List

Nonfiction Book Club: Wednesday, November 12, 2025

The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.

Join us Wednesday, November 12, 2025, at Southbury Parks and Recreation Department from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: December 10, 2025

EARTH IS NOT WELL. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no doomscrolling—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space businesses are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered:

Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism?

With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate per-haps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary.

Get in, we’re going to Mars.

Join us Wednesday, December 10, 2025, at Southbury Parks and Recreation Department from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: January 2026

Join us Wednesday, January 14, 2026, from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: February 2026

Join us Wednesday, February, 11, 2026, from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: March 2026

Join us Wednesday, March 11, 2026, from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: April 2026

Join us Wednesday, April 8, 2026, from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: May 2026

Join us Wednesday, May 13, 2026, from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of “the Doing of Important Things.” And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don’t make that history. From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

Emma Southon’s A Rome of One’s Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One’s Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

Join us Wednesday, July 9, 2025, at Southbury Parks and Recreation Department from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Stéphane Bréitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time.

He pulled off more than 200 heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight.

His girlfriend served as his accomplice.

His collection was worth an estimated $2 billion.

He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom.

He felt like a king.

Until everything came to a shocking end.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, Michael Finkel gives us one of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of our times, a riveting story of art, theft, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.

Join us Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at Southbury Parks and Recreation Department from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.

Nonfiction Book Club: Wednesday, October 8, 2025

A riveting, must-read, year-in-the-life account of three teachers, combined with reporting that reveals what’s really going on behind school doors, by New York Times bestselling author and education expert Alexandra Robbins.

Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school. Robbins also interviewed hundreds of other teachers nationwide who share their secrets, dramas, and joys.

Interspersed among the teachers’ stories—a seeming scandal, a fourth-grade whodunit, and teacher confessions—are hard-hitting essays featuring cutting-edge reporting on the biggest issues facing teachers today, such as school violence; outrageous parent behavior; inadequate support, staffing, and resources coupled with unrealistic mounting demands; the “myth” of teacher burnout; the COVID-19 pandemic; and ways all of us can help the professionals who are central both to the lives of our children and the heart of our communities.

Join us Wednesday, October 8, 2025, at Southbury Parks and Recreation Department from 10:00am - 11:00am!

Registration is requested, not required. Nonfiction Book Club selections may change. Final selections will weigh your feedback, book availability, and genre balance. Any changes made will be announced at book club meetings, in our newsletter, and on the library's website.

New members are always welcome to the Nonfiction Book Club! Please sign up so we know how many people to expect and to receive event updates! For more information call the Reference Desk at 203-262-0626 ext. 2.