Chicago, Illinois - On April 4th, over 300 people attended a Community Conversation with Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows at the Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center as part of the One Book, One Chicago initiative. Mr. Fallows discussed his experiences covering the war in Iraq and the challenges involved in building a civil society there. He spoke about the difficulties of decisions involving war, and compared the situation in Iraq with the One Book selection, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The book, about the title character's life in a Siberian labor camp during the Stalin era, explores such Facing History and Ourselves' themes as maintaining human dignity and individual identity in the face of oppression, and the obligation to understand differing world views.

Facing History and Ourselves provided curricular support for the One Book, One Chicago initiative, and provided Facing History students from Walter Payton College Prep the opportunity to discuss the book with a school in Moscow.

Community Conversations [1] is a national speaker series offered by Facing History and The Allstate Foundation that examines issues of civic responsibility.