Overview:

This is a book club exclusively for TigerDroppings posters with a primary focus on economics. Participants encompass a wide range of professional backgrounds and various levels of prior economics exposure. Read more about the club below - we look forward to a robust dialogue and new members joining at any time.

Why do this?

Reading a book in isolation does wonders for the intellect, but reading a book and then discussing it with folks who've also read it challenges views, aids comprehension, benefits from different interpretations/insights, and leads to an altogether more fruitful reading experience. In addition, the group setting and structured timeline should result in greater reading discipline, allowing the book club members to perhaps read more frequently than they otherwise would on their own.

Why economics?

The dismal science was intentionally selected as the guiding topic partly because of the importance of and general interest on this board in economics, but also because economics is really a patchwork of disciplines including business, finance, politics, history and other social sciences. This will allow us to tread into other areas as needed while keeping a core focus on economics so as to remain true to the book club's mandate. For instance, while the majority of the books read may relate purely to what can be understood as economics, one book may suggest a deeper understanding of a related historical context could be beneficial, and a book detailing that history may be chosen as the succeeding book even though it's more of a "history" book than an "economics" book.

How will we decide which books are read?

This is an economics book club, so the market (in our case, a majority vote of the members of the club) will dictate which books are read. To aid the process, members may provide a list of recommendations from time to time, but the majority vote will always dictate the final book that is selected.

How will this work?

In order for this to work, we'll need ample participation. If interested, respond to this post stating such. When you respond, also indicate how many hours per week you think you can dedicate to reading and a brief background (educational, professional and/or political) on yourself if you desire. These factors will guide us in how aggressive we are with our weekly reading assignments.

Also, in order to prompt discussion and keep the conversation moving along as fluidly as possible, I suggest we have a designated "moderator" for each book who has no formal responsibilities but is instead just asked to be active, ask a lot of questions, and try to be the one driving the discussion. This person would ideally be someone different each time.

Note we've also set up a group Goodreads account to keep track of everything. That account can be accessed with the username "TDbookclub225@gmail.com" and password "geauxtigers1" and is open for all to use.

Group Stats:

Below are some brief statistics of the book club's membership composition when it was first started in June of 2017.

Participants: 29

Target hours / week: 5

Starting out reading level: Intermediate

Professional backgrounds represented: business, energy, entrepreneurship, real estate, corporate finance, asset management, equity research, venture capital, business law, tax law, commercial banking, teaching, economics, engineering, accounting, management, sales, MBA studies, finance studies, commodity trading, agriculture, corporate development, military officer, medicine, teaching

Weighting of Books in Queue:

Trophy Room

1. Henry Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson

2. Thomas Sowell - Applied Economics

3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto

4. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind - The Smartest Guys in the Room

This post was edited on 9/30/17 at 10:01 am