The BAR Member Meeting
2023-05-20 12:00 - 15:00, 2023-07-15 12:00 - 15:00, 2023-09-16 12:00 - 15:00, 2023-11-18 12:00 - 15:00 UTC

The BAR Member Meeting
2024-01-20 12:00 - 15:00, 2024-03-16 12:00 - 15:00 UTC | The University of Michigan Detroit Center (UMDC), 3663 Woodward Ave, Detroit, 48201, United States

The BAR Member Meeting
2024-05-18 12:00 - 15:00 UTC | The University of Michigan Detroit Center (UMDC), 3663 Woodward Ave, Detroit, 48201, United States
As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”
And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?
Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misconception.
The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

The BAR Member Meeting
2024-07-20 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
Race, as we have come to understand it, is a fiction; but, racism, as we have come to live it, is a fact. The point here is not to impose a new racial hierarchy, but to remove an existing one. After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy, it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.
Acclaimed columnist and author Charles Blow never wanted to write a “race book.” But as violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests of the summer of 2020, he felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans. He envisioned a succinct, counterintuitive, and impassioned corrective to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. Drawing on both political observations and personal experience as a Black son of the South, Charles set out to offer a call to action by which Black people can finally achieve equality, on their own terms.
So what will it take to make lasting change when small steps have so frequently failed? It’s going to take an unprecedented shift in power. The Devil You Know is a groundbreaking manifesto, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country. This book is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, offering a road map to true and lasting freedom.

The BAR Member Meeting
2024-09-21 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
The Other Life of Abraham Lincoln’s Barber is a biographical narrative of that tells the story of Solomon “Sweet” Johnson, an Underground Railroad conductor and Civil War Soldier who serves as a White House presidential guard and barber to President Lincoln before going on to a long career of public service with the US federal government and a leadership position in US black Masonry.
Set against the backdrop of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, it describes how young Solomon’s heroic rescue of three kidnapped black boys in Columbus, Ohio lead him into the military and ultimately to service as a White House presidential guard. A trained barber, when the president’s personal barber dies unexpectedly, Solomon is called on to fill the opening while continuing as a presidential guard.
Sensitive war-time conversations between Lincoln and his cabinet members overheard by Solomon as he shaves and cuts the president’s hair shape the young guard’s views on public service and the nation’s continuing failure to live out the fundamental principle of its Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. The relationship he forms with the beleaguered war-time leader results in Solomon’s appointment as a Treasury Department clerk, the first black office worker in the history of the US government.
Energized by his trailblazing new responsibilities, and deeply troubled by the president’s assassination, Solomon leverages his government worker status and his Masonic leadership position in the battle to preserve the gains of Reconstruction in a nation rapidly sliding back into white supremacy after the death of the Great Emancipator.

The BAR Member Meeting
2024-11-16 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
The early 2020s will long be known as a period of racial reflection. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans of all backgrounds joined together in historic demonstrations in the streets, discussions in the workplace, and conversations at home about the financial gaps that remain between white and Black Americans. This deeply investigated book shows the scores of setbacks that have held the Black-white wealth gap in place—from enslavement to redlining to banking discrimination—and, ultimately, the reversals that occurred in the mid-2020s as the push for racial equity became a polarized political debate.
Fifteen Cents on the Dollar follows the lives of four Black Millennial professionals and a banking company founded to close the Black-white wealth gap. That company, known as Greenwood, a reference to the historic Black Wall Street district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, generated immense excitement and hope among people looking for new ways of business that might lead to greater equity. But the twists and turns of Greenwood’s journey also raise tough questions about what equality really means.
Seasoned journalist-academics Louise Story and Ebony Reed present a nuanced portrait of Greenwood’s founders—the entertainment executive Ryan Glover; the Grammy-winning rapper Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike; and the Civil Rights leader and two-term Atlanta mayor, Andrew Young—along with new revelations about their lives, careers, and families going back to the Civil War. Equally engaging are the stories of the lesser-known individuals—a female tech employee from rural North Carolina trying to make it in a big city; a rising leader at the NAACP whose father is in prison; an owner of a BBQ stand in Atlanta fighting to keep his home; and a Black man in a biracial marriage grappling with his roots when his father is shot by the police.
In chronicling these staggering injustices, Fifteen Cents on the Dollar shows why so little progress has been made on the wealth gap and provides insights Americans should consider if they want lasting change.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-01-18 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past.
Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media.
You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don’t need to accept the “whites only” theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn’t have to be.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-03-15 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
A new approach to understanding money and achieving financial fulfillment
Former Vice-Chairman of the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, John Hope Bryant, delivers an accessible and powerful resource for everyday Americans seeking to build a strong financial foundation. This book is an easy-to-read first step toward a fulfilling financial future, helping you understand your relationship to work and money, and a key component to untangling the surprisingly simple puzzle of personal finance.
With an insightful foreword by Doug McMillon, President and CEO of Walmart Inc., you’ll learn how to create wealth for yourself and your family, regardless of your educational or employment background, and how to establish a financial mindset that contributes to a sound future. You’ll also discover:

