Notes & links: 'The Vanquished'

Thank you to everyone who joined this month's rich conversation about historian Robert Gerwarth's book The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End.

Links and notes for further exploration:

• A short film featuring Dr. Gerwarth on the Fritz Lang's 1943 film Hangmen Also Die. (And the Lang film itself.)

• A video from Al Jazeera about the population exchange between Greece and Turkey described in the book.

• A video of a 2022 lecture by Dr. Gerwarth at the University of Edinburgh on "Civil Wars and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century."

• Just a few past books from our reading list that relate to this month's book (or were explicitly referenced) include The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer.

* December's Discussion *

On Sunday, December 17, we will conclude our 2023 discussions with a novel set in Rio: The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. (The book is in stock at Books Inc. Opera Plaza!)

About the book:

Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator—edge of despair to edge of despair—and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed. (source)

When and Where:

Sunday, December 17, 2023

11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. (approx.) Pacific Time

Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco