FoPH Book Group

The Round House [fiction]
By Louise Erdrich
2012-02 – Harper Perennial

2012 National Book Award for Fiction

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Friday, April 26, 2024 6:30 Spice Pepper Garden … More
A Shadow Under the Rock: A Personal Account of New England Archaeology
By Peter Waksman
2023-06 – Independently published

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Tuesday, March 5, 2024 via Zoom… More
History of the Nashobah Praying Indians: Doings, Sufferings, Survival, and Triumph
By Dan Boudillion
2023-03 – Raven House

Check Minuteman Library Network

Public book discussion (FoPH October event): Monday, October 16, 2023… More
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
By Ned Blackhawk
2023-04 – Yale University Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Thursday, September 14, 2023 at Spice Pepper Garden… More
Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
By Andrés Reséndez
2007-11 – Basic Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Wednesday, March 22, 2023 via Zoom… More
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
By Pekka Hämäläinen
2022-09 – Liveright

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Thursday, January 19, 2023 via Zoom… More
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
By Thomas King
2013-09 Univ of Minnesota Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Wednesday, November 30, 2022 via Zoom… More
(selected from previous year’s reading)
A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History
By Robert G Goodby
2021-10 – Peter E. Randall Publisher

Check Minuteman Library Network

Public book discussion (FoPH October event): October 24, 2022 at the Acton Memorial Library … More
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity [part 2]
By David Graeber & David Wengrow
2021-11 – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Tuesday, September 20, 2022 via Zoom… More
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity [part 1]
By David Graeber & David Wengrow
2021-11 – Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Thursday, July 21, 2022 via Zoom… More
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
By Jennifer Raff
2022-02 – Twelve

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Wednesday, May 25, 2022 via Zoom… More
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
By Eric H Cline
2021-02 (revised edition) Princeton University Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Thursday, March 24, 2022 via Zoom… More
A Deep Presence: 13,000 Years of Native American History
By Robert G Goodby
2021-10 – Peter E. Randall Publisher

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Tuesday, February 8, 2022 via Zoom… More
Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past
By Sarah Parcak
2019-07 – Henry Holt and Co.

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion: Wednesday, December 1, 2021 via Zoom… More
Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War
By Lisa Brooks
2019-02 – Yale University Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Tuesday, July 6, 2021, 6:00 p.m. at Sydney’s house. Meeting included discussion of Memory Lands.…More
Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast
By Christine M. Delucia
2019-11 Yale University Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Tuesday, July 6, 2021, 6:00 p.m. at Sydney’s house. Meeting included discussion of Our Beloved …More
The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
By Mark W. Moffett
2019-04 – Basic Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Tuesday, May 4, 2021, 7:00 p.m. via Zoom …More
Kindred: 300,000 Years of Neanderthal Life and Afterlife
By Rebecca Wragg Sykes
2020-10 – Bloomsbury SIGMA

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 7:00 p.m. via Zoom teleconference …More
Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
By Charles King
2019-08 – Doubleday Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Thursday, November 19, 2020, 7:00 p.m. via Zoom teleconference …More
The Day Before America: Changing Nature of a Continent
By William H. MacLeish
1994-09 – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Monday, May 18, 2020, 7-8:30 p.m. via Zoom teleconference. Discussion continued on Thursday, July 16, 2020, 6:30 p.m. via Zoom …More
This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
By David Silverman
2019-11 – Bloomsbury Publishing

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Thursday, March 5, 2020, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton.
Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, a new look at the Plymouth colony’s founding events, told for the first time with Wampanoag people at the heart of the …More
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Indian America from 1890 to the Present
By David Treuer
2019-01 – Riverhead Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Awards:
National Book Awards (2018)

Book Discussion: Thursday, January 9, 2020, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton …More
The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England, 1630-1750: A Historical Geography
By Dennis A. Connole
2000-12 – McFarland & Company

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Monday, November 18, 2019, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton
The North American Indian group known as the Nipmucks was situated in south-central New England and, during the early years of Puritan colonization, remained on …More
Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America
By Craig Childs
2018-5 – Pantheon Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, October 9, 2019, 7:00 p.m. at Acton Memorial Library (repeat of January 2019 discussion). …More
Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America
By David Hackett Fischer
1989-10 – Oxford University Press, USA

