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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, July 17, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

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  The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey

  by Candice Millard

  
  

  

  After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
  Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.

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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, August 21, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Registration is closed

  The House of Sand and Fog

  by Andre Dubus III

  
  

  

  A recent immigrant from the Middle East—a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force—yearns to restore his family’s dignity in California. A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold onto the one thing she has left—her home. And her lover, a married cop, is driven to extremes to win her love.

  
  

  
  

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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, September 18, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Registration is closed

  No Bridges Blown

  by William B. Dreux

  
  

  

  When William B. Dreux parachuted into France in 1944, the OSS infantry officer had cinematic visions of blood-and-guts heroics, of leading the French Maquis resistance forces in daring missions to blow up key bridges and delay the German advance.

  This isn’t the glamorized screen-ready account he expected; this is the real story. Dreux’s three-man OSS team landed behind enemy lines in France, in uniform, far from the targeted bridges. No Bridges Blown is a story of mistakes, failures, and survival, a story of volunteers and countrymen working together in the French countryside. The only book written by one of the Jedburghs about his wartime experiences, Dreux brings the history of World War II to life with stories of real people amidst a small section of the fighting in France. These people had reckless courage, little training, and faced impossible odds. This story will resonate with veterans and everyday citizens alike and it brings to life the realities of war on the ground in Nazi-occupied France.

  
  

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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, October 16, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Registration is closed

  Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

  by Salman Rushdie

  
  

  

  On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

  What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

  
  

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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, November 20, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Registration is closed

  Major Pettigrew's Last Stand 

  by Helen Simonson

  
  

  

  You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.

  The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: Honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?

  
  

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• JHC Book Club

  • When
    Thursday, December 18, 2025
  •  
    6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Registration is closed

  The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

  by James McBride

  
  

  

   In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

  
  

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