Alternate Title Exclusive NY launch of The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed
Russia
Production Language English
Country of Origin United States
Description Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has been praised as “humbly erudite, deftly unconventional, and courageously honest” by On Tyranny author Timothy Snyder. In this time of newly-escalated tension between Russia and the Western world, he notes, “when we must understand Russia to understand ourselves, we are all very lucky to have her." Gessen’s new book The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia is a major narrative nonfiction work and a cautionary tale for our time. Over the course of the past three decades, Russia, having seemingly shed its Soviet incarnation for good and embarked on a journey toward democracy, has devolved into a retro-totalitarian state run by Vladimir Putin with an iron fist. Gessen captures this pivotal era through the stories of several Russians whose lives spanned these decades, who blossomed with its embrace of unprecedented freedoms, and were then crushed by its war on the very means by which they had come to understand themselves. New Yorker Editor in Chief David Remnick will moderate. Book signing following the talk.
Gessen has written several books including the national bestseller The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, Slate, and many other publications, and her many awards include a Carnegie Fellowship and a Guggenheim. She lives in New York.
Identifier 2017f.SE.01003
