A few practicalities, while I have you.

If you’re in New York, come to a very special (free!) event I’m doing at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn on Thursday (October 15). This one is especially for all the transit nerds out there. We’ll be talking about public transit as this space in America that ends up absorbing so many of the failures of other institutions and holding people whom no one else will hold. Joining me will be amazing clinicians, city officials, and other experts. Register here.

And a few other upcoming dates to come say hello. I continue to love meeting you all!

Calgary this upcoming weekend. St. Louis on October 20. Brooklyn on October 28. Westchester County, NY, on November 7. Miami on November 21.

And if Wajahat only whet your appetite, at the risk of oversharing, some other fantastic chats I had the privilege of having.

Zeteo

Is This the ‘Defining Political Emotion of Our Time’? A Best-Selling Author Makes the Case

On May 1, 2023, a subway car in New York City suddenly became the center of American political discourse and division when former Marine Daniel Penny killed homeless Michael Jackson impersonator Jordan Neely…

Listen now

2 days ago · 127 likes · 15 comments · Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo

I’ve spoken to so many of you in recent days, and I was thinking of what I take away from these conversations. It may be this: It seems to me people are ready to turn the page not just on this era, because obviously, but on this culture we’ve been living in.

Donald Trump is not just a president; he’s a culture. He is a reflection, in many ways, of what we had allowed ourselves to become as a country. And what I sense in the air is a desire to turn away from that culture.

What is that culture? It’s hyperreactivity as a way of moving through the world. It’s contempt across whatever chasm of difference, or even crevice of difference. It’s assuming the worst in others. It’s assuming others lack the complexity that only you possess. It’s the flattening and reduction of everyone and everything. It’s refusing to imagine what it might be like to be others.

The other day, in Washington, D.C., one of my parents’ friends quipped to me: I thought you were brave when you wrote a book criticizing billionaires, but now I think you’re really brave because you’re writing the kind of book no one wants.

Thanks, auntie!

But she was right. I knew what she meant. This last decade has been so perpetually stressful, rage inducing, demanding of righteousness, that there is little space for other ways of being in our common life.

One of the bitter ironies of the Trump era is that Trump fosters in his opposition the mimicry of behaviors, habits, and attitudes that make it harder to get past Trump.

I can’t say that I set out to write a book in the opposite spirit; it sort of just emerged from the relationships I built with a range of characters and the substance of what I found. But the auntie was right. In the end, what I made was what no one wants now: full of moral complexity, inviting people into the shoes of people unlike them, asking them to like people they don’t agree with — just like them and ride along with them.

And as I have met so many of you and talked to you and felt the energy in these rooms, I have begun to feel that: maybe, actually, contrary to the auntie, people do want this now. Maybe we are ready to turn the page and peer into our next era.

I don’t yet know what that era looks or feels like; I don’t know what its leadership or slogans will be. But I do know this much: It will be centered on humanizing rather than dehumanizing each other, on curiosity rather than knowing it all in advance, on endeavoring to imagine the lives of others without feeling you’re complicit in them.

It will be an age defined by Team Human, not the dehumanizers or the machines.

I think even the auntie knew it. She was teasing me, but she was there that night. And you have been there night after night as I’ve crossed the country three times already.

And yesterday I learned that, thanks to you, MAN IN THE MIRROR debuted at No. 11 on The New York Times bestseller list.

I wasn’t expecting it. I had done a little self-management meditation in the morning preparing myself. This book isn’t viral-friendly, I told myself. It’s not provocative. It’s an attempt at art, not a fist-shaking manifesto. Let it have a slower life, I told myself.

But then you, and some others perhaps looking for what you’re looking for, lifted it up. You signed up to get it in your hands early. You spread the word. You came to events. You took a chance on a hard story. You pitched it to your beloved book club.

You did this. I mean that quite literally. I couldn’t feel more upheld by this community and in general than I do right now. When I found out, I called my wife, Priya, and even as I gave her news she basked in, she turned the tables on me and gave me some news.

What I take from all of this is that people are ready — you first and foremost among them. Ready for the next incarnation of us.

I tried to write myself out of this era by making this book. And it seems to me that more and more people want to venture together into whatever comes after this.

Let’s walk towards it, fast, steadily, together.

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Today I’m in L.A., where I went on Bill Maher’s show last night. We were supposed to talk about several things, but the conversation about homelessness and mental illness and how we care for those on the edge ended up consuming so much of our time, I think because there is no one who doesn’t see and feel this problem, and wonder.

I wanted to share a few things with you that I hope you’ll find worth your time.

First, and most importantly, there is this video of me humiliating myself when my book character Moses Harper tries to teach me some Michael Jackson moves.

Then there is this conversation from the 92nd Street Y in New York with the brilliant, irrepressible Tina Brown, one of the fiercest minds and sharpest pens we have. I don’t think I’ve ever come alive so much in a public conversation. It’s a special one. And check out Tina’s trenchant Substack here.

Now, if you’re ever wondered more about me, which I cannot remotely understand why anyone would, I nonetheless want to be here for you. So I’m also going to post a profile of me in The New York Times by the very knowing and seeing Ginia Bellafante.

