RSVP: https://zfrmz.com/k4R485sg2mlyZaR2MY0o

5:30-6:45 p.m. – In-Person & Zoom - Lecture/Discussion
6:45-7:15 p.m. – Book Signing

One of the most trenchant observers of modern democracy, Masha Gessen is a journalist and bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. They have covered political subjects from Russia, autocracy, LGBT rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among others, and their understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. Gessen's latest book is Surviving Autocracy, a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. As The New York Times Book Review noted in their review, “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen”. The Future Is History follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy, against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all. The Washington Post described the book as "ambitious, timely, insightful and unsparing.” Gessen’s other books include the New York Times bestseller, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, and Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot. A regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, and Slate, among other publications, they are a staff writer at The New Yorker and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship. Gessen teaches at Bard College in New York City.