(OLLI) is a membership organization. With your OLLI membership, you are entitled to request up to three courses per term during the “Request Period” and as many other courses as your schedule allows during the “Additional Registration Period”.
Spring 2019 Courses
30645 Conspiracies, Coverups! Lies-or historical facts? Governments, corporations, politicians sometimes work hard to keep truth hidden. Read and discuss, American Conspiracies and Cover-ups: JFK, 9/11, the Fed, Rigged Elections, Suppressed Cancer Cures, and the Greatest Conspiracies of Our Time by Douglas Cirignano. Skyhorse. 2019. The introduction reminds us of five major deceptions that have been unveiled. Then 12 chapters explore controversies of politics, war, wealth, health. Unusual format; author in dialogue with experts.
30646 How could this country get here? Very readable historian reminds us of many lesser-known facts. ”…[I]mperfection is the rule, not the exception.” Despite where the country is now, Meacham helps us “to hope” rather than “to fear.” Better knowledge of the past is the key. Meacham, Jon. The Soul of America. Random House Publishing Group. 2018
Previous Courses:
- Fall 2019, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy, 2014, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). This is the most recent of prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott’s several well-documented books on what we haven’t known—and should know. Is there a deep state: a second order of government behind the public or constitutional state? Can we still prevent the subversion of our republic?
- Fall 2019, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. Michiko Kakutani, 2018. Tim Duggan Books. Powerful documentations by an experienced journalist. Our democracy has been hobbled by a shortage of accurate information and a flood of trivia. How can we improve our information searches? Excellent analyses of the “hows” and her suggested “what nows?”
- Summer 2019, 30581 Will Our Empire Be Different? Empires destroy democracy. If we don’t know our history, we can’t slow this process. Editor/author Lapham knows the powerful roles of our moneyed elites, and shares eloquently his experiences with the incompatibility of money and democracy. We will read and review Age of Folly: America Abandons its Democracy, Lewis Lapham. New York: Verso, 2016
- Summer 2019, 30582 Under God? U.S. history has been continually reshaped by many religions. Author Peter Manseau explores the complex history of American pluralism—some created here, some brought by immigrants, and others borrowed from distant lands. We will meet these religions and discuss their impacts. And how about our future? We will read and review One Nation, Under Gods, Peter Manseau. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.
- Spring 2019, 30569 Appreciating the Enlightenment (Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
- Spring 2019, 30568 Saving the sciences (David Lewis, Science for Sale: How the U.S. Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits)
- Fall 2018, 30304 Testing our “Common Wisdom” about our world
- (Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better than You Think)
- Fall 2018, 30305 Explorinng a Cosmos of Issues (Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. Whole)
- Spring 2018, 30232 Do Liberals Always Win the Culture Wars?
- Spring 2018, 30231 Roots and Effects of our American Fantasies
- Fall 2017, 30207 West, Meet East!
- Fall 2017, 30208 American Violence
- Summer 2017, 30196 Religion and Science
- Summer 2017, 30197 “Unspeakable: Chris Hedges on the Most Taboo Topics in America”
- Spring 2017, 30190 “Unspeakable. Chris Hedges on the Most Taboo Topics in America”
- Spring 2017, 30191 Howard Zinn, “The Twentieth Century: A People’s History”
- Winter 2017, 30167 America`s Empire – the view from here and from abroad
- Winter 2017, 30166 America – A threatened democracy
- Fall 2016, 30144, Bookend. 30144 Chris Lehmann, The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream. (2016) Melville House.
- Fall 2016, Bookend. 30145 David Swanson, War is a Lie. (2010) Just World Books
- Summer 2016, Bookend. Grayling, A. C. (2013) The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind. Bloomsbury Publishing
- Summer 2016, Bookend. Engler, Mark; Engler, Paul (2016) This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century. Nation Books
- Spring 2016, Bookend. Bacevich, Andrew. The New American Mlitarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. 2013, Oxford University Press
- Spring 2016, Bookend. Montgomery, Scott L. and Chirot, Daniel. The shape of the new: four big ideas and how they made the modern world. 2015, Princeton University Press
- Winter 2016, Bookend. Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity
- Winter 2016, Bookend. Susan Jacoby. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
- Fall 2015, Bookend: Kevin Kruse, One Nation under God: how Corporate America invented Christian America
- Fall 2015, Bookend: Noam Chomsky, Masters of Mankind
- Summer 2015, Bookend: Eric Foner, Who Owns History?
- Summer 2015, Bookend: Michael Shermer, The Moral Arc: how science and reason lead humanity toward truth, justice, and freedom
- Spring 2015, 19069 Bookend: Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence
- Spring 2015, 19068 Bookend: Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
- Winter 2015: 18140 Bookend. Stuart Jordan, The Enlightenment Vision: Science, Reason, and the Promise of a Better Future
- Winter 2015, 18141 Bookend: Philip Zuckerman, Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion
- Winter 2015, Philip Kitcher, Life After Faith: The Case For Secular Humanism (with Bill Weir)
- Fall 2014, 19057 Bookend: Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason
- Fall 2014, 19058 Bookend: The New Sciences of Religion: Exploring Spirituality From the Outside In and Bottom Up
- Summer 2014, 19051 Bookend: Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World
- Spring 2014, 19050 Religion and Science A Dialogue about Who Is Accommodating Whom?
- Fall 2013, 19033 Modernity and Religions
- Summer 2013, 19026 The New Atheists and Their Critics
- Spring 2013, 13031 Bookend: Why Are Some of Us Liberals and Others Conservatives?
- Winter Special 2013, 13025: Non-Believer Nation: The Rise of Secular America
- Fall 2012, 19016: Religions: Partners or Partisans?