There are many insights and details Ginia weaves together, including exposing how utterly strange I must look while writing:

Giridharadas wrote “Man in the Mirror” in two years, a short span for a book of its length (442 pages) and seriousness. His first draft exceeded 1,000 pages. Priya Parker, his wife of 16 years, a specialist in conflict negotiation and also a writer, said he did it keeping “quote unquote office hours, working nine to five.” He would read his daily output to her while he cooked dinner in their home in Brooklyn. Giridharadas has played the piano since he was a child and thinks about writing in terms of musicality. “He’ll sit at his desk,” Parker said, “and tap the desk to feel the rhythm of the sentence and think, ‘Does this rhythm work?’”

L.A. folks — you asked for a SoCal event, and a reminder that there is one…tonight! Come see me in Summerland at Godmother’s!

Oh, and here’s a Bill Maher clip from last night.

Finally, just a note of thanks. None of this would be possible without the community I have around me. That includes you. Thank you.

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The message came in from out of the blue. A good fraction of the DMs I get feature unsolicited advice about my hair style, or a suggestion to go back to my country (Cleveland). This message stood apart.

It was from a woman who had seen me on “Morning Joe,” talking about a new book called MAN IN THE MIRROR. She had a great interest in that title, which of course comes from a Michael Jackson song. For, as it happens, she co-wrote that very song.

She was going to be in New York this week. I invited her as my guest to my launch at the 92nd Street Y. And then there she was in the crowd, the Siedah Garrett, off to my right; all I could see through the glare from the stage was a shimmering on her head. At one point, I mentioned her presence, as I had done with that of the homeless outreach workers, mental health clubhouse members, and book characters present.

Then there was the book signing, in a small room tucked away. As I was signing, I noticed to my right a dazzling shimmer.

Siedah. It was hard to concentrate on signing books, partly because my children were beside me and seemed to be trying for eye contact with people in the hope that they would be asked to co-sign. Then, as the signing wound down, I got up and met Siedah for the first time. We hugged, and I told her I couldn’t believe this encounter.

I asked her about the backstory of the song, and she told us all about being signed to Quincy Jones as a young lyricist, and Quincy calling her to say Michael Jackson needed one more song for an album he was close to finishing, and Siedah writing what would become MAN IN THE MIRROR, and then singing it for Jackson, who, she said, loved her way of singing it so much that he invited her into the booth to sing it for him, so that he could learn from her.

To understand what happened next, you have to know something about my parents. They love live music like squirrels love trees. They love live music like Republicans love cuts. In whatever city we are in, from my childhood through today, they maintain a kind of auditory Google alert for the sound of live music wafting. If they detect a waft, we must walk towards it. Other families play cards; we chase saxophone.

And so my father, without any shame, asks the Siedah Garrett if she wouldn’t mind — you know — singing. That MAN IN THE MIRROR song. I mean, it is, after all, his son’s book launch, and she did, after all, write the song, and, you know, we’re all here…

And that’s when suddenly it was happening. Siedah, standing a couple of feet from me, began to serenade me and all of us.

I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life.

Have you ever had a moment that you were aware was one of the unforgettable moments of your life even as it was unfolding? Well, this was one of those moments. And I want to share the moment with you:

Perhaps this is the kind of gift you get when you put a work of love out into the world: The world echoes back; and if you’re lucky, the echo will come in the form of a song.

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That minute with Siedah was only the most dramatic, melodious proof of this idea. This week I sent a book into the world and received the most gorgeous waves back.

I have all of you to thank. You in the Ink community were among the very first to hear about this book, take a leap of faith into it, spread the word, and then you began to show up at the events this week. To meet you in person is to have air become flesh. Thank you for all you have done for this work, which my friend Terry Moran last night said it took him time to realize was a love letter as much as a work of reporting.

Below, I’m going to give you a recap of some interviews I’ve been doing in recent days, in case you’re the kind of person who likes to binge. This section is for you, Mama.

Speaking of my mother, I think she would want me to tell you that today is the last day for orders of MAN IN THE MIRROR to count toward the first-week tally and The New York Times bestseller list. To be clear, her son doesn’t care about those things, as he is above such worldly concerns. But his mother would really like it if he brought the family honor by being on that list. So I felt I should pass along my mother’s strong request that, if you think you might want to read MAN IN THE MIRROR, you order it today. And then we can read it all together, book club-style, in the coming days.

Get the book

A final note, before the roundup of links. Books are deceptive. They generally have a single name on the cover. This is a lie. If anything has struck me this past week, it is that it takes so many people to make a work like this possible: This book has received from so many hands the gift of research, editing, designing, marketing, publicizing, and such. It has also had the immense fortune of so many friends and journalists and artists and others devoting their precious time to read it in advance, so that they can assess it and share their impressions with others. My book had so many champions who answered my calls to invite their friends and communities to events; they took trust they had earned with people and spent it on me. Nothing meaningful is possible without others; of a book this may be truest.

So, at week’s end, simply thank you. If today I’m the man in the mirror, what I see looking back at me is a grin wide as the glass.

And now a few links for those who want to go deeper and/or catch up:

• Come find me on book tour. Cities and dates here

• Join our New York City in-person book club over three months with yours truly, organized by McNally Jackson, which is also offering signed copies

• My “Morning Joe” residency, about cities, family, belonging, mental illness and homeless, and a subway car as a metaphor for a nation, featuring special guests Rev. Al Sharpton, former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and former New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan: Day 1, day 2, day 3.

• A Q-and-A with The Drift, going deep on an obscure literary technique called “free indirect discourse” and how that method is the spiritual center of this book, and why I wanted to probe the “emotional inner life” of our authoritarian age

• A smart-and-great-vibes chat with Preet Bharara, including drilling deep on the idea of dehumanization and humanization

• A thoughtful review in BookPage; one of those reviewers who just gets the project

• A wonderful NPR conversation

• A very New York conversation about the book on WNYC

• ICYMI: The night I spent in Penn Station: a New Yorker excerpt

• ICYMI: Scott Turow’s review in The New York Times

• ICYMI: The first three chapters of the book, for free, in audio form

Today MAN IN THE MIRROR is in the world. I’ve never been prouder of anything I have made, except for tomato jasmine broth.

You’ve heard me talk about this book and kept me company through its making. And now, finally, I get to put it in your hands.

As a special gift to you, I have included the opening three chapters of the audiobook for you to listen to. But if you’ve been waiting for today, too, and are ready to begin:

Get your copy of MAN IN THE MIRROR

It is available wherever books are sold, including: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s, Target, Books are Magic, or, for a signed copy, McNally Jackson. It’s available in hardcover, e-book, and audio.

MAN IN THE MIRROR represents my return to the shoe-leather reporting with which I began my career two decades ago in India. It took root in the tragic story of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny and a subway death in New York. And then I followed the story to places I hadn’t expected to go: a Marine Corps base in North Carolina, a community of Michael Jackson impersonators; a Harlem church; a suburb on Long Island; and Penn Station after midnight.

And, indeed, I found in this story so much of our common story today. This is a story of home, belonging, health and illness, security and fear, love, family, democracy. It is an opera about our struggle to live together.

My ambition was to write a book you couldn’t put down — because I know what else is sitting on your nightstand. I wanted to steal your attention away from that phone, with storytelling that felt propulsive. But I also wanted to show you something deeper — about how America works now, about how we might get out of these dark times.

Writing this book required me to change some of the habits that had crept into me in recent years, and that I believe have crept into so many of us: instant reactivity, reflexive dismissal, knowing what we think in advance about whatever comes down the pike. Reporting this book forced me back in the direction of curiosity.

If you have experienced some of this same thing, my hope is that reading the book will help you recover your own curiosity. Stories have the power to make other people more real to us. Democracy means sharing a country with people you didn’t choose; it depends on all of our ability to see each other as people rather than categories.

This community enables my work. Your commitment to independent reporting gives me the freedom to go deep, spend time, and follow a thread wherever it may lead. That is an extraordinary gift to give a writer.

In the months ahead, we’re going to read together and talk about what we find. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

I couldn’t be more grateful to have you in my corner. Thank you for making this morning the moment I’ve dreamed of.

Anand

P.S. Some more tidbits for you to follow.

Get your copy of MAN IN THE MIRROR

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The first three chapters for you to listen to right away

I’m delighted to share chapters 1 through 3 from the audiobook. Take a listen:

The audiobook is now available from Apple, Audible, Libro.fm, Spotify, among others.

Let’s meet…

Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 30, at 6 p.m. Eastern, I will launch the book at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, in conversation with the remarkable Tina Brown. I’d love to see you in the room and meet up afterward during the signing. If you’re elsewhere, you can join us by livestream.

Join us in person or online

I’ll also be coming to see you on book tour starting later this week. More locations and dates coming in the days ahead!

Find a tour stop near you here

Help the book find its readers

Launching a book is a barn raising. So many of you have already ordered, shared a piece, or asked how you can help. Thank you for your kindness, which moves me so.

If you’re wondering what you might do to support the cause:

• Post on social media. Could be a photo, or just a note that you’re excited to read this title, or a video of you reading a passage out loud. Whatever platform you favor. Tag me (@AnandWrites) and use the hashtag #maninthemirrorbook

  Share

• Drop it into your group chat. Give your friends and family something to talk about. Drop either or both of these in your group chats: this New Yorker excerpt and/or this New York Times essay. Bonus points for dropping in a tempestuous parent group or Indian-relatives Whatsapp.

• Review it. On whatever platform you buy on, or on Goodreads.

• Choose it for your book club: The themes of this book are the themes of American life today — and of life in so many places. Bring this work to your book club and I guarantee you lively discussions.

• Lean on your librarian. Librarians want to know what books the community actually wants. Give them a strong rec.

• Gift it. If you have people in your life who enjoy stories, cities, America, immersive experiences, empathy for other people, true crime, or feeling moved, gift them this book. Better gift than wine.

For organizations and hosts: If your company or nonprofit or civic group would be interested in reading the book, Porchlight Books can help with bulk orders. And if you’d like to invite me to speak to your organization, contact Trinity Ray at trinity@goliathjones.com.

Once again, my deepest thanks to you for being with me along this journey. It’s here, and I cannot wait for you to experience what I’ve long dreamed of sharing with you.

Get your copy of MAN IN THE MIRROR

For those of you good enough to scroll all the way down, some items to catch up on:

The first day of my three-day residency on “Morning Joe,” talking about the book.

The New York Times review of MAN IN THE MIRROR:

A New Yorker excerpt:

My New York Times essay on abandonment as a defining political emotion of the age:

The New York Times review of MAN IN THE MIRROR had just dropped. Admit it or not, it is the moment so many writers hanker for. I was flustered, and I began. And I saw the name Scott Turow, and I was floored. And then I began to read his powerful and rigorous engagement with my work.

