Lunch Book Club
Date: April 27, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm
Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Oprah Daily, Time, The Star Tribune, Vulture, The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Public Library, Esquire, California Review of Books, She Reads, Library Journal
Longlisted for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
Night Book Club
Date: May 4, 2026
Time: 6:00 pm
Long Island by Colm Toibin
“Stunning.” —People * “Dazzling yet devastating...Tóibín is simply one of the world’s best living literary writers.” —The Boston Globe * “Momentous and hugely affecting.” —The Wall Street Journal *
From the beloved, critically acclaimed, bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work in twenty years.
Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.
One day, when Tony is at work an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting and suspenseful.
Long Island is a gorgeous story “about a woman thrashing against the constraints of fate” (Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air). It is “a wonder, rich with yearning and regret” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis).