Meriwether Academy’s Chattanooga Men’s Book Club Reads Plutarch to Form Character

A free men’s book club meeting every Tuesday at 7 AM in downtown Chattanooga reads Plutarch’s Lives, drawing about 20 men to its first meeting.

CHATTANOOGA, TN, UNITED STATES, October 22, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A new men’s book club in Chattanooga is asking a question that has occupied readers for nearly two thousand years: what makes a man worth imitating? Every Tuesday at 7 AM, before the workday begins, members of the Chattanooga chapter of the Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club gather at a downtown coffee shop to read and debate Plutarch’s Lives, one ancient biography each week.

The chapter, launched on September 15, 2026 by Meriwether Academy, a Nashville-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, drew about 20 men to its first meeting. The group opened with Plutarch’s Life of Caesar and has since read the lives of Phocion, Cato the Younger and the Spartan reformers Agis and Cleomenes, discussing how each man’s virtues and vices shaped his rise and fall. The club is free to attend, and no background in the classics is required.

The chapter is led by Dr. Joshua Trevino, a Fellow of Meriwether Academy who holds a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Dallas and has taught in classical schools. Members read the Dryden translation of the Lives, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, following a published calendar that runs one Life per week through the first week of January 2027.

The format is deliberately simple: a demanding book, a set hour and the same men each week. Meetings draw men across a wide range of ages.

“It’s a highlight for me each time,” said David, a member of the Chattanooga chapter.

“Plutarch wrote his Lives so that readers would hold their own character up against the great men of Greece and Rome,” said Warren Steury, president of Meriwether Academy. “That is what happens around the table every Tuesday morning in Chattanooga. Men want fellowship that asks something of them, and reading a great book together, week after week, is one of the oldest ways to find it.”

The club arrives as research points to a growing need for both fellowship and serious reading among American men. A 2025 Gallup analysis found that 25 percent of American men ages 15 to 34 reported feeling lonely during a lot of the previous day, a higher share than young women in the United States and young men in most other wealthy countries. The Survey Center on American Life reported that the share of American men with no close friends rose from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2021. Reading for pleasure has also declined: a 2025 study in the journal iScience found the share of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.

Chattanooga already offers a range of book clubs through its library, bookstores and online groups. The Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club adds a weekly, men-only gathering devoted to the Western classics, with meetings timed so members can attend before work.

The Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club also has a Nashville chapter, which meets on Wednesday mornings and reads the same book on the same calendar. Men interested in joining the Chattanooga men’s book club can sign up through the Meriwether Academy website, and meeting details are sent by email after registration.

About Meriwether Academy
Meriwether Academy is a Nashville-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to the education and fellowship of men. It hosts dinner lectures with scholars and authors, the free weekly Gentlemen’s Classics Book Club in Nashville and Chattanooga, and guided wilderness expeditions in Tennessee. Its long-term goal is to found a classical boys’ school in Tennessee. More information is available at meriwetheracademy.com.

Warren Steury
Meriwether Academy
+1 615-212-5768
warren@meriwetheracademy.com
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