Now, if you want to avoid the complexity my book encourages us to face, if you want the wartless version, here’s a highlight reel:

“This book — often brilliant, occasionally frustrating — is an extraordinarily wide-ranging investigation of the circumstances underlying a lethal incident that occurred on a northbound F train on May 1, 2023: the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill homeless man, after a fellow passenger put him in a chokehold in an apparent attempt to subdue him when he began screaming…The remarkable scope of this book is demonstrated in a series of involving portraits, including of unhoused New Yorkers, whose meager possessions are routinely swept away in police raids but who nevertheless reappear on the Sarsame sidewalks hours later; of touchingly dedicated outreach workers who try to lead the homeless to safety; and of public health figures butting heads over policy…This is an exhaustively reported book by a ferociously talented writer.”

But Turow, to be clear, has some criticisms of the book, namely that I empathize too heavily with Jordan Neely and not enough with Daniel Penny. I have heard it before, except in the form that I empathize too much with Penny and not enough with Neely. That is what happens when, against the grain of this cultural moment, you set out to tell a story in which everyone is humanized. I embrace that this is not for everyone.

I may have succeeded, I may have failed, and Turow is a serious and thoughtful enough writer that his words will have me reflecting on my own. That is what this art is for. I’m so grateful to him for all of it.

I’d love for you to read the review, courtesy of this gift link from me, and then get in the comments and share your own views.

Read the review at NYTimes.com

The review has begun to trigger vigorous debate on social media, among other things about whether empathy is only for some people and is conditional on good behavior. Should we have empathy for everyone? Can you empathize with multiple people in a conflict without siding with one or the other? These are worthy questions to confront.

And so I thought I would give all of you a special gift that we hadn’t planned to release until later. Why not now? I say.

So here, with great trepidation and great excitement, are the first three chapters of MAN IN THE MIRROR in audio form. I’m sharing them because they capture the approach I’m trying to take: empathizing with everyone, because that is the work. It’s my work, but I also believe it’s our work at this juncture of our common life together.

After talking about this book with you for so long, I can’t believe I’m about to hit send on sharing these opening chapters with you.

Thank you for being with me on this journey. If you haven’t yet signed up to have the book at your doorstep on Tuesday, pub day, this is your moment. I want you in the many rich conversations we’ll be having.

Get the book (including in audio)

And tell me what you think. I’m listening.

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You have heard me talk about the story that consumed me for the last three years. Today I woke up painfully early, I think because I knew it was the day I would finally get to share a piece of the book with you.

This has been my little private thing for a long time. Today it becomes shared — ours. There are nerves with that, and much joy.

The New Yorker, a magazine I have revered ever since I could pronounce the word “magazine,” today runs an excerpt from MAN IN THE MIRROR. It is a chronicle of a night I spent in Penn Station in New York, observing kind and savvy outreach workers trying to coax homeless people into shelters.

The essay just posted on their website. I wanted to hop on here and share it with this community, which has made the work I do possible in so many ways, and whose curiosity and civic spirit inspire me daily.

Read the excerpt

And now we get to begin reading together.

On Monday, September 28, at noon ET, my beloved, Priya Parker, will host a community reading party for MAN IN THE MIRROR, right here on Substack Live. Special guests from the book will take turns reading aloud. After so long living with these pages, I’m looking forward to hearing them in other voices, with you there.

Join the community reading

The book comes out this Tuesday, September 29. If you’d like to keep reading with us, you can preorder your copy here, or via any of these retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s, Target, or, for a signed copy, McNally Jackson.

And tell me what you think of the excerpt:

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In our household, the beautiful chaos continues. Priya is somewhere between Florida and California. Last night I abandoned my kids to mow down some sushi on their own because I had to speak to a university class taught by my first mentor in journalism, Jill Abramson. Today, another frantic day of podcasts and signing several hundred books, many of them bound for you all. When I apologized to my kids for how scattered I’ve been, my son said, “It’s OK, it’s for a good cause.” I love them.

Today I wanted to share a special Q&A I did with the good people at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan — home to the historic room where I’ll be launching MAN IN THE MIRROR into the world next Wednesday.

The book I’ve written was first a conversation the internet showed itself incapable of having. Now, as I launch the book in that storied room, and then in rooms across the length and breadth of this country, I want us to have the conversations the internet couldn’t. Conversations that feel like the opposite of the clickbait all around us. Conversations that are human in the age of AI. Conversations that are life-giving, about how can build the kinds of communities where we all feel like we belong.

I’m so eager to meet so many of you along the way. Join us at the 92nd Street Y if you’re in or around New York, or sign up to join us virtually from anywhere else:

Join me in New York

And I’m very possibly coming to your city. Come meet me along the book tour trail:

Tour dates

If you haven’t yet, consider ordering the book, so we can all read it together:

Get the book

And now on to my conversation with Daniel Poppick.

Anand Giridharadas Holds Up the Mirror

Reposted from the original here.

The tragic story of Jordan Neely’s death on the subway and Daniel Penny’s subsequent trial for manslaughter and negligent homicide — and Penny’s ultimate acquittal — divided New York City, and much of the country. In your book, you make the case that the polarized reaction elides a deeper moral complexity. What have we been missing?

Part of why I am excited to be launching this book in that historic room at 92NY is that this was a conversation that the internet couldn’t have. The case of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny was on the simplest level the case of a tragic and fatal encounter on an uptown F train. But as every New Yorker who reads this will know, every subway car fits more than people — it contains clashing histories and social forces. There was a lot of institutional failure in the life of Jordan Neely, a former Michael Jackson impersonator who was homeless and mentally ill; there has also been an implicit permission of violence in the air since the beginning of the Trump era. Once the internet got hold of the story of this encounter, it was reduced to clickbait, hot takes, and a kind of American Rorschach test that quickly became almost tribal.

