Book Beat’s Reading Group Selection for September is Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. The Reading Group will meet on Wednesday,October 3rd at 7pm inside the Goldfish Tea House (117 West 4th Street in Downtown Royal Oak). Reading Group selections are discounted 15% at Book Beat. All are welcome!

Joining us to discuss Mother Night is author and historian Gregory Sumner, whose recent book on Vonnegut is entitled Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut’s Life and Novels. Sumner is chair of history at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he has taught since 1993. He holds a doctorate in American history from Indiana University and is the author of Dwight Macdonald and the Politics Circle. He has been awarded summer fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has twice been William J. Fulbright Senior Lecturer at the Université di Roma Tre.

“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time

American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.