Virtual Reading Groups
Would you like to join interesting people and have interesting conversations based on readings from the history of liberty?
Free Participation! | Powered by Zoom
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 online powered by Zoom.
Our Timeless Reading Groups are asynchronous and open to all in the Portal platform. Liberty Fund solicits a scholar to lead a discussion of a short story and/or essays that each participant will read and discuss. This format doesn’t require participants to use Zoom or “schedule” a specific time to participate.
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.
Upcoming
George Eliot's Middlemarch
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Pre-registration is required.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) is widely regarded as one of the greatest English novels, shaped by her remarkable life and intellectual background. The novel explores the tension between individual freedom, social…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams
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Pre-registration is required.
This session explores the evolving relationship and ideological divide between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who went from collaborators on the Declaration of Independence to political rivals with sharply different views on…
Wealth of Nations: A Six-Part Series - Book Five Part Two
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a six-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations!
Each month, Sarah Skwire and Janet Bufton (creators…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Daniel Webster vs. John Calhoun...the Slavery Debate
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Pre-registration is required.
In this Liberty and the American Statesman VRG, we will examine the contrasting responses to the sectional crisis presented in John C. Calhoun’s “Speech on the Slavery Question” (March 4, 1850) and Daniel Webster’s “The…
Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Twelve-Part Series - Part One
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a twelve-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!
Each month, Peter Mentzel will lead a 90-minute…
Brave New World and We: Dystopian Visions and the Nature of Tyranny
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Pre-registration is required.
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, first published in English in 1924, is often considered the grandfather of dystopian science fiction and influenced classics such as Orwell’s 1984, Vonnegut’s Player Piano, and Rand’s Anthem. In this…
The Rise and Fall of a Self-Made Man: Freedom and Falsehood in The Great Gatsby
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Pre-registration is required.
The Great Gatsby is one of America’s most-read novels, in large part because of its use in countless high school and college English classes. It offers the story of Jay Gatsby as told by Nick Carraway, his new neighbor. It…
Niall Ferguson's The Square and the Tower
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Pre-registration is required.
Join Aeon Skoble for a three-session VRG exploring Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower, an ambitious examination of the dynamic relationship between hierarchies and networks throughout history. As participants work through…
Liberty and the American Statesman: Before The Federalist: Alexander Hamilton as Revolutionary
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Pre-registration is required.
How did Hamilton become Hamilton? His earliest writing in favor of the American colonial cause evinced all the marks of a limited government Whig seeking redress for imperial overreach and violation of rights. By the end of the…
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: A Twelve-Part Series: Part Two
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Pre-registration is required.
Join us for a twelve-part monthly virtual reading group series that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!
Each month, Peter Mentzel will lead a 90-minute…
Past Sessions
Two Moralities? Jane Jacobs’ Systems of Survival
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Pre-registration is required, and we ask you to register only if you can be present for ALL sessions. Readings must be acquired in advance. Participants who successfully complete ALL sessions will be eligible to receive an Amazon…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - Julius Caesar
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“Beware the Ides of March!” Or simply prepare yourself for them with this exploration of one of Shakespeare’s most frequently read and quoted plays. Questions of politics are front and center in this play, with one of the primary…
Frank H. Knight’s Freedom and Reform: Essays in Economics and Social Philosophy
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Pre-registration is required, and we ask you to register only if you can be present for ALL sessions. Readings must be acquired in advance. You may use promo code VRG2023 to receive 35% off your purchase at Liberty Fund Books.…
T.S. Eliot on Education and Culture
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“Surely the great poet is, among other things, one who not merely restores a tradition which has been in abeyance, but one who in his poetry re-twines as many straying strands of tradition as possible.” T. S. Eliot’s work, both…
One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare's Plays - The Merchant of Venice
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One of the most problematic of Shakespeare’s so-called “problem plays,” The Merchant of Venice provides us with the opportunity to talk about early modern attitudes towards markets, merchants, and towards the Jews who were so…
Timeless: Reading Together - Utopia or Dystopia?
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Please join us in February/March 2024 for a Timeless Virtual Reading Group with Janet Bufton.
Timeless is our new series of asynchronous reading groups.
Each group will be “open” for a defined time period, with scheduled…
Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War: the Emancipation Proclamation
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Many of Lincoln’s speeches and letters articulate the concept of American freedom, and Lincoln’s vision continues to penetrate our culture today. Although it lacks the soaring rhetoric, the legalistic writing of the Emancipation…
Classic Texts of Confucianism and Daoism
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Pre-registration is required, and we ask you to register only if you can be present for ALL sessions. All readings are available online. Participants who successfully complete ALL sessions will be eligible to receive an Amazon…