I wrote a book in a very different spirit. In Man in the Mirror, I am trying to understand what actually happened, and I am trying to imagine a city and a country and a world in which Daniel Penny felt neither the need nor the right to take someone’s life. It is a story, more than anything else I’ve ever written about in my life, of deep moral complexity; of genuinely difficult dilemmas about how to care for the most precarious and vulnerable people in our society, and how to make people feel safe in public space without deploying police as a tool for everything. I wanted to launch this book in that historic room at 92NY because it is place that is famous for having hard conversations that couldn’t happen elsewhere. My hope is that we’re going to be able to gather on September 30th and have a conversation that is the opposite of clickbait.

What is it about 92NY and its audience that you think makes this conversation possible here?

Over the years I’ve heard from people who are older than me that 92NY is like an intellectual grocery store. It isn’t a place you visit twice a year when something piques your interest — it’s a place you visit twice a week because you want to refresh and restock your ideas about the world. There’s an infinite library of content on the internet, but 92NY has this community that keeps wanting to leave the house to go sit with other people to take in ideas. That is a profoundly civic faith that is sadly rare. I do think it has a good chance of coming back, but the burden is not just on the creators — it is on the audience to stay engaged. I think the audience at 92NY understands that.

You are known as a journalist, but Man in the Mirror is written in a more narrative style than your last few books — it is almost novelistic, reaching into the literary lineage of books like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which had its public debut on our stage. Why was it important for you to tell this story in this way?

I have always wanted to write this kind of book. In my previous books, I was trying to articulate an idea. My book Winners Take All from 2018 is very much in that spirit — it is not meant to be a beautiful work of art, it’s trying to articulate an idea and deliver it to a reader. With this book, I wanted to make something that was a piece of art that also happened to be non-fiction. There is a branch of journalism in this tradition: books like Capote’s In Cold Blood, Adrian LeBlanc’s Random Family, and George Packer’s The Unwinding. It is very hard to write a book with an imaginative quality that is also documented and true.

It seems to me that there is a crisis of both trust and attention in our culture. At its best, narrative non-fiction attempts to solve the problem of trust through journalistic rigor, and it addresses the problem of attention through a commitment to engaging storytelling. I wanted to write a riveting story in which I could show my receipts to prove its truth.

Winners Take All was an investigation into how the global elite’s efforts to “change the world” preserved and deepened a status quo of inequality. In a sense, Man in the Mirror could be read as a companion to that book, the other side of the same coin. What is the relationship between the inequality that you wrote about in 2018 and Neely’s story?

Great question. The Neely and Penny case reveals, in my view, the defining political emotion of our age: the feeling of abandonment. At a time when the richest and most powerful people in the world are building bunkers, buying private islands, and seeking immortality while telling the rest of us that AI is going to kill humanity, most of us have been left to fend for ourselves. In the subway car in which Jordan Neely was killed, there was one emotion that virtually all the passengers had in common: the feeling that no one was coming to save them. I would argue that this emotion was not just present in that one subway car. I think it’s everywhere in our culture. Man in the Mirror is a kind of follow-up story to what I was writing about in Winners Take All— a story about what happens when people are left to fend for themselves.

It’s been more than three years since Neely’s death and nearly two years since Penny’s trial. Have these events changed life in New York City?

It became very clear to me while reporting this book that people who are chronically homeless and mentally ill, of which there are many in America’s cities right now, are falling into a chasm. It is a chasm between a view of the world held by some progressives that overestimates the capacity for this population’s autonomy and a right-wing view of the world that doesn’t want to spend a dime on a system of care for people who need help, that wants people like this to be swept away. The tragedy of Neely’s death on the subway held up a mirror to our society, but so far it has not resulted in reforms.

At your event at 92NY, you’ll be talking to Tina Brown. Why was it important for you to have this conversation with her in particular?

Tina is one of the greatest editors around, and she’s someone who deeply understands many of the issues at the heart of this book. She understands New York deeply, she understands the crisis of mental health in our society, and she understands the problem of media sensationalism in how we process a story like the one I’m trying to tell. She has a combination of journalistic rigor and an understanding of the attention economy which is rare, and it’s something I aspire to.

What do you hope the audience takes away with them after this event?

You mentioned Truman Capote’s book debuting on that stage — I find that daunting, but I am moved to be part of that tradition, along with all the other 92NY conversations that I’ve seen, heard, and read about. My first hope is that this is going to be an electric night in New York. We’re going to sit together and ask a big question: how do we live together? How do we all find a shared sense of belonging? There is so much loneliness, isolation, and estrangement across this city. I think it’s time for New Yorkers to grapple with this story’s many realities and meanings and take it forward for themselves so that we can make the city better. I deeply believe that this kind of conversation actually can help build a new city. I couldn’t be more honored to be starting it on that stage.

Anand Giridharadas launches Man in the Mirror with Tina Brown on Wed, Sep 30.

It was a video seen around the world. But what did it really show? In this, the second episode of my new YouTube investigative series, a companion piece to MAN IN THE MIRROR the book, Emma Goldberg of The New York Times and I break down the clip so many briefly saw and made their minds up about. What might a closer look show?

Thanks for watching, and, as always, let me know what you think:

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Catch up on the first episode here:

We talked about the case of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny, the political emotion that unites Americans across divides today, whether spreading the sense of being needed and having others can be part of the public health response to mental illness, and what happens when we fail to see each other as human beings. It’s a rich conversation and a kind I love, in which two people seek and find what their work and experiences offer them in common.

