Phi Beta Kappa Association of the Chicagoland Area (PBKACA)

CALENDAR o UPCOMING EVENTS o PAST EVENTS o SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

Special Interest Groups: Book Club and Young Professionals

Book Club

For more than a decade, the PBKACA Book Group has gathered on Sunday afternoons to discuss, debate, and share in-depth, collaborative explorations of great books. Book group members come from an array profession and backgrounds. The quality of discussions that results is lively and elicits many diverse observations that stretch the mind.

"I enjoy the PBKACA book group because I love reading, spending time with intelligent people, and expressing my views in a supportive but discerning atmosphere. Our discussions are very lively, informal and purposeful,” says Sarah Bornstein, a devoted book group attendee.

The book group meets Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Nix Restaurant at the Knickerbocker Hotel, 163 East Walton Place, Chicago. Join us for one or all of the following dates. For more information, contact Roz Hoffman at info@pbkaca.org.

2012

Feb. 5: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

March 4: Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age by Kurt Beyer

April 1: The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain

May 6: James Madison by Richard Brookhiser

June 3: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

July 1: Three Famines: Starvation and Politics by Thomas Keneally

Aug. 5: Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy By John Nichols, Robert McChesney, and Tom Tomorrow

Sept. 9: Palace Walk: The Cairo Trilogy, Volume 1 by Naguib Mahfouz

Oct. 7: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

Nov. 4: Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell

Dec. 2: Hamlet's BlackBerry: Building a Good Life in a Digital Age by William Powers

2011

Feb. 6: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Mar. 6: The Last of the Mohicans by J. F. Cooper

Apr. 3: Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer

May 1: Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel

June 5: Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher

July 10: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by G. Garcia Marquez

Sept. 11: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Oct. 2: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Nov. 6: Francis Perkins: The Woman Behind The New Deal by Kristin Downey

Dec. 4: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

2010

Feb. 7: The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Mary S. Lovell

Mar. 7: The Land of Green Plum by Herta Mueller

Apr. 11: The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper

May 2: Homer & Langley: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow

June 6: My Father's Secret War by Lucinda Franks

July 11: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by A. Solzhenitsyn

Sept. 12: The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin

Oct. 3: Rosenkrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Nov. 7: The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini

Dec. 5: Midnight's Children: A Novel by Salman Rushdie

Young Professionals

While the broadmindedness of Phi Beta Kappans can bridge across the potential obstacles of generation gaps, those social animal instincts we all have ingrained into our psyches can make "birds of a feather want to flock together." Accordingly, particularly for the newest members to our community of scholars, those persons within about the first decade or so (but we're not counting too closely!) after their college years, we organize targeted activities. For more information, contact info@pbkaca.org.