Town Hall Seattle presents
Anand Giridharadas with Steve Scher
Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City
EVENT NOTES
Doors for this event will open at 7:30 PM. Town Hall events are approximately 75 minutes long.
Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City (Hardcover)
Elliott Bay Book Company
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New York City in 2023 was no stranger to the strains currently impacting many of our urban landscapes – heated political divides, ailing infrastructure, and struggling aid systems. These factors are uniquely felt, but not unfamiliar or unrelatable to many across the nation.
These issues were then thrown into even sharper relief when two men – Jordan Neely, a homeless man known in better days for his Michael Jackson impersonations, and Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine who had moved to the city seeking more than Long Island could offer – collided tragically on a subway car on an unassuming May afternoon. This fatal incident brought forward an intense response and layers of legal and political involvement that gripped the public – including journalist and author Anand Giridharadas.
Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City examines this tragedy through Giridharadas’s acute on-the-ground reporting in the early days following Neely’s death and compelling evaluation of the prosecution that followed. Man in the Mirror follows the many complicated figures involved in the case and the complexity of the systemic failures, vulnerable groups, and personal responsibilities at play. Giridharadas presents his keenly assembled research within an immersive narrative that aims to humanize rather than scandalize. With a panoramic view of one harrowing example of the type of socio-political impacts that can be felt nationwide, Man in the Mirror seeks to portray this case with critical empathy at a critical time.
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Anand Giridharadas is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Persuaders, the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and is the publisher of the newsletter The.Ink. He is an on-air political analyst for MS NOW. He has received the Radcliffe Fellowship, the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, Harvard University’s Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Humanism in Culture, and the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Steve Scher is a writer, broadcaster, and interviewer. His children’s book, The Moon Bear, came out in 2022. Over his 28 years on local public radio, he won awards for his incisive coverage of public affairs, breaking news and his beyond-the-headlines approach to issues. His in-depth interviews with award-winning authors, political leaders, scientists, artists, and active citizens are noted for their intelligence and sensitivity. Most summers since 2009, he has taught a Communications Department class on interviewing at the University of Washington.
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