Watch above and share your thoughts.

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For those who track that kind of thing (Hi, Mama!), MAN IN THE MIRROR comes out in exactly one week.

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Just as quickly as the article dropped, I watched people began to process it on social media. And I was startled by what should no longer surprise me: So many seem to be losing the ability to process information through any other filter besides “Do I agree with this?” If yes, post the essay with fire emojis. If no, eviscerate it. There are no other options for so many people today.

I say this as though it’s only happened to other people. But in recent years, I felt it happening to me, too. You probably felt it also. There is so much to be righteous about these days that the faculty we’re quickest to go to is judging. Do I deem this new information to be right or wrong?

But there are so many more interesting questions with which to face the world. What does this new information tell me that I didn’t know? How have I lived some variant of what I’m reading, in my own way? What must it have been like to be that person? These are not the questions people have on social media. These are the kinds of questions you have when you’re a reader.

As I’ve shared before, I wrote MAN IN THE MIRROR partly because I wanted, thanks to a friend’s intervention, to jolt myself out of the certitude I felt closing in. I wanted to feel curious again.

And now that I am a day and a week away from sharing the book with you, I want to say that my highest hope for this book is that it might help you in some of the same ways. If you feel that judging reflex swallowing your mind, if you feel that instinct to either agree or disagree and not take things in, if the certitude virus has come for you, too, I want to invite you to join me on this journey.

Let’s read this book together over the next few months. My promise to you, since I know what’s in it better than almost anyone, is that it will help you reclaim that part of your mind that was able to switch into other people’s ways of looking, to feel what it is like to be someone else, to hold in one’s mind a thought one doesn’t agree with but just hold it there for a moment, because citizenship demands this faculty of all of us.

So today, a last call from me to preorder MAN IN THE MIRROR, so that you will be among the very first to get it.

Preorder MAN IN THE MIRROR

I say last call because today is the deadline for letting us know you’re in this reading circle from the start — and getting to be part of a special event with me this Wednesday, September 23, at 8 p.m. ET.

That’s when my friend Sam Dolnick, who made said intervention and assigned me the idea for this book, will join me for an intimate conversation about our friendship, the origins of this book, and more. This will be open to anyone who preorders by today and submits their proof right here.

Join Wednesday's special event

Oh, and when you do, this crew who is here with me from the beginning will also get a behind-the-scenes archive just for you:

— Photos, videos, notes, and scraps from three years of reporting — some revealing, some strange, some funny, most never intended for publication.

— The music of the book: a playlist drawn from the people, places, moods, and worlds I entered while reporting it. Music became such a major character in this story that it felt wrong not to give you the soundtrack.

— And, after an unreasonable amount of lawyerly negotiation, a deleted scene I still love but couldn’t keep in the finished book. They won’t appear anywhere else.

I woke up this morning almost vibrating with energy to begin sharing this work with the world. I’m so honored to have you with me.

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Thank you for being the community you are.

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When so much in the world seems to undermine our sense of common humanity, a book can reconnect you to your own humanity and others’.

I wrote MAN IN THE MIRROR hoping you might find yourself in other people’s struggles to belong, to love, to matter, to find home, to make the world better. If you are like others who have already read it, I think you’ll finish it feeling less alone, more alive, and more human. And more hopeful about what brings us closer together.

I feel proud of what I’ve made. Now I need readers to pick up where this writer has left off. I’d love you to be among the first.

If you’ve been meaning to order it, please make today the day. It would make a big difference and be a light at tunnel’s end.

Preorder MAN IN THE MIRROR

Have you already ordered, or just did? Drop a comment telling me you have, so I can thank you and so you can find others to read along with. I’m so grateful to you.

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Because of copyright law, I had to excise the reading of the article, but I’m happy to share the little conversation we had afterward.

It’s about how to listen for the rhymes beneath so many of our different experiences.

As I say in the video, this is what my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR, is really about: this shared sense of abandonment we all feel, told through the story of an incident that reveals the country itself — and I think will show you to yourself.

It’s scary trying to put work like this into the world, but having this community makes it less so. If you are able and haven’t yet, it would mean the world to me if you pre-ordered MAN IN THE MIRROR today. You are the vanguard whose choices now will determine how many other readers get to see the book in the media and in stores.

Thank you for always having my back.

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Today I want to pivot from sharing my thoughts on the question of abandonment as our shared experience of modern America — to hearing all of your thoughts.

How do you experience this sense of abandonment? What do you think are the remedies? Do you struggle to find common cause with others who may also feel deserted, but for different reasons? What might make those rhymes easier to hear?

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And a personal request. What has occasioned this conversation is the three years I’ve spent working on my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR. I am beyond eager to share it with you. This work changed me and grew me in so many ways, and I hope reading it might do something similar for you. When we go deeply into the stories of other people’s humanity, we come away seeing everything a little differently.

If this conversation we’ve been having has meant something to you, I’d love for you to read the book. And if you know you want to, I’d be grateful if you ordered your copy now. Preorders make a real difference in helping a book find its way to more readers — and, most of all, it would mean a lot to know that many of you will be reading it in tandem when it comes out.

You can order a copy here. And eternally: thank you for reading, for thinking with me, and for being part of this community.

Read MAN IN THE MIRROR

The short version: The New York Times is running a guest essay today by yours truly, based on my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR. It’s about how a tragic subway killing that divided America actually revealed what we have in common.