The answers to tough money questions, including the actual utility of new financial inventions like cryptocurrency
How to think about exchanging your time and effort for money and the conditions under which you should agree to work
Plain-English discussions of the principles of responsible long-term investing and how it differs from speculation

Acting as a critical pillar for those seeking to build a rock-solid financial foundation, Financial Literacy for All is a must-have book for working professionals, blue-collar workers, members of young families, and established businesspeople looking for a better, more secure future for themselves and the ones they care about.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-05-17 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.
The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.
In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?
That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.
Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-06-19 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual
A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food–and each other.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-07-19 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
In a world where misinformation distorts the essence of manhood and societal expectations push men into emotional incarceration, bestselling author and founder of the Cave of Adullam, Jason Wilson, offers a path to freedom.

The Man the Moment Demands will empower you to become the right man in every moment by embodying the ten characteristics of the comprehensive man: the Fighter, the Provider, the Leader, the Lover, the Nurturer, the Gentleman, the Friend, the Husband, the Father, and the Son. With The Man the Moment Demands you’ll learn how to

unpack the impact of your past and unlock the power to shape your future;

embrace transparency and express the full spectrum of your emotions while maintaining self-control;

evolve beyond the “alpha male” myth through example, not intimidation; and

answer the question “Who are you?” to strip away the facade and live authentically.

This is not just a transformative book; it’s a blueprint. A rite of passage for those ready to rise and rediscover what it truly means to be a man–authentically human. One that will empower you to be the man the moments demands.

ECPA BESTSELLER

The BAR Virtual Meeting - 8/21/25
2025-08-21 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual
THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

“Kai-Fu Lee believes China will be the next tech-innovation superpower and in AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, he explains why. Taiwan-born Lee is perfectly positioned for the task.”—New York Magazine

In this thought-provoking book, Lee argues powerfully that because of the unprecedented developments in AI, dramatic changes will be happening much sooner than many of us expected. Indeed, as the US-Sino AI competition begins to heat up, Lee urges the US and China to both accept and to embrace the great responsibilities that come with significant technological power.

Most experts already say that AI will have a devastating impact on blue-collar jobs. But Lee predicts that Chinese and American AI will have a strong impact on white-collar jobs as well. Is universal basic income the solution? In Lee’s opinion, probably not. But he provides a clear description of which jobs will be affected and how soon, which jobs can be enhanced with AI, and most importantly, how we can provide solutions to some of the most profound changes in the future of human history.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-09-20 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.”—Zadie Smith

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.

The BAR Member Meeting
2025-11-15 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
In this New York Times bestseller, Elie Mystal offers a brilliant takedown of ten shocking pieces of legislation that continue to perpetuate hate, racial bias, injustice, and inequality today-an urgent yet hopeful read for our current political climate
“Mystal is a grassroots legal superhero, and his superpower is the ability to explain to the masses in clear language the all-too-human forces at play behind the making of our laws.” –Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot StopIn Bad Law, the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution reimagines what our legal system, and society at large, could look like if we could move past legislation plagued by racism, misogyny, and corruption. Through accessible yet detailed prose and trenchant wit, Mystal argues that these egregiously awful laws–his “Bill of Wrongs”–continue to cause systematic and individual harm and should be repealed completely.
By exposing the flawed foundations of the rules we live by, and through biting humor and insight, Bad Law offers a crisp, pertinent take on:
abortion and the Hyde Amendment, and the role federal funding, or lack thereof, has played in depriving women of necessary health and reproductive care
immigration and illegal reentry, and the illusions that have been sold to us regarding immigration policy, reform, and whiteness at large
voter registration laws, and how the right to vote has become a moral issue, and ironically, antidemocratic
gun control and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and the extreme yet obvious dangers of granting immunity to gun manufacturers
But, as the man Samantha Bee calls “irrepressible and righteously indignant” and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls “the funniest lawyer in America,” points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a fierce, funny, and wholly original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.

