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MSOG, Inc.
PO Box 215
Ashland, MA 01721-0215 |
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Tuesday, May 7
A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III by Janice Hadlow
7:30 pm Virtual
The surprising, deliciously dramatic, and ultimately heartbreaking story of King George III's radical pursuit of happiness in his private life with Queen Charlotte and their 15 children
In the U.S., Britain's George III, the protagonist of A Royal Experiment, is known as the king from whom Americans won their independence and as "the mad king," but in Janice Hadlow's groundbreaking and entertaining new biography, he is another character altogether―compelling and relatable.
He was the first of Britain's three Hanoverian kings to be born in England, the first to identify as native of the nation he ruled. But this was far from the only difference between him and his predecessors. Neither of the previous Georges was faithful to his wife, nor to his mistresses. Both hated their own sons. And, overall, their children were angry, jealous, and disaffected schemers, whose palace shenanigans kick off Hadlow's juicy narrative and also made their lives unhappy ones.
Pained by his childhood amid this cruel and feuding family, George came to the throne aspiring to be a new kind of king―a force for moral good. And to be that new kind of king, he had to be a new kind of man. Against his irresistibly awful family background―of brutal royal intrigue, infidelity, and betrayal―George fervently pursued a radical domestic dream: he would have a faithful marriage and raise loving, educated, and resilient children.
The struggle of King George―along with his wife, Queen Charlotte, and their 15 children―to pursue a passion for family will surprise history buffs and delight a broad swath of biography readers and royal watchers. (Amazon Review)
You must be logged in as a Member to participate in the event. Log-in at https://www.msoginc.org/members.php. Go to "Event Registration" to register for the book club.
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
June 4, 2024 The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani
July 2, 2024 Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
August 6. 2024 The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni |
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Tuesday, June 4
The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani
7:30 pm Virtual
Matelda, the Cabrelli family’s matriarch, has always been brusque and opinionated. Now, as she faces the end of her life, she is determined to share a long-held secret with her family about her own mother’s great love story: with her childhood friend, Silvio, and with dashing Scottish sea captain John Lawrie McVicars, the father Matelda never knew. . . .
In the halcyon past, Domenica Cabrelli thrives in the coastal town of Viareggio until her beloved home becomes unsafe when Italy teeters on the brink of World War II. Her journey takes her from the rocky shores of Marseille to the mystical beauty of Scotland to the dangers of wartime Liverpool—where Italian Scots are imprisoned without cause—as Domenica experiences love, loss, and grief while she longs for home. A hundred years later, her daughter, Matelda, and her granddaughter, Anina, face the same big questions about life and their family’s legacy, while Matelda contemplates what is worth fighting for. But Matelda is running out of time, and the two timelines intersect and weave together in unexpected and heartbreaking ways that lead the family to shocking revelations and, ultimately, redemption.(Amazon Review)
You must be logged in as a Member to participate in the event. Log-in at https://www.msoginc.org/members.php. Go to "Event Registration" to register for the book club.
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
July 2, 2024 Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
August 6. 2024 The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni
September 3, 2024 She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer |
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Tuesday, July 2
Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
7:30 pm Virtual
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that were crumbling in the trunks of desert shepherds. His goal: preserve this crucial part of the world’s patrimony in a gorgeous library. But then Al Qaeda showed up at the door.