Read it at NYTimes via gift link

Now, for those of you who like a little context stirred into your coffee, here’s a splash.

The first time I had the feeling, I was 17. I was a high school kid who had somehow talked himself into an internship at The Times. My boss, an editor in the Washington bureau named Jill Abramson, told me to report and write something. I suggested that might not be a good idea, because…17. But she insisted, and I did. And I remember sitting on my parents’ bed the night the piece was closing, and the copy desk calling me with edits, and the piece closing. And the feeling — that came the next morning when I went outside to bring in the blue bag. It was a magic trick to me, the only one I ever wanted to learn. I wrote it on my laptop, they called me with some repairs, and then it was in the blue bag in my front yard.

Some years later, I was lucky enough to embark on an 11-year stint writing for The Times. I learned everything about journalism there. It’s Parris Island for people whose idea of a pull-up is pulling up to a reluctant source’s house to see if they will talk.

And now I write something for The Times a few times a year at most. But the feeling, I will tell you, doesn’t go away. The magic trick.

So when I have a new book to share with the world, it’s a special honor to get to bring it to a broad audience of Times readers with an essay like today’s. And the 17-year-old boy buried in me is very thrilled to see it.

I talk a lot on here about the power of independent media — like this thing right here. But I have to tell you, it is a powerful and special experience to be edited the way a piece like today’s essay was. The legendary Vanessa Mobley is my editor. She used to be a book editor, now works at The Times. She is as fastidious and obsessive as I am, and doesn’t mind going three, five, eight rounds with me, back and forth, back and forth, until we cook it just right. Then several other editors weigh in, make tweaks, adjustments, suggestions, additions. Everyone in the Track Changes, a kind of ballet.

As much as I enjoy going it alone in a newsletter, I have to admit that this kind of process makes for powerful, lasting work. Or so I hope. (The same goes for books, by the way, and my wonderful team at Knopf.)

That’s it, that’s the context. I would love you to read this story, share it with people you know. In fact, if you’re able, send it to five people today. It would help a lot.

Read it at NYTimes via gift link

And if you haven’t yet, I will say unabashedly: I want you as one of the early readers of MAN IN THE MIRROR. I want you to get in on the ground floor of this work and of all the conversations we will have about it.

Order MAN IN THE MIRROR

And a short preview of the essay here:

For a few moments on May 1, 2023, an extraordinary amount of American life was compressed into one New York subway car.

There was Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man, homeless and suffering from mental illness, frightening passengers beneath a city still shaken by Covid. There was Daniel Penny, a white former Marine from Long Island who put him in a chokehold. There were bystanders facing a dilemma that would feel familiar to many Americans: wait for the system to work; take matters into their own hands; or withdraw. And hovering in the air of car No. 9774 was America’s deepening crisis of trust — in institutions, in strangers and even in the belief that anyone is coming to help.

When Mr. Neely died in that encounter and Mr. Penny was charged with killing him, an American tragedy was instantaneously reduced to an American Rorschach test: What did you see in Mr. Penny, a hero or a vigilante? Was Mr. Neely a victim or a menace? People retreated to their corners and posted before they knew much. Soon the story, having been picked over, fell out of consciousness.

Three years later, the case is worth revisiting for the mirror it holds up to the nation. A death on the subway that seemed to prove that Americans now inhabit perfectly sealed, irreconcilable moral universes actually revealed one of the last things we have in common — abandonment.

Read it at NYTimes via gift link

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I’ve shared a bit about this before, but in this conversation with my friend Monica, a lot more came out of me. I think a lot of people will relate to what has happened to all of our brains living in this era in which moral clarity and ferocity feel important, but are also bad for our thinking spirits.

Watch the full conversation here, along with my brilliant wife, Priya Parker, author of the new book THE ART OF FIGHTING:

Preorder MAN IN THE MIRROR here so that you’re part of our conversations about it when it comes out on September 29:

Preorder MAN IN THE MIRROR

And if you want to join a special live conversation with Sam and me on September 23, in which I share more of my own transformation behind this book, sign up here:

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It’s a conversation in two acts. First Jacob Weisberg joined me to discuss Profiles in Cowardice, his new book about capitulation under Trump. Then Robert P. Jones joined me to talk about Backslide, his new book about White Christianity’s devotion to Trump, enabling of authoritarianism, and, in Jones’ view, commitment of “apostasy.”

Two writers, two books, two acts, and a common underlying question: Can democracy, a system of citizens standing up, endure without spines?

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What happens when people and institutions fold? When accommodation and collaboration and looking the other way become the norm, not the exception?

It will be a conversation in two acts. At 12:30 p.m. Eastern, Jacob Weisberg will join me to discuss Profiles in Cowardice, his new book about capitulation under Trump. Then at 1 p.m., Robert P. Jones will join me to talk about Backslide, his new book about White Christianity’s devotion to Trump, enabling of authoritarianism, and, in Jones’ view, commitment of “apostasy.”

Two writers, two books, two acts, and a common underlying question: Can democracy, a system of citizens standing up, endure without spines?

Join us right here at 12:30 p.m. live.

Join the live

And tell me what questions you have for Jacob Weisberg and Robert Jones.

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We are published by two different imprints (Hi, Riverhead!, hi Knopf!, thanks for reading!!! and also for everything!!!), but they are part of the same conglomerate. I thought corporate consolidation was supposed to solve problems like this. Alas.

Ultimately, they agreed to separate our pub dates by three weeks. So Priya went yesterday, and mine is September 29. And this whole month everything is chaos.

