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Protocol Prose Book Club - October 2026
Tuesday, October 06, 2026, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDT
Category: Member Exclusive Events

The Protocol Prose Book Club convenes on October 6, 2026 at 12 noon Eastern Daylight Time for a members-only discussion of the book A Time to Gather: How Ritual Created the World and How It Can Save us. 

About the Book  

One of our great decoders of human connection chronicles the astonishing rise of new rituals around the world—and offers a road map for restoring togetherness with gatherings you’ll love.
Since time immemorial, humans have turned to ritual to connect us in periods of change. Until today. Birth rituals and coming-of-age rituals have plummeted; fewer than half of Americans are married; only one in three is buried. “It took us ten thousand years to establish cultural norms around how we mark collective life transitions,” writes Bruce Feiler. “It took us fifty years to dismantle them.” Can this threat to society be reversed?
To find out, Feiler went on a round-the-world ritual road trip, attending—and participating in—life rituals in sixteen countries on six continents. These spectacles, some rarely seen, include a mass baptism in the Vatican, a tribal bride price negotiation in South Africa, an adolescent tooth filing in Bali, six weddings in Las Vegas, and ten funerals in Ireland.
Beyond the decline in traditional rituals, Feiler discovered that we are in the midst of a ritual renaissance that is pushing back against apathy, loneliness, and digital saturation. Fed up with top-down scripts, everyday people, from boomers to Gen Z, are reimagining collective rituals at a remarkable pace, inventing fresh ways to gather around life, love, health, and family—and forging thriving communities in the process.
As he did with Life Is in the Transitions, Feiler also collected stories of a hundred ritual designers and built a first-of-its kind database of ideas to make gatherings more effective—from creating sacred space to mediating conflict to generating “wows” that guests will talk about forever.
From a master storyteller uncovering a thrilling phenomenon hiding in plain sight, A Time to Gather is both a stirring adventure and practical manual. It’s a landmark guide to modern ritual; a tool kit for turning everyday moments into unforgettable celebrations; and an invitation to reconnect and rejoice—together.

About the Author:

Bruce Feiler is one of America’s most thoughtful voices on contemporary life—he uses original research into life transitions, life rituals, and life stories to help people find meaning in times of change. 

Bruce is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS, THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES, and COUNCIL OF DADS. His four TED Talks have been viewed more than five million times; he teaches the TED Course “How to Master Life Transitions;” he is a fellow at the Stanford Computational Psychology and Well-Being Lab, which is writing an AI LLM based on his work. 

Bruce’s latest book, A TIME TO GATHER: How Ritual Created the World—and How It Can Save Us (May 2026), describes his 50,000- mile journey to sixteen countries on six continents chronicling the astonishing rise of reinvented life rituals. From the Vatican to Bali to Ireland, A TIME TO GATHER is a both stirring adventure and a practical manual for restoring togetherness with gatherings you’ll love. 

Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS describes his journey collecting hundreds of life stories to help us all navigate life transitions with purpose and skill. “One of those books that’s so profoundly aligned with the zeitgeist that you end up underlining the whole book,” wrote Arianna Huffington. A Top 10 New York Times bestseller. 

THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES gathers best practices from the country’s most creative minds. It was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal and Parade. COUNCIL OF DADS captures how faced with cancer, Bruce asked six friends to support his daughters. The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time, and became a CNN documentary and a NBC primetime drama. 

WALKING THE BIBLE describes Bruce’s perilous, 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. Called an “instant classic” (Washington Post), the book spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into fifteen languages. ABRAHAM recounts his personal search for the shared ancestor of the monotheistic religions. “Exquisitely written,” wrote the Boston Globe. WHERE GOD WAS BORN describes his trek visiting biblical sites throughout Israel, Iraq, and Iran. “Bruce Feiler is a real-life Indiana Jones,” wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. All were bestsellers. 

Bruce is the host of two primetime series on PBS: WALKING THE BIBLE (“Beguiling,” Wall Street Journal) and SACRED JOURNEYS WITH BRUCE FEILER, in which he retraces pilgrimages in France, India, Japan, Israel, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. (“Feiler is the perfect guide,” Newsday). A longtime columnist for the New York Times, Bruce Feiler writes the popular newsletter THE NONLINEAR LIFE about navigating life’s ups and downs. He has contributed to The New Yorker, Parade, and Gourmet, where he won three James Beard Awards. He has been the subject of Jay Leno joke and a JEOPARDY! question, and his face appears on a postage stamp in the Grenadines.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their identical twin daughters. For more: brucefeiler.com. 

Copies of the book are available through Amazon. 

The Protocol Prose Book Club is an exclusive benefit for PDI-POA members. If you are interested in participating in the book club or other members-only events, we invite you to consider joining PDI-POA!
Register to attend the October Protocol Prose Book Club Meeting!

Contact: [email protected]