“Part history, part scholarly adventure story, and part journalist survey…Joshua Hammer writes with verve and expertise” (The New York Times Book Review) about how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist from the legendary city of Timbuktu, became one of the world’s greatest smugglers by saving the texts from sure destruction. With bravery and patience, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. His heroic heist “has all the elements of a classic adventure novel” (The Seattle Times), and is a reminder that ordinary citizens often do the most to protect the beauty of their culture. His the story is one of a man who, through extreme circumstances, discovered his higher calling and was changed forever by it. (Amazon Review)
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
August 6. 2024 The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni
September 3, 2024 She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer
October 1, 2024 Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis |
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Tuesday, August 6
The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni
7:30 pm Virtual
After a DNA test reveals that Alberta “Bert” Monte is the sole heir of a wealthy noble family in the Italian Alps, she leaves New York to visit the family estate: Montebianco Castle, a centuries-old compound isolated in the mountains. What appeared to be a fairy tale inheritance, however, soon turns into a nightmare as Bert begins to uncover the dark legacy of her family: the truth about the abandoned village at the base of the castle; the whispers of stolen children; and the rumors of a legendary monster in the mountains. As Bert unravels the truth, she learns that her true inheritance lies not in a noble title or ancestral treasures, but in her very genes, and now she must choose between preserving a secret centuries in the keeping or abandoning it forever. (Amazon Review)
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
September 3, 2024 She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer
October 1, 2024 Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis
November 5, 2024 The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser |
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Tuesday, September 3
She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer
7:30 pm Virtual
Zimmer writes, “Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are—our appearance, our height, our penchants—in inconceivably subtle ways.” Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors—using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates—but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.
Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations. (Amazon Review)
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
October 1, 2024 Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis
November 5, 2024 The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser
December 3, 2024 The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp
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Tuesday, October 1
Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis
7:30 pm Virtual
The Salem witch hunt has entered our vocabulary as the very essence of injustice. Judge Samuel Sewall presided at these trials, passing harsh judgment on the condemned. But five years later, he publicly recanted his guilty verdicts and begged for forgiveness. This extraordinary act was a turning point not only for Sewall but also for America's nascent values and mores.
In Judge Sewall's Apology, Richard Francis draws on the judge's own diaries, which enables us to see the early colonists not as grim ideologues, but as flesh-and-blood idealists, striving for a new society while coming to terms with the desires and imperfections of ordinary life. Through this unsung hero of the American conscience -- a Puritan, an antislavery agitator, a defender of Native American rights, and a Utopian theorist -- we are granted a fresh perspective on a familiar drama. (Amazon Review)
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
November 5, 2024 The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser
December 3, 2024 The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp
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Tuesday, November 5
The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser
7:30 pm Virtual
The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly-equipped group of English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had eighty casks of butter and two dogs but no cattle for milk, meat, or ploughing. They were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.
Edward Winslow, an apprentice printer, fled England and then Holland for a life of religious freedom and opportunity. Despite the intense physical trials of settlement, he found America exotic, enticing, and endlessly interesting. He built a home and a family, and his remarkable friendship with King Massassoit, Chief of the Wampanoags, is part of the legend of Thanksgiving. Yet, fifty years later, Edward’s son Josiah was commanding the New England militias against Massassoit’s son in King Philip’s War.
The Mayflower is an intensely human portrait of the Winslow family written with the pace of an epic. Rebecca Fraser details domestic life in the seventeenth century, the histories of brave and vocal Puritan women and the contradictions between generations as fathers and sons made the painful decisions which determined their future in America. (Amazon Review)
Upcoming Book Club Readings:
December 3, 2024 The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp |
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Tuesday, December 3
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria Von Trapp
7:30 pm Virtual
With nearly 1,500 Broadway performances, six Tony Awards, more than three million albums sold, and five Academy Awards, The Sound of Music, based on the lives of Maria, the baron, and their singing children, is as familiar to most of us as our own family history. But much about the real-life woman and her family was left untold.
Here, Baroness Maria Augusta Trapp tells in her own beautiful, simple words the extraordinary story of her romance with the baron, their escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, and their life in America.
Maria Augusta Kutschera was born on a train en route to Vienna just before midnight on January 26, 1905. Her mother died when she was only two years old and her father left her with an elderly cousin so that he could be free to travel. She experienced a lonely and very strict upbringing without any siblings or other children in the household. She was raised a socialist and an atheist and was actively cynical towards all religions. It was during a visit to a church to hear a Bach concert that her mind was changed when she heard the words of a well-known priest, Father Kronseder. Her meeting with him led to her entering a convent to become a nun. While she was devoted to the convent life, she was taken away from the outdoor activities she once thrived on. Her doctor, concerned that her health was failing, helped the nuns to decide to send Maria to the home of retied naval captain Georg Von Trapp, to be governess to his bedridden daughter. On November 26, 1927, Maria and Georg were married. The rest is history. (Amazon Review)
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