina August 2, 2015 – Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, by Susan Jacoby July 5, 2015 -Forbidden Fruit, by Paul Kurtz ● June 7, 2015 – One Nation Under God, by Kevin M Kruse ● May 3, 2015 – Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order (2011), by Noam Chomsky and Robert W McChesney) ● April 5, 2015 – Six Amendments, by Justice John Paul Stevens ● March 1, 2015 – Tending the Epicurean Garden, by Hiram Crespo ● February 1, 2015 – Maus, volumes I and/or II, by Art Spiegelman ● January 4, 2015 – A Man without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut ● December 7, 2014 – This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, by Barbara Ehrenreich ● November 2, – The Genesis of Justice, by Alan M Dershowitz ● October 5, 2014 – No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U S Surveillance State, by Glenn Greenwald ● September 7, 2014 – Blueprint for Theocracy: The Christian Right’s Vision for America, by James C Sanford ● August 3, 2014 – This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation, by Barbara Ehrenreich ● July 6, 2014 – The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Stephen Pinker ● June 1, 2014 – Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America, by Ariana Huffington ● May 4, 2014 – Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch ● April 6, 2014 – The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins ● March 2, 2014 – Extreme Prejudice, by Susan Lindauer ● February 2, 2014 – The Wrecking Crew, by Thomas Frank ● January 5, 2014 – The Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer ● December 1, 2013 – American Fascists, by Christopher Hedges ● November 3, 2013 – The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, by Kevin Dutton ● October 6, 2013 – Crooked Timber of Humanity, by Isiah Berlin ● September 1, 2013 – The Good Atheist: Living a Purpose-Filled Life Without God, by Dan Barker ● August 4, 2013 – Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became one of America’s Leading Atheists, by Dan Barker ● July 7, 2013 – The Attack of the Theocrats, by Sean Faircloth ● June 2, 2013 – The Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought, by Susan Jacoby ● May 5, 2013 – Any magazine article or book by Chris Hedges ● April 7, 2013 – Candidate Without a Prayer, by Herb Silverman ● March 3, 2013 – Nonbeliever Nation, by David Niose ● February 3, 2013 – Whale Falls: An Exploration of Belief and Its Consequences, by Cecil Bothwell ● January 6, 2013 – Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin ● December 2, 2012 – Energy for Future Presidents, by Richard A Muller ● November 4, 2012 – The Mindfullness Revolution, edited by Barry Boyce ● October 14, 2012 – People of the Lake, by Richard E Leakey ● September 9, 2012 – When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” by George Carlin ● August 4, 2012 – The Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson ● July 1, 2012 – Billions & Billions, by Carl Sagan ● June 3, 2012 – The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman ● May 6, 2012 – Any book by Christopher Hutchens ● April 1 , 2012 – Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, by Christopher Hitchens (or any other book about or by Thomas Paine) ● March 4, 2012 – Nemesis, by Chalmers Johnson ● February 5, 2012 – The Limits of Power, by Andrew J Bacevich ● January 8, 2012 – Magazine or website article of choice, pertaining to humanism, skepticism, science, separation of church and state ● December 4, 2011 – Technical Singularity (the covery story in TIME Magazine 2/21/2011), by Lev Grossman titled, “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal” (Theo Lichtenstein, Discussion Leader) Click here for article ● November 6, 2011 – Blood and the Covenant: The Historical Consequences of the Contract with God, by Pierre Parisien (John Ruskuski, Discussion Leader) ● October 2, 2011 – Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations can Teach Us about Contentment, by Phil Zuckerman (Bill House, Discussion Leader) ● September 4, 2011 – The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, by A C Grayling (Don DuClose, Discussion Leader) ● August 7, 2011 – Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein ● July 3, 2011 – Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, by Brooke Allen ● June 5, 2011 – Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, by Wendell Potter ● May 1, 2011 – The Cheating Culture, by David Callahan ● April 3, 2011 – No Impact Man, by Colin Beavan ● March 6, 2011 – Idiot America, by Charles Pierce ● February 6, 2011 – The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes ● January 2, 2011 – Article, poem, or book of your choice ● December 5, 2010 – Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, by Daniel Everett ● November 7, 2010 – The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by Mark Twain (Held in a private home this month, contact info above ) ● October 3, 2010 – Good Without God: What a Billion Non-Religious People Believe, by Greg M Epstein (Bill Howes will lead ) ● September 5, 2010 – Hot, Flat and Crowded, by Thomas L Friedman ● August 1, 2010 – Rigging The Game: How Inequality is Reproduced in Everyday Life, by Michael Schwalbe (Sociologist Lance Stoll will lead ) ● July 4, 2010 – Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas L Friedman ● June 6, 2010 – Where Was God: Evil, Theodicy, and