League of Women Voters of Naperville

Tuesday Book Group - On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights
2023-10-24 19:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom Meeting
By Lawrence Goldstone. Our book groups are offered twice a month. Register for the 10/24 event.

Lower Your Carbon Footprint and Cast a Carbon Shadow: Meaningful Personal Climate Action
2023-11-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Join us for our November Ideas Forum!
If you’re worried about climate change, you probably want to take steps in your own life to reduce your carbon footprint.
Maybe you’ve already bought an electric vehicle or cut back on red meat. But what really has the most impact?
Cathy Clarkin, executive director of Accelerate Climate Solutions and co-chair of Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force (NEST) will address various ways you can reduce carbon pollution from your home and lifestyle, and share information on available incentives to save you money.
She’ll also discuss the concept of a carbon shadow – how you can look beyond your own personal actions to create broader change to address the climate crisis.

This event is free, but please register.

About our speaker: Cathy Clarkin is an education facilitator, environmental chemist, co-founder of Accelerate Climate Solutions, as well as co-chair of the Naperville Environment and Sustainability Task Force.

Friday Book Group - The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It
2023-11-17 12:30 - 13:30 | Zoom Meeting
By Russ Feingold & Peter Prindiville. Our book groups are offered twice a month. Register for the 11/17 event.

Tuesday Book Group - The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About It
2023-11-21 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
By Russ Feingold & Peter Prindiville. Our book groups are offered twice a month. Register for the 11/21 event.

Meet Dr. Anita Thomas, the 111th President of North Central College
2023-12-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Join us for our monthly Ideas Forum meeting via Zoom to meet Dr. Anita Thomas!
Dr. Thomas is the first woman and the first person of color to serve as North Central College’s president. At her installation ceremony, she said, “Since its founding, North Central College opened its doors wide to educate both men and women for service, to move for what is right and for the importance of social justice. Given that history, it is fitting and appropriate that the College has selected a woman of color to lead.” Join us as we discuss the importance of North Central College to our community and how she sees her role.
Read more about Dr. Thomas.
This event is free, but please register.

Friday Book Club - A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
2024-01-19 12:30 - 13:30
by Timothy Eagan
Register for our January Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan’s rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them.
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.

Tuesday Book Club - A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
2024-01-23 19:00 - 20:00

March Primary Candidate Forum
2024-01-30 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Are you Rev’d up for the March 19th Election? Register for the 11th Congressional District Candidate Forum

Make plans to join us to learn about candidates for the 11th Congressional District seat before you cast your vote on March 19th.
The Republican Candidate Forum will be held virtually via Zoom on January 30th at 7:00 pm. Candidates Jerry Evans, Susan Hathaway-Altman, and O. Kent Mercado are expected to attend.
Register for the Republican Candidate Forum

Due to legislative calendar uncertainty, the Democratic Primary forum between Rep. Bill Foster and Qasim Rashid will not occur on January 31st, as previously reported.

We encourage all voters in the 11th Congressional District to visit VOTE411.org and the candidate websites to learn more about them.
The forum will be streamed live on Facebook, so be sure to follow us for more details!
Are you in the 11th Congressional District? Check this map!

Friday Book Club - Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation
2024-02-16 12:30 - 13:30
by John Lewis
Register for our February Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
*National Bestseller*
A brilliant and empowering collection of final reflections and words of wisdom from venerable civil rights champion, the late Congressman John Lewis at the end of his remarkable life.
Congressman John Lewis was a paragon of the Civil Rights Movement and political leadership for decades. A hero we won’t soon forget, Lewis was a beacon of hope and a model of humility whose invocation to “good trouble” continues to inspire millions across our nation. In his last months on earth, even while battling cancer, he dedicated time to share his memories, beliefs, and advice—exclusively immortalized in these pages—as a message to the generations to come.
Organized by topic ranging from justice, courage, faith, mentorship, and forgiveness to the protests and the pandemic, and many more besides, Carry On collects the late Congressman’s thoughts for readers to draw on whenever they are in need of guidance. John Lewis had great confidence in our future, even as he died in the midst of one of our country’s most challenging years to date. With this book, he performs that crucial passing of the baton, empowering us to live up to the legacy he has left us with his perseverance, dedication, profound insight, and unwavering ability to see the good in life.

