Northeast DC Book Club

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!