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) …More
Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places
By Peter Nabokov
2006-02 – Viking Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton …More
Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984
By William S. Simmons
1986-03 – University Press of New England

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, November 14, 2018, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton.
Legends, folktales, and traditions of New England Indians reflect historical events and a changing Indian identity over a 365-year period. … More
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story
By Douglas Preston
2017-01 – Grand Central Publishing

Check Minuteman Library Network

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the …More
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
2014-09 – Beacon Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

2015 Recipient of the American Book Award

The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples
Today in the United States, there are more than … More
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
By Yuval Noah Harari
2015-02 – Harper

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, August 1, 2018, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road (Route 2A) Acton …More
Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian
By Ray A. Williamson
Illustrator Snowden Hodges
2012-05 – University of Oklahoma Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, May 23, 2018, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Red Raven Restaurant (‘The Nest’ on the second floor), 3 Nagog Park, Acton …More
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
By Nicholas Wade
2006-05 – Penguin Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Thursday, November 30, 2017, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Linda’s house, Acton (note change of usual venue). Pot luck.
Based on a groundbreaking synthesis of recent scientific …More
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
By Colin Woodard
2011-09 – Viking Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Monday, October 23, 2017, 7:00-8:30 p.m. at the Acton Memorial Library
Woodard leads readers on a journey through the history of this fractured continent, and the rivalries and alliances between its component nations, which conform to neither state nor international boundaries. He illustrates and explains …More
The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
By David Lewis-Williams
2002-11 – Thames & Hudson

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, September 13, 2017, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Red Raven Restaurant (‘The Nest’ on the second floor), 3 Nagog Park, Acton. …More
The Settlement Of The Americas A New Prehistory
By Thomas D. Dillehay
2000-05 – Basic Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at the home of Sydney in Harvard, MA.
Note that book is c. 2000, 1st ed. –more recent edition-dates are only re-printings. …More
The Memory Code: The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments
By Lynne Kelly
2017-1 – Pegasus Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Red Raven Restaurant, 3 Nagog Park (off Rt. 2A), Acton, MA 01720. …More
Breaking the Maya Code
By Michael D. Coe
1999-10 – Thames & Hudson

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden Restaurant, 36 Great Road, Acton, MA 01720.
Coe’s classic inside story of one of the major intellectual breakthroughs of our time–the last decoding of an ancient …More
Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
By William Carlsen
2016-4 – William Morrow & Company

Check Minuteman Library Network

The acclaimed chronicle of the discovery of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya. Includes the history of the major Maya sites, including Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tuloom, Copan, and more. …More
Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid
Edited By Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney
2006-06 – University of Massachusetts Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion with Co-Author Kevin Sweeney :Sunday, October 23, 2016, 2:30-4:00 p.m. at the Acton Memorial Library
This volume draws together an unusually rich body of original sources that tell the story of the 1704 French and Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, from different vantage points. Texts range from one …More
Vikings: Vikings
By William F. Fitzhugh
Edited by Elisabeth Ward and William F. Fitzhugh

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion, Wednesday September 14, 2016, 6:30-8:00 p.m., Filho’s Great Road, 59 Great Rd., Acton. …More
Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization
By Roger Kennedy
1994-08 – Free Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Rapscallion Table and Tap, 5 Strawberry Hill Road, Acton.
Few realize that some of the oldest, …More
Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile
By John Hanson Mitchell
1997-03 – Counterpoint LLC

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Rapscallion Table and Tap, 5 Strawberry Hill Road, Acton (note new location).
Ceremonial time’ is the moment when past, present and future can be perceived simultaneously. In this, John Mitchell’s most magical book, first published in …More
Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi
By Timothy R. Pauketat
2009-08 – Viking Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Larry’s house in Acton (note change of usual venue). …More
American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England
By Katherine Grandjean
2015-01 – Harvard

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England, by Katherine Grandjean. Tuesday, October 13, 2015, 7:30-9:00 p.m. at Acton Memorial Library (note change from usual …More
The Chaco Meridian: One Thousand Years of Political and Religious Power in the Ancient Southwest
By Stephen H. Lekson
2015-03 – Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Thursday, September 17, 2015, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Linda’s house in Acton (note change of usual venue). …More
House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest
By Craig Childs
2007-02 – Little Brown and Company