Tuesday Book Club - Carry On: Reflections for a New Generation
2024-02-20 19:00 - 20:00

11th District Democratic Primary Candidate Forum
2024-02-28 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Are you Rev’d up for the March 19th Election? Register for the 11th Congressional District Democratic Primary Candidate Forum
Make plans to join us to learn about candidates for the 11th Congressional District seat before you cast your vote on March 19th.

The Democratic Candidate Forum will be held virtually via Zoom on February 28th at 7:00 pm. Candidates Rep. Bill Foster and Qasim Rashid are expected to attend.
Register for the Candidate Forum
We encourage all voters in the 11th Congressional District to visit VOTE411.org and the candidate websites to learn more about them.
The forum will be streamed live on Facebook, so be sure to follow us for more details!
Are you in the 11th Congressional District? Check this map!

A Panel Discussion with Almost and New Voters
2024-03-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Our future depends on our youth!
Our monthly Ideas Forum this month is a panel discussion with students from the Naperville North High School Junior State of America. They’ll be talking about voting and youth in government.
Let’s find out what they are thinking!
Junior State of America (JSA) is a nationwide nonprofit, nonpartisan political debate and activism student-led organization in high schools. JSA aims to help high school students acquire leadership skills and the knowledge necessary to be effective debaters and civic participants.
It helps them experience the power of politics, the challenges and responsibilities of leadership, and the journey towards a better democracy.
This event is free, but please register at https://rebrand.ly/march13-ideas.

Friday Book Club - Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
2024-03-15 12:30 - 13:30
by Liz Cheney
Register for our March Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
A gripping first-hand account from inside the halls of Congress as Donald Trump and his enablers betrayed the American people and the Constitution–leading to the violent attack on our Capitol on January 6th, 2021—by the House Republican leader who dared to stand up to it.
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor , she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face.

Tuesday Book Club - Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
2024-03-19 19:00 - 20:00

Misinformation and Disinformation - Threats to Democracy
2024-04-10 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Join us for our April Ideas Forum!
The proliferation of misinformation and disinformation has emerged as a significant threat to our democratic processes and informed decision-making of the electorate.
We make important decisions based on what we hear on social media and in the news. When we are unable to distinguish between truth and mis/disinformation, it can cause confusion and misunderstandings, leaving a generalized sense that “you can’t believe anything anymore.”
Mis/disinformation ultimately undermines trust in legitimate information sources, increases polarization in our society, and leads to misinformed decisions. Learn:

The difference between misinformation and disinformation
How to spot it
What you can do about it

This event is free, but please register.
Our presenter is Barb Laimins, a former public school civics teacher and civic mentor liaison to social studies teachers in Illinois for the McCormick Foundation. She currently serves on the Illinois General Assembly Rank Choice Voting Task Force, the planning team for the LWV/National Institute for Civic Discourse, and co-chair of the LWVIL Mis/Disinformation Task Force.

Friday Book Club - Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
2024-04-19 12:30 - 13:30
by Candice Millard
Register for our April Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.
But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what happened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in turmoil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his condition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.
Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.

Tuesday Book Club - Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
2024-04-23 19:00 - 20:00

Is It for You? Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Ranked Choice Voting in the US
2024-05-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
Join us on May 8th, at 7 pm, for our monthly Ideas Forum, Is it for You? Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Ranked Choice Voting in the US.

Canvassers are currently collecting signatures to gather support for a binding referendum on the Naperville April 2025 ballot, asking voters if they want to use ranked choice voting to elect the city’s mayor and council. Ranked Choice Voting is an alternative electoral system that allows voters to rank candidates by preference.

Dr. Chod of North Central College will lead a discussion highlighting the advantages and complexities of adopting ranked choice voting (RCV) in the U.S. electoral system. Topics covered include how RCV can increase voter representation, promote consensus, and decrease voters’ “wasted vote” approach. The discussion will also address the logistical hurdles, voter confusion, and structural changes required for successful RCV implementation. Ultimately, the talk is designed for attendees to answer the question: Is RCV for you?

