The Open Minds Book Club invites thoughtful participation from GVSU students, faculty and staff, Hauenstein Center members, and community members. Kahler Sweeney, program manager of the Common Ground Initiative, and Brian Bowdle, associate professor of psychology, will host discussions on books that seek to understand and serve the needs of our democratic society.

Thanks to the generous support of our Hauenstein Center members, we are able to make copies of these books available for free to the first 20 individuals to register for each meeting.

January 2024

For the January 2024 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing  Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation by Roosevelt Montás. 

What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors―Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi―had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education―and why it can still remake lives.

The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, January 24, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.

Please order or request your copy of the book by January 10th to allow time for shipping and to enjoy the reading before the discussion.

Register here!

February 2024

For the February 2024 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing  The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S.  Lewis is a classic masterpiece of religious satire that entertains readers with its sly and ironic portrayal of human life and foibles from the vantage point of Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is the most engaging account of temptation—and triumph over it—ever written.

The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, February 21, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.

Please order or request your copy of the book by February 7th to allow time for shipping and to enjoy the reading before the discussion.

Register here!

April 2024

For the April 2024 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing  Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth?

The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, April 3, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU Pew Campus.

Please order or request your copy of the book by March 20th to allow time for shipping and to enjoy the reading before the discussion.

Register here!

Past Titles

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 - The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis.

Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future by Patty Krawec.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023 - How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation by E.D. Hirsch Jr.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023 - The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Wednesday, March 1, 2023: This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, by David Sloan Wilson

Wednesday, January 25, 2023 - The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar

Wednesday, November 30, 2022 - War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

Wednesday, October 19, 2022 - Liberalism and its Discontents, by Francis Fukuyama

Thursday, April 14, 2022 — Suspicious Minds by Robert Brotherton 

Wednesday, January 27, 2022 — No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

Wednesday, September 8, 2021 —  Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them by Ethan Zuckerman

Thursday, June 24, 2021 — Self Portrait in Black and White by Thomas Chatterton Williams

Friday, March 12, 2021 — Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech by Keith E. Whittington