About this Event
How do we recognize history while we are still living through it?
A contested election. A war. A financial collapse. An attack on the Capitol. A democracy transformed.
We experience history one event at a time. Only later do we begin to see the connections, and wonder when the world we knew began to change. In Crossing the Rubicon, journalist and political thinker Mark Danner traces twenty-six years of American political life, from the disputed election of 2000 and the War on Terror to the rise and return of Donald Trump, asking how democratic institutions have been tested, weakened, and transformed.
Joining him is sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land and Stolen Pride, whose work explores the emotions, identities, and experiences beneath America's political divisions. Together, they bring two extraordinary ways of seeing the same history: the political forces that shape a nation and the human lives shaped by those forces.
The evening begins with a short introduction from anthropologist and Clio's founding member Cari Borja, placing the conversation within Clio's larger commitment to the history of ideas, and the importance of gathering to understand the history we are living through.
The title reaches back to 49 BCE, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River, setting in motion events that would help bring an end to the Roman Republic. More than two thousand years later, the question remains: How do we know when a society has crossed a threshold from which there may be no return? And what can history teach us about what comes next?
Join us for an evening about democracy, power, memory, and the future we are still capable of shaping.
Mark Danner has been writing about foreign wars and American politics for more than three decades. Among his books are The Massacre at El Mozote, Torture and Truth, Stripping Bare the Body,and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for many years and is a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has received many honors, including a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, a Gug- genheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Berkeley.
Arlie Hochschild’s latest book is Stolen Pride, Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right. Now out in paperback with a new Afterword, it was among five non-fiction books Barack Obama selected as favorite books of 2024. It followed Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestseller. Other of her books include The Second Shift, The Time Bind, and The Managed Heart. Her work has been translated into 18 languages.
Event venue & nearby stays
Clio's Books, 353 Grand Ave, Oakland, United States
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