Writers Bloc and the Beverly Hills Bar Association Present
Lawrence Wright: The Plague Year
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
5:00PM PDT
Watch the conversation here:
Support authors and local bookstores by purchasing The Plague Year from Skylight Books here. Signed bookplates available.
So much went wrong so fast as we absorbed the breathtaking ferocity of COVID-19. Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, weaves together the maddening, sometimes farcical, sometimes comical, story of not only what went wrong, but how and why the response to COVID toggled between the catastrophic and heroic. In his new book, The Plague Year, Lawrence moves us from “an evolving situation,” to “flattening the curve,” to full-on nightmare. As only he can do, Wright brings to light the testing screw-ups, the skeptics in the government, the scientists — and their pseudo science counterparts, public health leaders, activists, and the courageous heroes in a once-in-a-century year whose effects will ripple for decades to come. What happened? The Plague Year makes clear that this story is an on-going global drama, and no one could tell it better than Lawrence Wright. As you might know from Wright’s reporting in The New Yorker and in his Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Wright delivers drama and great humanity on every page.
In conversation with Daniel Zalewski. Daniel is the Features Director for The New Yorker, and has edited Lawrence Wright for more than 15 years. In addition to his editorial work, he has written numerous features for The New Yorker, including profiles of Ian McEwan, Guillermo del Toro, and Werner Herzog.
Author photo credit: Kenny Braun