Modern Science, by Gary A Stilwell, Ph D ● May 2, 2010 – The Closing of the Western Mind, by Charles Freeman (led by Fred Hill) ● April 4, 2010 – The Imperial Cruise, by James Bradley (led Bill Howes) ● March 7, 2010 – The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer (led by John Ruskuski) ● February 7, 2010 – Book or magazine article of your choice ● January 3, 2010 – Night, by Elie Wiesel; and God on Trial, a Masterpiece Theater presentation of a play written by Elie Wiesel ● December 6, 2009 – Coal Country, a documentary about mountaintop removal ● November 1, 2009 – When Atheism Becomes Religion, by Chris Hodges ● October 4, 2009 – Christianity: 5000 Years of History and Development, by Gary A Stilwell, Ph D ● September 6, 2009 – The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, by Matt Miller ● August 2, 2009 – Article of choice from http://atheism about com/ ● July 5, 2009 – The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard De Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man, by Amir D Aczel ($16) ● June 7, 2009 – Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin ● May 3, 2009 – 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, by Gavin Menzies ● March 1, 2009 – Doubt: A History – The great doubters and their legacy of innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickenson – by Jennifer Michael Hecht ● February 1, 2009 – Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety, by Wendy Kaminer ● January 4, 2009 Humanist Manifesto III ● December 7, 2008 – Becoming Evil, by James Waller ● November 2, 2008 – Book of your choice ● October 19, 2008 – The Age of Unreason, by Susan Jacoby ● September 21, 2008 – The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan ● August 17, 2008 – The Atheist Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts, edited by Joan Konner ● July 20, 2008 – Book of your choice ● June 15, 2008 – The Future of Life, by Edward O Wilson ● May 18, 2008 – The Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens ● April 20, 2008 – Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, by Bjorn Lomborg ● March 16, 2008 – Robbing Us Blind, by Steve Brouwer and Matt Wuerker ● February 17, 2008 – Dark Ages: The Final Phase of Empire, by Morris Berman ● January 20, 2008 – Book or article of your choice ● December 16, 2007 – Christ Stopped at Eboli, by Carlo Levi ● November 18, 2007 – The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Bobby Henderson ● October 21, 2007 – Any book by Kurt Vonnegut ● September 16, 2007 – The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore ● August 19, 2007 – Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali ● June 17, 2007 – Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett ● May 20, 2007 – Affirmations: Joyful and Creative Exuberance, by Paul Kurtz ● April 15, 2007 – A Rulebook for Arguments, by Anthony Weston ● February 18, 2007 – The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright ● January 21, 2007 – The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins ● December 17, 2006 – Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris ● November 19, 2006 – Humanism as the Next Step, by Lloyd and Mary Morain ● October 15, 2006 – Free Inquiry Magazine, Oct/Nov 2006 edition ● September 17, 2006 – Civil Liberties vs National Security in a Post 9/11 World, edited by Katherine B Darmer, Stuart E Rosenbaum, and Robert M Baird ● August 20, 2006 – Values and Virtue in a Godless Universe, by Erik J Weilenberg ● July 16, 2006 – Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins ● June 18, 2006 – Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi ● May 21, 2006 – God Versus the Gavel, by Marci A Hamilton ● April 16, 2006 – One Planet, One People, by Carl Coon ● March 19, 2006 – The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins ● February 19, 2006 – The Crisis of Islam, by Bernard Lewis ● January 15, 2006 – Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life without God, by A C Grayling ● December 18, 2005 – The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris ● November 20, 2005 – The Happy Heretic, by Judy Hayes ● October 16, 2005 – Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H Smith ● September 18, 2005 – Aug/Sept issue of Free Inquiry magazine ● August 21, 2005 – July issue of Skeptic Magazine ● July 17, 2005 – May/June issue of The Humanist ● June 19, 2005 – Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer ● May 15, 2005 – The Fundamentals of Extremism, by Kimberly Blaker, Ed ● April 17, 2005 – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan ● March 20, 2005 – Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking, by Steve Allen ● February 15, 2005 – Age of Reason by Thomas Paine ● January 16, 2005 – The Philosophy of Humanism, by Corliss Lamont ● December 19, 2004 – Drug Crazy, by Mike Gray ● November 21, 2004 – Best of Robert Ingersoll: Selections From His Writings and Speeches – by Rober E Greeley, Ed ● October 17, 2004 – Continuation of previous discussion on the Bush administration and implications for November elections Book of your choice Recommended: The New American Empire – by Rodrigue Tremblay ● September 15, 2004 The Bush-Hater’s Handbook, by Jack Huberman; The Despoiling of America, by Katherine Yurica ● August 15, 2004 – Writings On An Ethical Life, by Peter Singer

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