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: House of rain: tracking a vanished civilization across the American Southwest. Thursday, May 14, 2015, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden restaurant at 36 Great Road (Route 2A) in East Acton.
The greatest unsolved mystery of the American Southwest is the fate of the Anasazi, the native peoples who in the eleventh century …More
Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
By Daniel K. Richter
2001-12 – Harvard University Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Thursday, March 19, 2015, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden restaurant at 36 Great Road (Route 2A) in East Acton.
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded …More
Who Discovered America?: The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas
By Gavin Menzies and Ian Hudson
2013-10 – William Morrow & Company

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Who Discovered America?: The Untold History of the Peopling of the Americas. Thursday, January 29, 2015, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden restaurant at 36 Great Road (Route 2A) in East Acton.
Greatly expanding on his blockbuster 1421, distinguished historian Gavin Menzies uncovers the complete untold history of how …More
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
By William Cronon
Foreword by John Demos
Afterword by William Cronon
2003-09 – Hill & Wang

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion: Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Book Discussion Wednesday, December 10, 2014, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Spice Pepper Garden restaurant at 36 Great Road (Route 2A) in East Acton.
Lauded on Amazon.com as “The book that launched environmental …More
Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts
By Daniel R. Mandell
1996-05 – University of Nebraska Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion Monday, October 27, 2014, 7:30-9:00 p.m. at Acton Memorial Library [This book discussion is a part of Acton’s annual Massachusetts Archeology Month program. Please note the change from our usual venue and day].
The book, by historian Daniel R. Mandell is a detailed yet readable look at the development of Native American communities in our …More
Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture
By Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley
Foreword by Michael B. Collins
2012-02 – University of California Press

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion Monday, September 22, 2014, 6:30-8:00 pm at Spiceppper Garden, a nice Chinese restaurant on Route 2A in East Acton. [Please note the change from our usual Thursday day].
According to a long-accepted story, the first mammal hunters entered North America from Asia some 12,000 years ago via a …More
Trespassing: An Inquiry Into the Private Ownership of Land
By John Hanson Mitchell
1999-06 – Counterpoint LLC

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion Thursday, June 19, 2014, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Bella Famiglia, an Italian restaurant on Route 2A in East Acton.
John Mitchell is a noted local author who lives in Littleton and is editor of the award winning magazine, Sanctuary, published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. He has written several books, with subject matter …More
Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization
By James W. Mavor Jr. and Byron E. Dix
1989-11 – Inner Traditions International

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion Thursday, April 17, 2014, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Bella Famiglia, an Italian restaurant on Route 2A in East Acton.
Archaeoastronomy has received much public and professional attention in recent years, especially in relation to Mesoamerican civilizations. This book attempts to establish that rock piles and other stone formations in New England are …More
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
By Jill Lepore
1998-01 – Alfred A. Knopf

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussion Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014, 6:30-8:00 p.m. at Bella Famiglia, a nice Italian restaurant on Route 2A in East Acton.
King Philip’s War, the excruciating racial war – colonists against Indians – that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages …More
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
By Charles C. Mann
2006-10 – Vintage

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book discussion Thursday, January 9, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. at Bella Famiglia Restaurant, Route 2A in East Acton
In this work, Mann, an established science writer, assembles recent work by archaeologists and anthropologists which challenges many of the common conceptions of our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. …More
Caleb’s Crossing
By Geraldine Brooks
2011-05 – Viking Books

Check Minuteman Library Network

Awards:
Chautauqua Prize (2011), Christianity Today Book Award (2011), Langum Prize for Historical Literature (2010), New England Book Award (2010)

Book discussion Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. at the Acton Memorial Library.
Inspired by true events, this novel tells a story of cultural understanding that unfolds in Massachusetts in the mid-1600s around the young daughter of a Calvinist minister and the son of a Wampanoag chieftain. …More
The Farfarers: A New History of North America
By Farley Mowat
2011-04 – Skyhorse Publishing

Check Minuteman Library Network

Book Discussionn Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. at Bella Famiglia Restaurant, Route 2A in East Acton.
Mowat, a well-known Canadian environmentalist and writer, creates an engaging historical novel which details an alternative version of pre-Viking contacts with North America. …More