Welcome to the Velshi Band Book Club. I'm MSNBC's Ali Velshi.

There's perhaps no genre more critical to the success of a democracy and the success of its country than dystopian literature.

These stories force us to confront the darkest possible realities we can imagine,

the worst-case scenarios, our deepest fears, fears we didn't even know we should have,

and look them in the face.

For many students, both in America and abroad, dystopian literature grows with us.

Look no further than the runaway success of Suzanne Collins as the Hunger Games series, or James Dashner's The Maze Runner series. Children,

adolescents, and teens are fixated on the what-ifs. Confronted by today's political and

cultural uncertainty, the what-ifs are not just more prominent, they're ever present.

At the center of this critical genre informing the books that have come after them are two

classics, The Giver by Lois Lowry and 1984 by George Orwell.

Those are the books we will be exploring on this episode of the Velsheban Book Club.

We discussed which could come first on this episode, The Giver or 1984?

On the one hand, 1984 is seminal.

You cannot so much as discuss government overreach without the word Orwellian presenting itself.

But the Giver comes first for readers.

For many, for decades, the Giver was the first ever exposure to the critical thought

that comes with that question of, what if?

So we're going to begin with the giver, just like we did as elementary age students all those years ago.

Let's get started.

Would we be happier in a society without the brutality of war,

without rain ruining our commute and with babies that slept through the night from the day we brought them home?

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