Our presenter, Suzanne Chod, received her B.S. in Political Science from Bowling Green State University in 2002 and her PhD in the same field from Michigan State University in 2007. Dr. Chod joined the NCC faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2010. She teaches classes in American political institutions, parties, campaigns, and elections and courses focused on women in American politics and research methods. She is currently the Coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and a member of the President’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force.

This event is free, but please register here.

Sip, Shop and Celebrate Spring
2024-05-10 13:00 - 17:00 | J. McLaughlin, 216 S. Main Street, Naperville, IL, 60540, United States
Looking for gifts or outfits for Mother’s Day, graduations, or other upcoming events? Visit J McLaughlin in downtown Naperville on May 10, 2024, to see what they have in store. A portion of your purchase will benefit LWV Naperville.

Friday Book Club: Madam Secretary: A Memoir
2024-05-17 12:30 - 13:30
by Madeleine K. Albright
Register for our May Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
In this outspoken and much-praised memoir, the highest-ranking woman in American history shares her remarkable story and provides an insider’s view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence. A national bestseller on its first publication in 2003, Madam Secretary combines warm humor with profound insights and personal testament with fascinating additions to the historical record.

Friday Book Club: Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir
2024-06-21 12:30 - 13:30
by Tammy Duckworth
Register for our June Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
In this New York Times bestselling book, learn the incredible story of Illinois senator and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth and see what inspired her to follow the path that made her who she is today.​
In Every Day Is a Gift , Tammy Duckworth takes readers through the amazing—and amazingly true—stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth’s U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift , that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns.
The biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war—all before the age of 16. As a child, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. As a teenager, she sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii. Through these experiences, she developed a fierce resilience that would prove invaluable in the years to come.
Duckworth joined the Army, becoming one of a handful of female helicopter pilots at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She served eight months in Iraq before an insurgent’s RPG shot down her helicopter, an attack that took her legs—and nearly took her life. She then spent thirteen months recovering at Walter Reed, learning to walk again on prosthetic legs and planning her return to the cockpit. But Duckworth found a new mission after meeting her state’s senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. After winning two terms as a U.S. Representative, she won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. And she and her husband Bryan fulfilled another dream when she gave birth to two daughters, becoming the first sitting senator to give birth.
From childhood to motherhood and beyond, Every Day Is a Gift is the remarkable story of one of America’s most dedicated public servants.

Tuesday Book Club: Every Day Is a Gift: A Memoir
2024-06-25 19:00 - 20:00

Friday Book Club: Romney: A Reckoning
2024-07-19 12:30 - 13:30
by McKay Coppins
Register for our July Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
A remarkably illuminating biography of the political maverick, filled with revelations and written with his full cooperation by an award-winning writer at The Atlantic.
Authoritative, personal, and vividly written, Romney: A Reckoning is a revealing account of Mitt Romney’s life.
Based on dozens of exclusive interviews with Romney, his family, and his inner circle as well as hundreds of pages of his personal journals, this book offers a rare, portrait of a politician who in recent years has been at the center of our nation’s most defining political dramas.

Tuesday Book Club: Romney: A Reckoning
2024-07-23 19:00 - 20:00

August Ideas Forum: An Insider's Look at VOTE411
2024-08-14 19:00 | Zoom Meeting
Join us for the August Ideas Forum on August 14th at 7:00 pm on Zoom.

If the past month is any guide, it promises to be a “hot hot hot” election season. The League’s VOTE411 is a key public service that helps voters learn about the candidates.
Be sure to catch this discussion with the national league’s VOTE411 coordinator Megan Brown as she gives us an insider’s look at the task of providing information on every possible candidate.
She’ll talk to us about what online guides offer every voter. This event is free, but please register!

