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Anna Feigenbaum, author of “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today,” in conversation with L.A. Kauffman, Mark Bray, Ali Issa, and Ajay Singh Chaudhary. At Verso Books in Brooklyn, November 8, 2017.
How has tear gas gone from the battlefields of WWI to the most commonly used form of “less-lethal” police force? How can activists today learn from the history of chemical weapons used to suppress political dissent and labor strikes? How might we build campaigns against the profiting off protest? Join a panel of writers, scholars and activists who will discuss their work and personal experiences organizing in the face of state repression.
This discussion will commemorate the launch of Anna Feigenbaum’s new book, “Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of WWI to the Streets of Today.” An engrossing century-spanning narrative, “Tear Gas” is the first history of this weapon, and takes us from military labs and chemical weapons expos to union assemblies and protest camps, drawing on declassified reports and witness testimonies to show how policing with poison came to be.
Co-sponsored by Melville House and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. 
Investigative reporter and bestselling author Luke Harding takes you through the key players in the Trump-Russia scandal.
MOSCOW, July 1987. Real-estate tycoon Donald Trump visits Soviet Russia for the first time at the invitation of the government.
LONDON, December 2016. Luke Harding meets former MI6 officer Christopher Steele to discuss the president-elect’s connections with Russia. Harding follows two leads; money and sex.
WASHINGTON, January 2017. Steele’s explosive dossier alleges that the Kremlin has been 'cultivating, supporting, and assisting' Trump for years and that they have compromising information about him. Trump responds on twitter, 'FAKE NEWS.'
In Collusion, award-winning journalist Luke Harding reveals the true nature of Trump’s decades-long relationship with Russia and presents the gripping inside story of the dossier. It features exclusive new material and draws on sources from the intelligence community.
Harding tells an astonishing story of offshore money, sketchy real-estate deals, a Miss Universe Pageant, mobsters, money laundering, hacking and Kremlin espionage. He shines a light on powerful Russian players like Aras Agalarov, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Sergey Kislyak, whose motivations and instructions may have come from Vladimir Putin himself. The special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, has already indicted several of the American protagonists, including Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort. More charges are likely as the crisis engulfs Trump’s administration.
This book gets to the heart of the biggest political scandal of the modern era. Russia is reshaping the world order to its advantage: this is something that should trouble us all. 
Investigative journalist David Neiwert talks with Joe Conason about his new book Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.
David Neiwert has made a name for himself by reporting on political and cultural extremists for over two decades. Now, in a time where so many Americans are mystified and alarmed by the seeming "revival" of xenophobic organizations and hate groups, Neiwert has compiled the results of his journalistic findings into one book. Alt America: the Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump examines the factors playing into the greater level of visibility afforded to the people who have come to be known as the Alt-Right in contemporary America. He traces the resurgence of far-right political ideology to the 1990's, and later, 9/11. Nurtured by right-wing radio, TV, and now the president, these groups have more leniency now than in the past 20 years.
Joe Conason is editor-in-chief of The National Memo and an editor at The Investigative Fund. One of the country's most popular political columnists. Conason authored two New York Times best selling books, The Hunting of the President and Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine. His newest book, Man of the World, focuses on the post-presidency of Bill Clinton. Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times contributing op-ed writer, joins fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen for a deep dive into this moment of extraordinary transition in American journalism.
Just a few years ago, writes Greenhouse in her new book, Just a Journalist, the mainstream press was wrestling with whether labeling waterboarding as torture violated important norms of neutrality and objectivity. Now, major American newspapers regularly call the president of the United States a liar. Clearly, something has changed as the old rules of “balance” and “two sides to every story” have lost their grip. Is the change for the better? Will it last?
For decades, Linda Greenhouse covered the US Supreme Court for The New York Times. Get her perspective on these issues and more, as she and Quindlen explore questions about the role journalists can and should play as citizens, even as participants, in the world around them.
Recorded on November 15, 2017 at the 92nd Street Y. Award-winning poet Danez Smith is celebrated for deft lines, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police—suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten, replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith writes about desire, mortality—the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood—and an HIV-positive diagnosis. Smith confronts, praises, and rebukes America, where every day is too often a funeral and too rarely a miracle. University of Chicago sociologist, poet, artist, and educator Eve L. Ewing joins Danez in conversation.
This program is presented in partnership with Gallery Guichard and the Poetry Foundation.
