Laurie Cowan Marion
A.B. cum laude, Bryn Mawr College, 1983
Ph.D. in philosophy, Emory University, 1996
Laurie has organized the Team Ivy Book Club since 2004 to provide a forum for well-educated people to read and discuss various types of literature, and also to provide an opportunity to engage in critical thinking and dialogue, and cultivate and sustain a liberal arts orientation among Team Ivy alumni..
Laurie herself has collaborated on an introductory philosophy textbook. And as a Fellow of the Global Dialogue Institute she published a paper in the UNESCO journal, Higher Education in Europe, about the Institute’s work with UNICEF to introduce Deep Dialogue/Critical Thinking™ to teachers in the primary schools in Indonesia.
As a parent-volunteer at the Atlanta International School, Laurie served on the committee that organized WorldFest 2007, the signature community event of AIS. She also participates in the French book club with other French-speaking parents at the school.
She says, "a liberal arts education forms the mind so that it appreciates timeless human values and makes it possible for individuals to express those values in a manner appropriate to their own time."
Meeting times & places can be found at www.teamivy.com under 'forum' and here is a list of some of our recent selections -
The Blind Side: In this book Michael Lewis combines an analysis of a significant development in football strategy with the story of one individual who had the right kind of physical abilities and talent to become an extremely valuable player because of this change in how the game is played. After quarterback Joe Theisman was severely injured on the field, coaches began to realize that the left tackle position was key to success in a passing game because the left tackle protects the quarterback’s blind side. Persons who could play this position well became some of the most valuable players, reflected in a huge increase in salary. A young black man named Michael Oher from one of the poorest sections of Memphis had the type of physique and talent to play this position, but he had no education. A wealthy white family adopted him and helped him achieve a level of education that enabled him to play left tackle for Ole Miss. This year he is a senior, and he will likely become a very highly paid player in the NFL because of his talents. Michael Lewis writes in a very readable style, and he excels at bringing complex analysis together with a good story to convey a critical understanding of one of America’s dominant cultural phenomena.
Gilead: This novel tells the story of John Ames, a preacher who has spent most of his life in Gilead, Iowa. When he is 76 years old, he writes a letter to his 7-year-old son to pass on his family and spiritual legacy. John Ames’s father and grandfather were both preachers; his grandfather had participated in John Brown’s abolitionist movement. Ames himself lived alone for many years after his first wife and newborn child died in childbirth, but in his sixties marries a young woman from his congregation. Because he has heart disease, Ames feels a sense of urgency to communicate to his son what he has found to be important in life. This novel is about the relationships of fathers and sons and offers deep insights about the human condition that can be appreciated regardless of one’s religious affiliation. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2005.
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories: The four stories in this book present different narrative experiments in which Tolstoy practices his art of evoking feelings to produce a common subjective unity with others. The first story, Family Happiness, is a first-person narrative from the point of view of a young woman addressing the question, "how should one live?" She makes a transition from seeking pleasure to learning to truly live for others when she has a child. The second story, The Death of Ivan Ilych, traces the life of a man from the administrative class whose every action is determined by bureaucracy, such that he never achieves full human agency. Obeying authority all his life results in a sort of paralysis of the will. The third story, The Kreutzer Sonata, is a narrative within a narrative about a man who kills his wife because of infidelity. The main character resembles the type of person one would find in a Dostoevsky novel, driven by passions and critical of current social mores. The fourth story, Hadji Murad, is about a man from the Caucasus mountains who takes different sides during the conflict between Chechen and Russian forces in 1851. Each time he changes sides, it is because of a desire for vengeance for something that was done either to him or to his family. Eventually he becomes a prisoner of the Russian forces, and Tolstoy shows his readers the operation of Russian society from the point of view of an outsider. Tolstoy's special skill is to present characters and situations that will evoke some emotional response in the reader. Many of his major insights about human nature and society appear on a smaller scale in these works.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: John LeCarré is considered by many to be the best author of spy novels, and this is one of his best. The main character, George Smiley, is a retired British intelligence officer. When suspicions arise that there is a mole in the upper ranks of the secret service, Smiley is asked to find out who it is. One of four high-ranking officers is working for Karla, the chief of the Soviet Covert Espionage Bureau. Smiley must operate completely undercover to avoid alerting anyone that there is any suspicion. The plot follows Smiley gathering very complex information and sifting through it, finally to discover the identity of the mole. LeCarré draws from personal experience in the foreign service and MI6 so that his novels authoritatively evoke the psychology of Cold War paranoia. His hero fully participates in that world, yet ultimately his best efforts create space for truth and decency to prevail.
The Shadow of the Wind: Originally written in Spanish, this novel tells a complex and mysterious story about a young man, Daniel Sempere, who discovers a rare novel by an obscure author, Julián Carax. Daniel’s father owns a bookstore, and one day in 1945 he takes Daniel to a warehouse called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Daniel finds the novel by Carax, and from this discovery he begins a quest for knowledge about the novelist and his works. One day in 1936, Carax’s dead body had been found in an alley in Barcelona, but no one ever knew how he died. While Daniel is learning about Carax, there is a disfigured man acquiring every book written by Carax and burning them. This person calls himself Lain Coubert, a name Carax had used in his novel to designate the devil. Daniel encounters many more characters on his quest, and events that may have seemed random or unfortunate at first begin to appear part of an insidious grand scheme. Adding to the suspense is the fact that Daniel’s life begins to appear more and more similar to Carax’s. Part thriller, part historical fiction, part passionate love story, Zafón’s bestseller has been compared to novels by Gabriel García Márquez, Umberto Eco, Victor Hugo and others.
You can reach Laurie at lcmarion@aol.com
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