July 2025’s Book Selection is Rush: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, by Stephen Fried.

The discussion will be led by Molly Stockdale, MT 250th Commission member and executive director of Travelers' Rest.

By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. He was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. Discover Rush's singular life and towering legacy in this illuminating book by Stephen Fried.

Register via the link below:

Thur., July 10 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Part I: Turbulent Spirit, pages 1 - 250

*NOTE: Author Stephen Fried will join us live for the July event

August 2025’s Book Selection is Rush: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, by Stephen Fried.

The discussion will be led by Molly Stockdale, MT 250th Commission member and executive director of Travelers' Rest.

By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. He was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. Discover Rush's singular life and towering legacy in this illuminating book by Stephen Fried.

Register via the link below:

Thur., Aug. 14 ~ 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Part II: American Hippocrates, pages 251 - 510

September 2025’s Book Selection is The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, by Garrett Graff.

The discussion will be led by Chris Averill, MT 250 Commission member.

Garrett Graff, the award-winning journalist and author of Raven Rock shares the first comprehensive oral history of September 11, 2001—a panoramic narrative woven from hundreds of interviews with government officials, first responders, survivors, friends, and family members.

Over the last two-plus decades, much has been written and said about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the profound impact they had on America and the world. But those names, stories, and memories have never before been collected in one place to tell the full, 360-degree story of what happened that day, and in the days after.

In The Only Plane in the Sky, award-winning journalist and author Garrett Graff draws on never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, and original interviews and stories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members to paint the most comprehensive, minute-by-minute account of the September 11 attacks yet, all told in the words of those who experienced that dramatic and tragic day. From the firefighters who streamed into the smoke-filled stairwells of the Twin Towers to the fighter pilots scrambled from air bases across the Northeast with orders to shoot down any hijacked commercial aircraft; from the teachers who held their fear at bay while evacuating terrified children from schools mere blocks from the World Trade Center to the stricken family members trapped helplessly on the ground, hearing their loved ones’ final words from aboard a hijacked plane or within a burning building, Graff weaves together the unforgettable testimonies of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.

Author Garrett Graff will join us live for this special event in honor of the victims of September 11, 2001.

A registration link is forthcoming.

October 2025’s Book Selection is Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate, by Marc Johnson.

The discussion will be led by Deena Mansour, MT 250th Commission member and Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Center and the University of Montana.

The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed. One key reason: two remarkable leaders who remain giants of the Senate—Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history, so revered for his integrity, fairness, and modesty that the late Washington Post reporter David Broder called him “the greatest American I ever met.” The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Marc C. Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time.

Working together, with the Democrat often ceding public leadership to his Republican counterpart, Mansfield and Dirksen passed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation, created Medicare, and helped bring about a foundational nuclear arms limitation treaty. The two leaders could not have been more different in personality and style: Mansfield, a laconic, soft-spoken, almost shy college history professor, and Dirksen, an aspiring actor known for his flamboyance and sense of humor, dubbed the “Wizard of Ooze” by reporters. Drawing on extensive Senate archives, Johnson explores the congressional careers of these iconic leaders, their intimate relationships with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and their own close professional friendship based on respect, candor, and mutual affection.

A study of politics but also an analysis of different approaches to leadership, this is a portrait of a U.S. Senate that no longer exists—one in which two leaders, while exercising partisan political responsibilities, could still come together to pass groundbreaking legislation—and a reminder of what is possible

Author Marc Johnson will join us for this event.

A registration link is forthcoming.