Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Northeast Book Club 1/9

Join us for the January Northeast DC Book Club

You can RSVP and get more info online.

Monday, January 9, 7:00 - 8:00 PM

Open to All - Meet some Northeast DC neighbors. Learn a little about DC. Engage in dynamic discussion. Join us for the Northeast DC Book Club! We welcome the casual page skimmer to the in-depth literary minds.

Featured Book: Washington Goes to War

The city "boasted" 15,000 privies; you could walk through the White House gate without being questioned; the Army chief of staff, early in the war, at least, sent a handwritten note to the family of every serviceman killed in battle. Things were quite different in the WW II capital, and Brinkley (a radio reporter in Washington at the time) reveals the tempo of the town in a series of vivid character sketches and anecdotes connected by commentary both illuminating and entertaining. Among the wide variety of subjects dealt with: the bulging civilian and military bureaucracies; the housing crisis in a city "crowded to suffocation"; the pressures on black Washingtonians; the frivolousness of the town's high society (President Roosevelt publicly called them parasites); the effect on the citizenry of hordes of thrill-seeking servicemen in a city without much entertainment to offer them; the emotional wranglings of the wartime Congress; the thorny yet genial relationship between FDR and the press. This is a valuable record of a town and government coping with global responsibilities for which it was ill prepared.

Questions? Contact: NEDCBookClub@gmail.com

All are welcome, no matter how much or how little of the book you have read. There will be time at the end of our discussion to determine the next book and location for our book club meeting, so come with your ideas!

4 comments:

Rayful Edmond said...

Sorry, I've got nothing on the book club. :( Though someone wants to raze some buildings on H Street. :/

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-DC&month=1201&week=a&msg=G62u/T4e9Wf3YVVHX5xSdw

oboe said...

The buildings in question:

http://g.co/maps/hmrmk

Chris said...

Following up on RE's post:

From Google Street View, all three are on the north side of H.

402 H Street NE = Dynamic Wellness, next to TruOrleans.

1404, 1406 H Street NE = two of the three buildings in the last block of H before the starburst. Rags to Riches Vintage + Dee's Liquor Store.

Chris said...

Ooh, oboe, I'm sure you're right -- that "402 H Street NE" should have been "1402 H Street NE." That makes more sense in many ways (all three listed as 6A06, completes the raze of three buildings, interior raze wouldn't make much sense, etc.)