Virtual Reading Groups
Would you like to join interesting people and have interesting conversations based on readings from the history of liberty?
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Our Virtual Reading Groups will each focus on a particular topic, and a common set of readings will form the basis for our discussions. Each group is facilitated by a professional moderator and is conducted via the Zoom online platform.
Participation is offered at no-cost, and there is no need to be an expert on the topic for discussion! The only requirement is that participants be eager to read and engage in conversation.
Participants who successfully complete all sessions will receive an e-gift certificate from Amazon.com!
Upcoming
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare Plays: Henry IV, Part I
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Pre-registration is required.
Shakespeare’s three plays featuring Prince Hal’s development into the famed king, Henry V, are some of his most popular in the modern era. We’ll look into Hal’s intellectual and moral growth, and try to decide how to feel about…
The Presidents: Jefferson and Understanding the Declaration of Independence
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Pre-registration is required.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that in drafting the Declaration of Independence he meant to give expression to “the American mind.” What does this mean? What does the Declaration tell us about the American mind as it relates to the…
Stefan Zweig’s Chess novella
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Chess story (Schachnovelle) is Stefan Zweig’s last completed work & his most famous. It has been translated into 60 languages. It has sold many millions of copies. It is taught in schools & in colleges. It has been…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Richard II
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Pre-registration is required.
Richard II begins Shakespeare’s second tetralogy, which comprises his most famous English history plays. We will consider the play not just as a way of teeing up the Henriad, but on it’s own merits and for its own mission. What…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Cymbeline
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Pre-registration is required.
Cymbeline has been classified as a tragedy, a romance, and even a comedy, so our first order of business will be to try to understand what kind of a play this is. Lytton Strachey thought the play was evidence that playwriting had…
An Economy of Words: Adam Smith and the Political Philosophy of Language
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Linguistic diversity, from the Tower of Babel to the present, has drawn many thinkers to speculate over language and its potential impact on political theory and approach to economic principles. Smith is no exception. Adam Smith’…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays
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Our new series of Shakespeare Virtual Reading Groups will explore all of Shakespeare’s plays over the course of about 3 years. We’ll look at one play a month, with Liberty Fund’s Sarah Skwire leading one 90 minute discussion for…
Past Sessions
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Macbeth
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Ghosts, witches, murder, and madness! Halloween is the perfect time to read Macbeth, again or for the first time. But Macbeth is much more than Shakespeare’s witch play. It is a play about ambition, about fate, and about free…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Macbeth
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Ghosts, witches, murder, and madness! Halloween is the perfect time to read Macbeth, again or for the first time. But Macbeth is much more than Shakespeare’s witch play. It is a play about ambition, about fate, and about free…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Henry VI, Part III
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The comedy troupe “The Reduced Shakespeare Company” famously portrays Shakespeare’s English history plays as a football game, with the crown being tossed back and forth. Nowhere is this more apt than in Henry VI, Part Three,…
H. L. Mencken on Commerce, Culture, and Democracy
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“We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm.” H.L. Mencken, arguably the greatest prose stylist of the 20th…
Islam and Liberty
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We appreciate your interest in this virtual reading group. Unfortunately, this VRG is full and we are no longer accepting registrations. We invite you to check out our upcoming events here. We hope to see you at a future VRG!
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One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Henry VI, Part II
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With the weak Henry VI still on the throne, England struggles to hold together. Jack Cade’s rebellion threatens stability from below and machinations among the nobles threaten from above, and the play closes with the opening of…
The Price of Power: Bring Up the Bodies and The Prince
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In the sequel to Wolf Hall,Henry VIII’s infamous counselor Thomas Cromwell finds himself more powerful than ever before—and more in danger. By the end of the book, he will have executed a queen and become Baron Cromwell, an…
Civil Society and Political Economy
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Debates surrounding public policy often bifurcate the world into private markets and government. When social and/or economic problems arise, pundits are quick to propose government solutions to so-called failures of private…