Join us for our next installment of the 1 Bear | 1 Book Alumni Wide Book Club with a nomination from the Brown Club of Boston, Night Swim by Jessica Keener AM’84.

The discussion will be led by Boston Club member, William Brisk ‘60.

Register for the virtual event here: Zoom Registration 

Learn more about this event here: BCOB Presents: Night Swim by Jessica Keener 

The 1 Bear | 1 Book program seeks to connect alums globally by selecting books to read and discuss at the same time. Each Club has nominated a book that captures the zeitgeist of their region, a title they would tell a fellow alum, You Gotta Read This. 

March 19, 2024  - Author to join Book Club in Person!
Skinfolk, by Matt Guterl (Professor of Africana and American Studies at Brown).  A memoir of growing up in the 70s of his family with parents who adopted children of several races. 

May 21&22, 2024
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver-(based on David Copperfield).  Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

July 16&17, 2024
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky.  A common household item with a long and intriguing history. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Salt is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

September 17&18, 2024

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.  Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo. 
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

November 19&20, 2024

Up Home: One Girl’s Journey by Ruth Simmons.  “Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)