Beautiful, lucky, maddening, joyous chaos.

Yesterday, we both woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get prepared for Priya’s launch day and “Morning Joe” appearance. I accompanied her there and played the role that so many young boyfriends now seem obligated to play: director of social media chronicling. Then she dropped me off at a three-hour podcast taping I was doing in Dumbo, in Brooklyn, and she was off to Washington, D.C., for a launch event there. Then I was with the kids, and I asked them if they could play quietly so I could nap, because of the 4:30 a.m. wake-up, plus naps are my secret, and then I had to take them with me to get my haircut back in Manhattan, because I couldn’t look the way I was looking for Priya’s big launch event tonight. I know this because Priya, the least judgmental person on earth, has repeatedly asked me of late about any upcoming haircut plans. The woman who cuts my hair cuts it with a knife, in addition to scissors, which provided huge entertainment for the kids. They were more engaged by this than by the gorgeous art books she had generously handed them, after apologizing that her selection was limited because most of her art books consist of nudes. Then I took the kids to dinner, during which a gigantic crisis erupted for Priya. But it’s OK now!(?)

This morning, I have the kids solo as Priya returns from D.C. Just had a long morning can-you-wake-me-up-Papa hug with my daughter, who likes to be introduced to the day, and a consultation about hair gel with my son — there is a school orientation today and a play date involving board games. Tonight is Priya’s big launch. And my task list for today involves: finishing my toast for Priya tonight, sending out invites for my book events, consulting a dermatologist about this skin thing, and maybe a run?!

But it’s all part of the madness of the joy. Or so we are trying to tell ourselves. To be honest, we have been stressed about it all summer — it’s hard to bring into the world something people keep saying no one wants anymore: books. It’s hard for both partners to do it. But I don’t believe those prognostications. Priya and I decided, with help from wise friends, that the way to face this situation is to find the joy in it.

Prove THEM wrong: Read this book

The reason the coincident pub dates were a problem, in our minds, was because of how much we would be asking of people. It wasn’t the logistics. It was the sense of shame in asking for so much from so many people, all at the same time. We are more comfortable offering than asking, hosting than guesting, but here we are.

So I am very intentionally not going to apologize to you for spamming you with all of these things happening and these invitations. I’m going to keep sharing with you in the spirit of sharing our family’s chaotic joy. In my work, you go away for a long time, and you report and learn and think and write. And then you return to the world, and sometimes, as it happens, your wife is landing on the same runway at the same hour.

So I hope you take all of these offerings and invitations in the spirit in which they are intended, as portals into that which we most care about and have most carefully nourished and tightly held in these years. Thank you for being in this with me and us.

And now to those offerings and invitations:

If you live in or around New York:

— I want to see you at the big launch event at the 92Y on September 30. It’s going to be an amazing night. Tina Brown is the greatest chat partner I could have asked for. Get tickets here.

— Also for New Yorkers: I’m doing a really cool and special thing with the McNally Jackson bookstore: an in-person book club series. The store is organizing New Yorkers to read the book in tandem over three months, and there are going to be three meetings — with yours truly in attendance — and we’ll discuss it all. RSVP here.

If you live anywhere at all:

— Please come meet me on book tour. All the dates here — along with a new Southern California date because you all asked for it! And also here on my website.

— A lot of you have complained about cities not on the list as of yet. I hear you, and I urge you to tell your local bookstore to invite me. That’s how it works, and I am more than eager to come wherever books are read. And you can also catch the big launch event on September 30 via streaming here.

If you like true-crime investigative series:

— I’m trying a new experiment with this book: a companion YouTube investigative series where I unspool one piece of evidence from my reporting at a time. The first episode just dropped, and I’m really proud of trying something weird and new.

If you like conversation full of laughter:

Not long ago, Priya and I did our first joint podcast interview with our friend Monica Lewinsky. It is a truly hilarious conversation in which we share more than we should have, and nonetheless I will share it here.

OK, I was just summoned to go make breakfast and see my daughter’s new Doc Martens — she apparently went with black, not the sparkly pink, she updated me. All of life, in all its high and low variety. Grateful for all of it and for you being here.

On May 1, 2023, as the world began to get word of a death on the New York subway, a video clip began to make the online rounds. It showed a chokehold on the floor of an uptown F train — the incident at the heart of my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR.

But there is another video at the burning heart of the case of Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny that I’m betting you haven’t seen: the interview of Penny by detectives shortly after the incident.

For my new YouTube investigative series accompanying the book, we are taking one piece of evidence at a time and unspooling the reporting slowly, to show you the work.

This week, in the first episode of the show, Emma Goldberg of The New York Times and I break down the interrogation video most of the world hasn’t seen which ended up being pivotal to the government’s bringing a case against Penny for allegedly causing Neely’s death. Did one word used by Penny change the course of this case?

Here’s what we see in those thirty minutes of the interview: two detectives and a young Marine veteran first finding common ground, swapping unit numbers and deployment stories, and then, slowly, the ground shifting under all three of them.

In this episode, Emma and I watch the tape together, minute by minute, and trace the exact point where the language changes, where the word “crackhead” enters the room, and where I observed the detectives quietly pulling away from camaraderie with Penny. It’s a small, human turn, and I’ve come to believe it explains more about why this case was brought, and why it went down the way it did, and why it matters not just on the level of two men or of a city but of the country itself, than almost anything else I found in two and a half years of reporting. I hope you’ll watch it with us.

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