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Seven Stories Press

Works of Radical Imagination

Joel Berg in Conversation with Matt Taibbi

March02 at Town Hall Seattle in Seattle, Washington

Joel Berg's America, We Need to Talk:

The newest book by Joel Berg—internationally recognized leader and media spokesman in the fields of hunger, poverty, food systems, and U.S. politics, and the director of Hunger Free America—
America We Need to Talk: A Self-Help Book for the Nation is both a parody of relationship and self-help books and a serious analysis of the nation’s political and economic dysfunction. Explaining that the most serious—and most broken—relationship is the one between us, as Americans, and our nation, the book explains how, no matter who becomes our next president, average Joes can channel their anger with our hobbled system into concrete actions that will fix our democracy, rebuild our middle class, and restore our stature in the world as a beacon of freedom and hope. Starting with the belief that it is irresponsible for Americans to blame the nation’s problems solely on “the politicians” or “the system,” Joel makes a case for how it is the personal responsibility of every resident of this country to fix it. The American people are in a relationship with their government and their society, and, as in all relationships, it is the responsibility of both sides to recognize and repair their problems.

Matt Taibbi's Insane Clown President

In twenty-five pieces from Rolling Stone—plus two original essays—Matt Taibbi tells the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society.

Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the “dangerously bright” alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the “Racial Holy War” to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, “bloviating and farting his way” through the campaign, “saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.” For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement.

Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight.
 

March02, 7.30pm

1119 Eighth Avenue
Seattle, Washington 98101 United States