Book Groups

AML Book Group

The AML Book Group meets at 6:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of the month. All are welcome. Copies of the books will be available at the circulation desk. The forthcoming list of titles to be discussed can be found below. Please check the Program Calendar for discussion dates and times.

February 18, 2025 Book Discussion

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond

"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."—Bill Gates In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographic al and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

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January 21, 2025 Book Discussion

Smoke and Ashes

Amitav Ghosh

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Foreign Policy, Literary Hub, and The Millions Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family―the climax of a yearslong project. When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire’s financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, of America’s most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself. Moving deftly between horticultural history, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant has had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

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Additional Resources for Book Lovers and Book Groups

• Booklist Blog: Freely accessible book lists, interviews, and resources from Booklist and the American Library Association.
• Goodreads: A social media site for book lovers.  Discover and create personalized shelves of books to read, track books you have already read and share your opinions about books with friends.
• LibraryThing: Create a library-quality catalog for your personal book collection while discovering new books through social networking.
• LitLovers: “The website for all things literary”– book club tips, book club title recommendations, reading guides and reviews …
• Reading Group Choices: Discover great book club reads and get advice on running your book club.
• ReadingGroupGuides: Need discussion questions to help run your next book club meeting?  This online community for book clubs has over 3,600 searchable guides.