Wonky Tonk Book Club to meet

LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — The Wonky Tonk Book Club will meet at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, January 25 to discuss “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia,” by John Gray.

The New Yorker wrote, “‘Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion,’ Gray, a British philosopher, says in this outspoken attack on utopianism and the ‘faith-based violence’ it has inspired. History, Gray writes, offers no new dawns or sharp breaks, and, from the French Revolution to the war on terror, he is as critical of the humanist belief in progress as of the ‘belligerent optimism,’ of neoconservatives… Taking the Iraq war as an object lesson, he argues for an acknowledgment that the ‘local pieties of Atlantic democracy’ are not the only way to govern.”

The Wonky Tonk Book Club reads non-fiction political and history books. Book club members receive 25 percent off list price for that month’s pick. The club meets the last Friday of every month at Hamish & Henry Booksellers. New members are always welcome, but must read the book to participate in the discussion.

For more information visit hamishandhenry.com/blog.