The History Book Group will discuss Anne Applebaum’s “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956” at 6:30 p.m. Thurs. April 18^th on the 2^nd floor of the library. In “Iron Curtain,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated.

The Friday Book Group will meet at 2:00 p.m. Fri. April 26^th on the 2^nd floor of the library to discuss Kirk Wallace Johnson’s “The Feather Thief.” In June 2009, twenty-year-old Edwin Rist went to the Natural History Museum at Tring and stole hundreds of rare bird skins whose feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to those who shared his obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson learned about the heist and was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation.