september, 2021

7sep7:00 pm- 8:00 pmAdam Tooze + David Wallace-Wells: Shutdown (The Strand Bookstore, Virtual Event)

Event Details

Adam Tooze + David Wallace-Wells: Shutdown

 

Join us for a virtual event with award-winning author and history professor Adam Tooze for a discussion of his new book Shutdown.

About this event

Join us for a virtual event with award-winning author and history professor Adam Tooze for a discussion of his new book Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy. Joining Adam in conversation is columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine David Wallace-Wells. This event will be held on Zoom and be livestreamed on the Strand’s Facebook page.

Can’t make the event? Purchase a copy of Shutdown here.

All book purchases will include a signed bookplate by the author.

————————————————REGISTER HERE

Deftly weaving finance, politics, business, and the global human experience into one tight narrative, a tour-de-force account of 2020, the year that changed everything–from the acclaimed author of Crashed.

The shocks of 2020 have been great and small, disrupting the world economy, international relations and the daily lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Never before has the entire world economy contracted by 20 percent in a matter of weeks nor in the historic record of modern capitalism has there been a moment in which 95 percent of the world’s economies were suffering all at the same time. Across the world hundreds of millions have lost their jobs. And over it all looms the specter of pandemic, and death.

Adam Tooze, whose last book was universally lauded for guiding us coherently through the chaos of the 2008 crash, now brings his bravura analytical and narrative skills to a panoramic and synthetic overview of our current crisis. By focusing on finance and business, he sets the pandemic story in a frame that casts a sobering new light on how unprepared the world was to fight the crisis, and how deep the ruptures in our way of living and doing business are. The virus has attacked the economy with as much ferocity as it has our health, and there is no vaccine arriving to address that.

Tooze’s special gift is to show how social organization, political interests, and economic policy interact with devastating human consequences, from your local hospital to the World Bank. He moves fluidly from the impact of currency fluctuations to the decimation of institutions–such as health-care systems, schools, and social services–in the name of efficiency. He starkly analyzes what happened when the pandemic collided with domestic politics (China’s party conferences; the American elections), what the unintended consequences of the vaccine race might be, and the role climate change played in the pandemic. Finally, he proves how no unilateral declaration of ‘independence or isolation can extricate any modern country from the global web of travel, goods, services, and finance.

 Adam Tooze + David Wallace-Wells: Shutdown image

Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University and the author of Crashed, winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize, a New York Times Notable Book of 2018, one of The Economist‘s Books of the Year, and a New York Times Critics’ Top Book. He lives in New York City.

David Wallace-Wells is a columnist and deputy editor at New York magazine. He has been a national fellow at the New America Foundation and was previously the deputy editor of The Paris Review. He lives in New York City.

Time

(Tuesday) 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

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