Kurt Andersen Discusses Evil Geniuses with Rebecca Carroll
Join us on Zoom for Kurt Andersen’s discussion of his new book Evil Geniuses, in conversation with Rebecca Carroll.
During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.
Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself.
Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the way out of this man-made disaster.
Andersen will be in conversation with Rebecca Carroll. Carroll is Host and Managing Editor of Come Through, a podcast from WNYC Studios. Her writing has been published widely, and she is the author of several interview-based books about race, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. Rebecca's memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, is due out in February 2021 from Simon & Schuster.
Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event. Evil Geniuses can be ordered online from our partner Greenlight Bookstore for in-store pickup or direct-to-home shipping here.
Author photo credit Marco Lau KA
Kurt Andersen discusses Evil Geniuses with Rebecca Carroll is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Join us on Zoom for Kurt Andersen’s discussion of his new book Evil Geniuses, in conversation with Rebecca Carroll.
During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.
Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself.
Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the way out of this man-made disaster.
Andersen will be in conversation with Rebecca Carroll. Carroll is Host and Managing Editor of Come Through, a podcast from WNYC Studios. Her writing has been published widely, and she is the author of several interview-based books about race, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America. Rebecca's memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, is due out in February 2021 from Simon & Schuster.
Please register for this free Zoom event. Registered audience members will receive a Zoom link prior to the event. Evil Geniuses can be ordered online from our partner Greenlight Bookstore for in-store pickup or direct-to-home shipping here.
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