The BAR Virtual Meeting - 12/18/25
2025-12-18 16:00 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Virtual
Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.
When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem—the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor.
The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown’s time, but also because of its inspiring message. Now with an introduction by Nathan McCall, here is the story about the one who “made it,” the boy who kept landing on his feet and grew up to become a man.
With millions of copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time—the definitive account of African-American youth in Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, and a seminal work of modern literature.

The BAR Member Meeting - 1/17/2026
2026-01-17 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
“In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ books may be unmatched.”—The New Yorker
From a celebrated, award-winning author, a modern classic about a young girl fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Margaret Atwood.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.
Includes a foreword by LeVar Burton and an afterword by N. K. Jemisin
Lauren’s story continues in The Parable of the Talents.

The BAR Member Meeting - 3/21/2026
2026-03-21 13:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
From a celebrated author, the thrilling sequel to The Parable of the Sower—a cautionary novel ahead of its time, perfect for fans of The Broken Earth trilogy.
In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction and ruin of everything she knew. Her peaceful community based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed, provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president. Under his rule, Lauren’s colony—a minority religious faction led by a young Black woman—becomes a target for the president’s reign of terror and oppression.
Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew. As she searches for answers, she struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.
“In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ books may be unmatched.”—The New Yorker

Thursday Night Read
2026-04-23 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Virtual
The Black Family Who Built America – the McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers by Cheryl McKissack Daniel with Nick Chiles.
sign up below: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScBKHnsmjWfG8DTKZk4Wyvms-8xjkicexF9dLTvayx1qOrwJQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Animal Farm by George Orwell.
2026-05-16 13:30 - 16:00 UTC | The LOVE Building, 4731 Grand River Ave, Detroit, MI, 48208, United States
Animal Farm is a sharp and timeless political allegory that explores power, leadership, and corruption. The story follows a group of farm animals who overthrow their human owner, hoping to build a society based on equality and fairness. What begins as a revolution for freedom slowly transforms into a system just as oppressive as the one they replaced.
Through characters like the ambitious pigs and the hardworking horse Boxer, Orwell reveals how easily ideals can be manipulated when power is concentrated in the hands of a few. The famous principle—“All animals are equal”—gradually becomes distorted, exposing the dangers of blind loyalty, propaganda, and unchecked authority.
At its core, Animal Farm is not just about politics—it’s about human nature. It challenges readers to think critically about leadership, question narratives, and recognize how quickly truth can be reshaped when people stop paying attention.

Thursday Night Read
2026-06-18 19:00 - 20:00 UTC
In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail…Terrifying.”—Wall Street Journal

There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the
United States.
Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

The wretched of the earth, by frantz fanon
2026-07-18 13:00 - 16:00 UTC
The Wretched of the Earth
By Frantz Fanon
Published in 1961, The Wretched of the Earth is Frantz Fanon’s powerful examination of colonialism, liberation, identity, and nation-building. Drawing from his experiences during the Algerian struggle for independence, Fanon explores the psychological and social damage caused by colonial rule and the challenges faced by societies seeking freedom.
Fanon argues that colonialism extends beyond political domination; it shapes how people see themselves and others. Through language, culture, and institutions, colonial systems create identities of “coloniser” and “colonised,” reinforcing relationships of power and subordination. These imposed identities influence both the oppressor and the oppressed, affecting personal and collective mental well-being.
The book also examines nationalism, revolutionary movements, and the role of intellectuals in social change. Fanon challenges traditional political thinking by arguing that successful liberation movements must engage those often overlooked by society, particularly the rural poor and marginalized populations. He believed these groups possessed the independence and determination necessary to challenge colonial structures and drive meaningful change.
One of the book’s most influential sections, “On National Culture,” emphasizes the responsibility of each generation to identify its mission and contribute to the advancement of its people. Fanon argues that true liberation requires not only political independence but also cultural renewal, self-awareness, and a commitment to building a just society.
More than six decades after its publication, The Wretched of the Earth remains a foundational text for discussions on power, identity, leadership, liberation, and the enduring effects of historical systems of domination.
