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About Book Club
The InspireSeattle book club is always seeking new members interested in reading and
discussing books regarding key political issues of these times. We meet every 4 to 6 weeks
on a weekday evening for
2 hours to discuss our latest book. The meeting place rotates among the homes of our membership,
located from West Seattle to the Greenlake neighborhood. Carpooling is encouraged and is generally available.
Each book club concludes with a discussion of which book the majority of attendees would prefer to read next. You can take a look at a list of books previously suggested by InspireSeattle members or make your own suggestion at the book club or online.
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Reviews of books by members of InspireSeattle:
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Provide us with your email address to
receive invitations to future book club
meetings:
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What we're reading for our Sunday,
August 29th, 2010 gathering:
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
by George Friedman
With a unique combination of cold-eyed realism and boldly confident fortune-telling, Friedman (America's Secret War)
offers a global tour of war and peace in the upcoming century. The
author asserts that the United States power is so extraordinarily
overwhelming that it will dominate the coming century, brushing aside
Islamic terrorist threats now, overcoming a resurgent Russia in the
2010s and 20s and eventually gaining influence over space-based missile
systems that Friedman names battle stars. Friedman is the founder of
Stratfor, an independent geopolitical forecasting company, and his
authoritative-sounding predictions are based on such factors as natural
resources and population cycles. While these concrete measures lend his
short-term forecasts credence, the later years of Friedmans 100-year
cycle will provoke some serious eyebrow raising. The armed border
clashes between Mexico and the United States in the 2080s seem
relatively plausible, but the space war pitting Japan and Turkey
against the United States and allies, prognosticated to begin precisely
on Thanksgiving Day 2050, reads as fantastic (and terrifying) science
fiction. Whether all of the visions in Friedmans crystal ball actually
materialize, they certainly make for engrossing entertainment. (From Publishers Weekly)
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Planning ahead? We will be discussing
The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes at the
gathering to follow the one described above.
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