The Unofficial Fifth Column Book Club
Greetings! Welcome to the official Substack of the unofficial book club of the Fifth Column Podcast, your monthly quarterly when-we-mutually-feel-like-it venue for self-styled bibliophiles of the Fifdom to gather for literary discussion.
Among the books we have read so far are
The Revolt of the Public: And the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium - Martin Gurri
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up A Generation For Failure - Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt
Nutshell - Ian McEwan
Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left - Roger Scruton
Anarchy, State, and Utopia - Robert Nozick
Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought - Jonathan Rauch
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt
Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World - Tom Holland
Letters to a Young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
Typically we choose a book and set up a time to meet via Zoom to discuss it. For long books we might have multiple meetings over the course of reading.
Some of us have ambitions to write about the books for this Substack—we’ll see how that goes!
How to Join
If you haven’t already, sign up for a free subscription to this Substack.
Wait for a moderator to comp you a “paid” subscription. (Nobody pays; we’re not making money off this. We just want to keep our meeting details off Google!)
Return to this page. You should now be able to scroll past the paywall and see Step 4.