NYT: A Book Club Courts Liberals
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: June 16, 2008
....Starting on Monday, the new Progressive Book Club is inviting readers to join and buy three books at $1 apiece in exchange for the obligation to buy four books over the next two years. The brainchild of Elizabeth Wagley, a former fund-raiser and communications adviser for nonprofit groups including Doctors of the World, the Progressive Book Club is trying to update the paradigm of such familiar institutions as the Book-of-the-Month Club, as well as the 44-year-old Conservative Book Club.
Ms. Wagley said that she believed the new book club would fill a void for progressively minded readers. “The right has always understood the power of ideas, the power of books as legitimizers of ideas,” she said. “I see the opportunity with the book-club structure to create a powerful tool to showcase the ideas of the left.”
As with a classic book club, members of the new club will be offered a slate of books each month, reviewed and chosen by a panel that includes the novelists Michael Chabon, Erica Jong and Barbara Kingsolver; John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine; and Todd Gitlin, the author and a journalism and sociology professor at Columbia University.
The first lead selection is “The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker” by Steven Greenhouse, a reporter at The New York Times. Other offerings for June include “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy” by Jeffrey Feldman, and “Mudbound,” a debut novel by Hillary Jordan. The club will also offer about 200 older titles like “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/books/16club.htmlLINK TO PROGRESSIVE BOOK CLUB:
http://www.progressivebookclub.com/pbc2/home.pbc
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