🚨 Announcing my next book -- MAN IN THE MIRROR 🚨

It’s about a tragic encounter in a New York subway car that held up a mirror to a troubled and divided nation. It will be out September 29

My dear Ink family,

For the last few years, I’ve been working on a book I’ve had to keep close to my vest — until now. I’ve never worked so hard on a project, nor been prouder of something I’ve made. Today I can finally share that it will be published September 29. It’s called “MAN IN THE MIRROR: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City.”

In 2023, the lives of 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 in a New York subway car. As the story spread, it became a kind of American Rorschach test: Did you see vigilantism or anarchy, resurgent white supremacy or a broken mental healthcare system, dehumanization or disorder? It was one case in one city, but it was also a story about everything, everywhere.

MAN IN THE MIRROR is my attempt to get to the heart of this complicated case and, ultimately, the heart of this American age. It is a portrait of the fear and rage and division that have defined this decade in our common life, but also of the ongoing work of care and justice seeking and union perfecting that people do despite the odds.

I’m thrilled to tell you about MAN IN THE MIRROR for the first time, and to reveal this cover by the brilliant artist Arsh Raziuddin.

I would be honored and grateful if you would consider pre-ordering the book, which you can do by clicking on the link below and choosing the retailer of your choice.

In a moment when independent journalism is under attack, and nonfiction books struggle to compete with the desire to escape, pre-ordering is the best way to show your early support of my work and to signal to the marketplace that the book already has traction and an eager readership-in-waiting (and it will mean that you’ll be among the very first to get it in September). I hope to meet many of you on my book tour.

It is this community that sustains me as a writer, in so many ways, and it is an honor to share this work with you first. Thank you for always standing by me and my writing.

MAN IN THE MIRROR is not a screed or a manifesto. It does not offer easy answers. It takes a story so often served up as divisive clickbait and finds in it human dimension and moral complexity. The challenge I assigned myself was to dive into the story of this case not as a political commentator, not as an advocate, but as a reporter, a documentarian, an artist.

I followed a sprawling cast of characters connected to the case and to the larger issues it raised. I covered the trial of Daniel Penny in Manhattan. I spent time on the street with homeless folks, in City Hall with government officials, on a Marine Corps base with Daniel Penny’s old unit, at subway stations with outreach workers — in every corner of a city facing the interwoven challenges of enduring public safety, caring for the most vulnerable, and grappling with impossible questions about mental illness and individual freedom.

While I’ve worked hard to document this landmark case with rigor and fairness, I hope you’ll find that the book is about so much more. It’s about mental health and illness, housing and homelessness, fear, sensationalism, violence, and the inner life of an authoritarian age. It’s about who belongs. It’s about how change is made. It’s about what happened to cities after Covid-19 and what Donald Trump is doing to cities now. And it’s a book that aspires to use the power of writing to hold together the fighting faiths of a divided country — to portray us back to ourselves in a way that might nourish greater empathy and make our problems seem more solvable.

Rage sells. Selling understanding, empathy, and curiosity is harder. I need your help.

They say people don’t want to read anymore. They say people certainly don’t want to read nonfiction anymore. They say our attention spans have gone to waste. Today I am asking for your help to tell a different story.

If you want to help even more, thank you! Maybe you work at a publication and want to feature the book or interview me. Maybe you work at a bookstore or are planning a conference, and you might be interested in hosting me. Maybe you work in the fields of mental healthcare, homelessness, or urban transit, and think your colleagues should see the book. Maybe you want to read the book with your book club. If any of these ideas speak to you or you want to suggest others, we’ve made a convenient form to fill out. Just click on the button below to let us know more about your interest in MAN IN THE MIRROR and how to contact you so we can discuss further.

I am so grateful for your support for MAN IN THE MIRROR — in all the ways. It is the kind of book I have always dreamed of writing but never thought I could. I can’t wait to share it with you. Thank you, as ever, for reading and being part of this community. You lift my spirits every day.

Yours,

Anand

P.S. Please share this with anyone you think might want to know about this book.

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