Brown Club of DC

We are having our next board meeting at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday, January 27, at 7pm.  Please contact Corey Lipow at clipow@gmail.com or Mary Yang at mqyang231@gmail.com if you are interested in attending.  Our board meetings are open to all alumni!

The Brown Book Club will meet on Sunday, February 9 to discuss Forty Autumns by Nina Willner (nonfiction, 416 pp, 2016). We’ll begin at 6PM with dinner, then go on to discussion. Please RSVP by Friday, February 7 by contacting the event organizer, who will provide location information. Mention any food allergies, and bring $6 – $8 for the meal.

“In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family—of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than forty years, and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Forty Autumns makes visceral the pain and longing of one family forced to live apart in a world divided by two. At twenty, Hanna escaped from East to West Germany. But the price of freedom—leaving behind her parents, eight siblings, and family home—was heartbreaking. Uprooted, Hanna eventually moved to America, where she settled down with her husband and had children of her own.

Growing up near Washington, D.C., Hanna’s daughter, Nina Willner became the first female Army Intelligence Officer to lead sensitive intelligence operations in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War. Though only a few miles separated American Nina and her German relatives—grandmother Oma, Aunt Heidi, and cousin, Cordula, a member of the East German Olympic training team—a bitter political war kept them apart.

In Forty Autumns, Nina recounts her family’s story—five ordinary lives buffeted by circumstances beyond their control. She takes us deep into the tumultuous and terrifying world of East Germany under Communist rule, revealing both the cruel reality her relatives endured and her own experiences as an intelligence officer, running secret operations behind the Berlin Wall that put her life at risk.

A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation, and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love—of five women whose spirits could not be broken, and who fought to preserve what matters most: family.

Forty Autumns is illustrated with dozens of black-and-white and color photographs.” – Amazon Book Review

“5 Principles for a Prosperous, Impactful Financial Life” with Zach Teutsch ’05, Founder, Values Added Financial

For most of us, there are easy things we aren’t doing that would make our financial lives more secure now and improve life for our future selves.  Zach Teutsch ’05 will share some simple and advanced principles to help with our financial decisions.  He will make an attempt to cover ground relevant to everyone in the audience, such as how to eliminate credit card debt, maximize the match in workplace retirement accounts, and save thousands of dollars in investment fees.  The floor will be open for questions at any time during the talk.

While this event is free of charge, we are suggesting a $5 donation, if possible, to support the Club’s programming and schedule of events.  RSVP today at this site!