The Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter’s book club is back again for 2023 with plenty of great reads. We meet from 7 - 8 pm on the first Tuesday evening of every other month (on odd months) and we’d love for you to join us! Some book club discussions are pushed back to avoid holidays, so please check the list below for the dates.
Below are the dates of each virtual discussion and their corresponding books:
January 3, 2023: Diet for a Small Planet - 50th Anniversary Edition by Frances Moore Lappe
The classic novel that has inspired healthy eating for half a century is back with even more tips, tools and recipes to help us eat well. The new edition also acknowledges diet as an agent of social and environmental change, and more specifically the value of sustainable diet culture in a world facing food insecurity and climate change.
RSVP here: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002GMf3AAG&mapLinkHref=
March 7, 2023: As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
This nonfiction book details the history of Native Americans in the United States since European colonization, including criticisms of the modern conservation movement as exclusionary to indigenous concepts of land and environmental stewardship, and coverage of the 2010s Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgPLAA0&mapLinkHref=
May 2, 2023: The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry
"The Unsettling of America" is Wendell Berry's personal, dramatic inquiry into the way in which we use the land that sustains us. For the roots of our attitudes toward farming, Berry goes back to the industrial revolution, which promised freedom from physical toil, and to the "conquistador" mentality that ruled the settlement of North America, treating land, resources, and ultimately people as infinitely expendable. Out of this history comes a disturbing, and officially sanctioned, vision of the farm of the future -- where the supreme value is maximum production, where the environment is to be controlled by technology, and where a man has no place.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgoOAAS&mapLinkHref=
July 11, 2023 (pushed back one week to avoid holiday): Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
Bitter is a young adult novel written by Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi (they/them). A companion novel to Emezi's Pet, Bitter tells the story of a Black teenage girl living in a city troubled by constant protests and violence. This novel explores both the importance and cost of social revolution--and how youth lead the way.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgodAAC&mapLinkHref=
September 5, 2023: Nomad Century: How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince
From an award-winning science journalist comes Nomad Century, an urgent investigation of environmental migration—the most underreported, seismic consequence of our climate crisis that will force us to change where—and how—we live.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgosAAC&mapLinkHref=
November 14, 2023 (pushed back one week to avoid election day): Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
Eager is the powerful story of how one of the world’s most influential species, beavers, can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and climate change — and how we can learn to coexist with our fellow travelers on this planet.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgpqAAC&mapLinkHref=
January 2, 2024: Nathan Coulter: A Novel by Wendell Berry
Nathan Coulter, Wendell Berry’s first book, was published in 1960 when he was twenty–seven. In his first novel, the author presents his readers with their first introduction to what would become Berry’s life’s work, chronicling through fiction a place where the inhabitants of Port William form what is more than community, but rather a “membership” in interrelatedness, a spiritual community, united by duty and bonds of affection for one another and for the land upon which they make their livelihood.
RSVP: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002NgqFAAS&mapLinkHref=
Please join us for as many book club reads as you would like, and feel free to drop in even if you haven't finished the book or are only able to attend one discussion during the year.
Books are selected from a list of recommendations from book club attendees. Recommend a book for our 2024 reading list by filling out this form.
Contact Cassie at cassie.steiner@sierraclub.org with questions.