2020 : one city, seven people, and the year everything changed / Eric Klinenberg.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2024]Copyright date: ©2024Edition: First editionDescription: 444 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780593319482
- 0593319486
- Twenty twenty
- Two thousand and twenty
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Shelving location | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
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Main Library | NonFiction | New | 306 K65 | Available | 33111011242597 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A meticulously reported, character-driven, unforgettable investigation of a time when nothing was certain and everything was at stake, by the acclaimed sociologist and best-selling author Eric Klinenberg
"A gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history, told through the stories of seven ordinary people. Klinenberg's narrative shows how the legacy of that year continues to shape us, our politics and our personal lives."--Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies * "I can easily see this book being invaluable in the future."--Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times
2020 will go down alongside 1914, 1929, and 1968 as one of the most consequential years in history. This riveting and affecting book is the first attempt to capture the full human experience of that fateful time.
At the heart of 2020 are seven vivid profiles of ordinary New Yorkers--including an elementary school principal, a bar manager, a subway custodian, and a local political aide--whose experiences illuminate how Americans, and people across the globe, reckoned with 2020. Through these poignant stories, we revisit our own moments of hope and fear, the profound tragedies and losses in our communities, the mutual aid networks that brought us together, and the social movements that hinted at the possibilities of a better world.
Eric Klinenberg vividly captures these stories, casting them against the backdrop of a high-stakes presidential election, a surge of misinformation, rising distrust, and raging protests. We move from the epicenter in New York City to Washington and London, where political leaders made the crisis so much more lethal than it had to be. We bear witness to epidemiological battles in Wuhan and Beijing, along with the initiatives of scientists, citizens, and policy makers in Australia, Japan, and Taiwan, who worked together to save lives.
Klinenberg allows us to see 2020--and, ultimately, ourselves--with unprecedented clarity and empathy. His book not only helps us reckon with what we lived through, but also with the challenges we face before the next crisis arrives.
"A masterful piece of rigorous journalism, rigorous sociology, and incredible story-telling."--Chris Hayes, MSNBC News
"Crisis has a way of laying bare our truest selves: who we trust, which principles and impulses we heed, whose lives we deem expendable. As it ravaged millions of lives, the Covid-19 pandemic revealed and accentuated the dividing lines that had already, for decades, splintered American public life. Against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential election, misinformation regimes, and the transformation of the facemask into a flagrant political symbol, acclaimed sociologist Eric Klinenberg takes careful inventory of how the U.S. and other nations handled the extraordinary challenges of that seminal year. Any autopsy searches for causes, and in this book, Klinenberg uses seven people's piercingly vivid reflections to examine how communities across the globe reckoned with the profound tragedy and loss of 2020--and how they built networks of solidarity in an attempt to survive. We move from the gross negligence in Canadian for-profit nursing homes, to England's gradualist approach to instating robust Covid safety protocols, to early policy innovations in Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan, which dramatically curtailed the virus' spread. According to Klinenberg, our capacity to bear witness to the rampant failures and successful models of resilience of 2020 will help shape our responses to the escalating climate emergency, the ongoing fight for racial justice, and widening global economic disparities. This book is both mirror and roadmap-a reflection of the social divisions that plague our world and a set of principles for how we might approach the next global catastrophe differently"-- Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-425) and index.