(Coming in January, 2023)
Announcing a non-fiction book club for thoughtful citizens interested in the Climate Crisis, preserving constitutional democracy, and – in general – building a better society through thoughtful, pragmatic reform.
The Ponderous Tome Book Club will meet monthly, ten times a year – omitting December and once during the high season – to discuss books on a variety of topics, including:
History and Biography
The Climate Crisis and Species Extinction
Economics
Domestic and Global Politics
Economics
Education, Health, and the Future of Food
War and Peace
Stimulating discussion is expected, but civility will be the order of the day, with Benjamin Franklin’s precepts for the conduct of meetings as our inspiration.
We hope to attract participants from a broad range of rational perspectives – but we will draw the line at denialism and defeatism. We seek to expand our minds and our sense of the possible – not our lists of grievances and causes for despair. (A daily dose of news and social media furnish quite enough of the latter.)
Our first book will be The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, published this October by Pulitizer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff. (At 327 pages, not too ponderous.)
‘Rick Gray, organizer of the Ponderous Tome Book Club, is a native Virginian and, since 2018, a full-time resident of Cannon Beach. In a varied career, he has been – in order – a practicing attorney, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia, a high school history teacher and administrator, a professional stage actor, an op-ed columnist, and a full-time caregiver for his mother. A lifelong student of history and frequent political activist, he sought the District 32 seat in Oregon’s House of Representatives in 2022.
For more information, visit our Facebook group, or contact ‘Rick Gray at deinikes@gmail.com.
