The book selected for September 14, the first meeting of the new season, is The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer. Another tale straight from “real” headlines, this is the little-known story of the efforts made to save some of the world’s oldest and most precious manuscripts from their seizure by the Taliban. Many of the documents had been literally buried for centuries in Mali; their discovery and recovery, the building of new repositories for them, the remarkable contents of the writings – primarily Muslim, and the risks involved in safely removing them once again constitute a fascinating, often gripping, always engrossing adventure tale.

Note that September 14 is the second Thursday in the month. This is the only time that, due to religious observances, we will meet on a day other than our usual third Thursday of the month.