Friday Book Club: The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
2024-08-16 12:30 - 13:30
by Kirstin Downey
Register for our August Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Based on eight years of research, extensive archival materials, new documents, and exclusive access to Perkins’s family members and friends, this biography is the first complete portrait of a devoted public servant with a passionate personal life, a mother who changed the landscape of American business and society.
Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, she spearheaded the fight to improve the lives of America’s working people while juggling her own complex family responsibilities. Perkins’s ideas became the cornerstones of the most important social welfare and legislation in the nation’s history, including unemployment compensation, child labor laws, and the forty-hour work week.
Arriving in Washington at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins pushed for massive public works projects that created millions of jobs for unemployed workers. She breathed life back into the nation’s labor movement, boosting living standards across the country. As head of the Immigration Service, she fought to bring European refugees to safety in the United States. Her greatest triumph was creating Social Security.
Written with a wit that echoes Frances Perkins’s own, award-winning journalist Kirstin Downey gives us a riveting exploration of how and why Perkins slipped into historical oblivion, and restores Perkins to her proper place in history.

Tuesday Book Club: The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience
2024-08-20 19:00 - 20:00

How Disabled People Vote (It's Not Always Easy)
2024-09-11 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Meeting
When the average person heads to the polls, it’s usually an easy ‘in-vote-out’ process. However, even getting to a polling place can be difficult if you’re differently-abled.
Join us at September’s Ideas Forum on 9/11 at 7:00 pm via Zoom to learn about barriers and services available.
How do you fill out a ballot privately if you’re blind, unable to write, or can’t reach the polling booth’s desktop? Disability Voting Rights Week, which aims to raise awareness about the obstacles to voting for the disabled community, is September 9-13.
This event is free, but please register.
Our panelists for this program include:
Brandy Johnson – Board for the Illinois Chapter of the United Spinal Association
Professor Johnson is a decorated and widely published Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University Simmons Law School. While in private practice, she specialized in Illinois and Missouri workers’ compensation law and appellate advocacy and gained experience in premises liability, personal injury, product liability, and other areas of insurance defense. She serves on the board for the Illinois Chapter of the United Spinal Association.
Patti Gregory-Chang – National Federation of the Blind
Patti Gregory-Chang graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1988 and worked in the City of Chicago Law Department for twenty-eight years. In 2016, Patti embarked on a second career, accepting the position of Director of Outreach for the National Federation of the Blind, the largest organization of blind people in the world. She is currently the Second Vice President of the Illinois affiliate of the NFB. She has served on its National Board of Directors and worked as national scholarship committee chair for many years.
Rebecca Leder – Will County Clerk’s Office
Rebecca Leder has served Will County residents for almost 10 years as the senior election analyst at the Will County Clerk’s Office. She assists and supervises elections, administers the Will County Clerk’s website, and educates voters on social media and at events. Rebecca serves on the board of Bridges to a New Day, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence and providing therapy for those who cannot afford it.
Before the meeting, visit the American Association of People with Disabilities website to learn more about its mission.
By the way, is there a topic you’d like to learn about at upcoming Ideas Forums? If so, please send your ideas to lwvnaperville.programming@gmail.com.

Friday Book Club: A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story AND America, a Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity(optional)
2024-09-20 12:30 - 13:30
by Raphael Warnock
Register for our September Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
On the heels of his historic election to the United States Senate, Raphael G. Warnock shares his remarkable spiritual and personal journey.
“Sparkling… a narrative of an extraordinary life, from impoverished beginnings in Savannah to his arrival on Capitol Hill. Along the way, he reflects with considerable candor and insight on the meaning and importance of faith, truth-telling and political and social redemption.”— The New York Times Book Review
“A compelling, insightful memoir that details an extraordinary journey.” — Bryan Stevenson
Senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock occupies a singular place in American life. As senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and now as a senator from Georgia, he is the rare voice who can call out the uncomfortable truths that shape contemporary American life and, at a time of division , summon us all to a higher moral ground.
Senator Warnock grew up in the Kayton Homes housing projects in Savannah, the eleventh of twelve children. His dad was a World War II veteran, and as a teenager his mom picked tobacco and cotton in rural Georgia. Both were Pentecostal preachers. After graduating from Morehouse College, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, Senator Warnock studied for a decade at Union Theological Seminary while serving at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. At thirty-five, he became the senior pastor at Ebenezer, where Dr. King had preached and served.
In January 2021, Senator Warnock won a runoff election that flipped control of the Senate at one of the most pivotal moments in recent American history. He is the first Black senator from Georgia, only the eleventh Black senator in American history, and just the second Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. As he said in his maiden speech from the well of the senate, Senator Warnock’s improbable journey reflects the ongoing toggle between the pain and promise of the American story.
A powerful preacher and a leading voice for voting rights and democracy, Senator Warnock has a once-in-a-generation gift to inspire and lead us forward. A Way Out of No Way tells his remarkable story for the first time.
*OPTIONAL*
by Tim Scott
From Goodreads:
The American Dream isn’t a thing of the past, but a miracle of the present.
Now more than ever it’s easy to focus on the divisions that plague our nation. It may seem as if our best days are behind us, but bestselling author and senator Tim Scott believes we have yet to realize the fullness of our identity. We are in the midst of a story that’s still unfolding. And beautiful opportunities await.
In this powerful memoir, Scott recounts formative events of his life alongside the inspiring stories of other Americans who have risen above hardship and embodied the values that make our nation great. Together these personal and inspirational accounts call readers to embrace
the mountaintops as well as the valleys on the journey to a more perfect union;a path marked by optimism, hope, and resolve; anda future characterized by endurance, unity, and strength.
Both a clear-eyed reckoning with our nation’s failures and an ode to its accomplishments, America, a Redemption Story issues a clarion call for all of us to rise courageously to the greatness within our reach.

