Let's Talk About It! Discussion & Reading Group

Bogue Banks Library * Carteret County Library * Down East Library * Newport Library * Western Carteret Library

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"Let's Talk About It!" Discussion Series at Carteret County Public Library

The Carteret County Public Library proudly presents the latest in this popular book discussion series. Your insights are the focus of the sessions. Our guest humanities scholars act as guides, leading discussion about how the books inform and enrich our lives. The library has limited copies of the books to loan at no charge. Light refreshments will be served.

January 30, 2012

through

March 26, 2012

with Civil War expert and author Jonathan Sarris, PhD

Free & Open to the Public

The February 26 session has been rescheduled for Monday, March 5


In commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, the National Endowment for the Humanities and American Library Association have awarded the North Carolina Humanities Council a grant for this new Let�s Talk About It! series. The Carteret County Public Library has been invited to be one of the first libraries in the state to run the series in 2012.

The program is designed for libraries seeking to present sesquicentennial programming that probes meanings of the Civil War that are �hidden in plain sight� behind the key questions and main characters so familiar to us. Program participants may be surprised to encounter in the readings such a large cast of characters, so broad a range of perspectives, and so dense a web of circumstances.

After considering the vast sweep and profound breadth of Civil War experiences, readers will understand that the American Civil War was not a single thing, or a simple thing. And yet they will also see emancipation�the end of the most powerful system of slavery in the modern world�take its place as the central story of the war.

Jonathan Sarris, PhD of North Carolina Wesleyan College will be the guest speaker for the program. He is the author of Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South (2006).

The program is designed as a series of five conversations exploring different facets of the Civil War experience, informed by reading the words written or uttered by powerful voices from the past and present, as listed below:

1. Monday, January 30, 7 p.m.: Imagining War March By Geraldine Brooks This is a parallel novel that retells Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists' absent father. Brooks reveals the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in 1862.			4. Monday, March 12, 7 p.m.: The Shape of War Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam By James McPherson Historian James McPherson presents his account of Antietam, the savage Civil War battle that made the freeing of the slaves possible.

2. Monday, February 13, 7 p.m.: Choosing Sides Readings from: America�s War: Talking About the Civil War and Emancipation on Their 150^th Anniversaries Edited By Edward Ayers � Frederick Douglass, �What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?� (1852), p. 15 � Henry David Thoreau, �a Plea for Captain John Brown� (1859), p. 31 � Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861), p. 41 � Robert Montague, Secessionist speech at Virginia secession convention (April 1-2, 1861), p. 59 � Chapman Stuart, Unionist speech at Virginia secession convention (April 5, 1861), p. 69 � Elizabeth Brown Pryor, excerpt from Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through his Private Letters (2007), p. 73 � Mark Twain, �The Private History of a Campaign That Failed� (1885), p. 99 � Sarah Morgan, excerpt from The Diary of a Southern Woman (May 9, May 17, 1862), p. 107			5. Monday, March 26, 7 p.m.: War and Freedom Readings from: America�s War � Abraham Lincoln, address on colonization (1862), p. 205 � John M. Washington, �Memorys [sic] of the Past (1873), p. 211 � Frederick Douglass, �Men of Color, to Arms!� (March 1863), p. 225 � Abraham Lincoln, letters to John C. Conkling (1863) and Albert F. Hodges (1864), p. 229 � Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863), p. 237 � James S. Brisbin, report on U.S. Colored Cavalry in Virginia (Oct. 2, 1864), p. 239 � Colored Citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, Petition to the Union Convention of Tennessee Assembled in the Capitol at Nashville (Jan. 9, 1865), p. 243 � Margaret Walker, excerpt from Jubilee (1966), p. 251 � Leon Litwack, excerpt from Been in the Storm So Long (1979), p. 261 - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865), p. 271

3. Monday, March 5, 7 p.m.: Making Sense of Shiloh Readings from: America�s War � Ambrose Bierce, �What I Saw of Shiloh� (1881), p. 117 � Ulysses Grant, excerpt from the Memoirs (1885), p. 137 � Shelby Foote, excerpt from Shiloh (1952), p. 145 � Bobbie Ann Mason, �Shiloh� (1982), p. 163 � General Braxton Bragg, speech to the Army of the Mississippi (May 3, 1862), p. 179			All sessions meet at the Carteret County Public Library Program Room.

		This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in partnership with the North Carolina Center for the Book, a program of the State Library of North Carolina. Financial support is also provided by the Friends of Carteret County Public Library.

Past �Let�s Talk About It� Series

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