*Meetings for the HJL Book Club are currently on hold due to COVID. Please check back for updates.
The HJL Book Club meets on the 3rd Wednesday of February, April, June, August and October. Discussion starts at 5:30 PM.
Fee: $5.00 donation to the Adopt-A-Collection Fund
You do not need to be a member of the Berks History Center to join the discussion.
We will provide beverages. We kindly ask that you bring a brown bag dinner.
If you have any book ideas or questions about Book Club, please email them to library@berkshistory.org
Remember, if your book is chosen, you get to lead the discussion!
Books Read To Date
Enemies in the Rear: Or the Golden Circle Squared, by Francis Hoover – July 18, 2012
The Day Lincoln Was Shot, by Jim Bishop – October 17, 2012
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich – January 16, 2013
The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America, by Scott Weidensaul – April 24, 2013
Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness At the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson – June 19, 2013
Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, by Andrea Wulf – August 21, 2013
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot – October 16, 2013
John Adams, by David McCullough – February 19, 2014 (Snow Date, March 19, 2014)
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, by David von Drehle – April 16, 2014
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard – June 18, 2014
Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, by Erik Larson – August 20, 2014
One Summer: America, 1927, by Bill Bryson – October 15, 2014
Ike: An American Hero, by Michael Korda – February 18, 2015
The Johnstown Flood, by David G. McCullough – April 15, 2015
When Rackets Reigned, by Ed Taggert – June 17, 2015
The Worse Hard Time, by Timothy Egan – August 19, 2015
George Washington’s Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeager – October 21, 2015
No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin – February 17, 2016
A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn – The Last Great Battle of the American West, by James Donovan – April 20, 2016
The Girls of Atomic City, by Denise Kiernan – June 2016
The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island, by Mac Griswold – August 2016
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream, by H. W. Brand – October 2016
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard – February 2017
The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough – April 2017
The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II, by Jan Jarboe Russell – June 2017
The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars, by Paul Collins – August 2017
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson – October 2017
Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr, by Nancy Isenberg – February 2018
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly – April 2018
Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack, by Steve Twomey – June 2018
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by David Okrent – August 2018
Woodrow Wilson, by H.W. Brands – October 2018
Bloody Crimes: The Funeral of Abraham Lincoln and the Chase for Jefferson Davis, by James L. Swanson – February 2019
Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, by Louisa Thomas – April 17, 2019
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust – June 19, 2019
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson – August 21, 2019
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance – October 16, 2019
Grant, by Ron Chernow- February 19, 2020
The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War by A.J. Baime – June 17, 2020