Tuesday Book Club: A Way Out of No Way: A Memoir of Truth, Transformation, and the New American Story AND America, a Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity(optional)
2024-09-24 19:00 - 20:00
Register for our September Book Club meeting!
From Goodreads:
On the heels of his historic election to the United States Senate, Raphael G. Warnock shares his remarkable spiritual and personal journey.
“Sparkling… a narrative of an extraordinary life, from impoverished beginnings in Savannah to his arrival on Capitol Hill. Along the way, he reflects with considerable candor and insight on the meaning and importance of faith, truth-telling and political and social redemption.”— The New York Times Book Review
“A compelling, insightful memoir that details an extraordinary journey.” — Bryan Stevenson
Senator Reverend Raphael G. Warnock occupies a singular place in American life. As senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, and now as a senator from Georgia, he is the rare voice who can call out the uncomfortable truths that shape contemporary American life and, at a time of division , summon us all to a higher moral ground.
Senator Warnock grew up in the Kayton Homes housing projects in Savannah, the eleventh of twelve children. His dad was a World War II veteran, and as a teenager his mom picked tobacco and cotton in rural Georgia. Both were Pentecostal preachers. After graduating from Morehouse College, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, Senator Warnock studied for a decade at Union Theological Seminary while serving at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. At thirty-five, he became the senior pastor at Ebenezer, where Dr. King had preached and served.
In January 2021, Senator Warnock won a runoff election that flipped control of the Senate at one of the most pivotal moments in recent American history. He is the first Black senator from Georgia, only the eleventh Black senator in American history, and just the second Black senator from the South since Reconstruction. As he said in his maiden speech from the well of the senate, Senator Warnock’s improbable journey reflects the ongoing toggle between the pain and promise of the American story.
A powerful preacher and a leading voice for voting rights and democracy, Senator Warnock has a once-in-a-generation gift to inspire and lead us forward. A Way Out of No Way tells his remarkable story for the first time.
*OPTIONAL*
From Goodreads:
The American Dream isn’t a thing of the past, but a miracle of the present.
Now more than ever it’s easy to focus on the divisions that plague our nation. It may seem as if our best days are behind us, but bestselling author and senator Tim Scott believes we have yet to realize the fullness of our identity. We are in the midst of a story that’s still unfolding. And beautiful opportunities await.
In this powerful memoir, Scott recounts formative events of his life alongside the inspiring stories of other Americans who have risen above hardship and embodied the values that make our nation great. Together these personal and inspirational accounts call readers to embrace
the mountaintops as well as the valleys on the journey to a more perfect union;a path marked by optimism, hope, and resolve; anda future characterized by endurance, unity, and strength.
Both a clear-eyed reckoning with our nation’s failures and an ode to its accomplishments, America, a Redemption Story issues a clarion call for all of us to rise courageously to the greatness within our reach.
