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Joshua Cohen and Tablet Magazine’s Alana Newhouse discuss Cohen’s new novel “Moving Kings.”
“Moving Kings” is a powerful and timely novel that blends the American housing crisis with the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Twenty-one-year-olds Yoav and Uri have just completed their required military service in the Israel Defense Forces, having become veterans of the last Gaza War. Taking a year off for rest they journey to New York City, acquiring work with Yoav’s distant cousin—a proud American patriot, Republican, and Jew, and a heavyweight in the tri-state area’s moving and storage industries.
Yoav and Uri struggle to return to civilian life, but are faced with difficulties due to their traumatic pasts and having to spend their days kicking down doors as eviction-movers, throwing out delinquent tenants and seizing their possessions. What starts as an uncomfortably familiar job turns violent when the boys come face-to-face with one homeowner seeking revenge.
Joshua Cohen’s critically acclaimed debut novel, “Book of Numbers,” was published in 2015. He has written short fiction and nonfiction for The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, London Review of Books, The Forward, n+1, and others. In 2017 he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists.
Alana Newhouse is a writer, editor and the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine. 
Dava Sobel is a former New York Times science reporter and a repeated New York Times bestselling author. Her past books include "Longitude", "Galileo's Daughter", and "The Planets". A recipient of multiple awards, including the prestigious Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science for her “outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vital roles it plays in all our lives”, Dava even has an asteroid named after her. Dava visited Google Seattle office to discuss her latest book, "The Glass Universe", named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Shanthi Sekaran's new novel, Lucky Boy, tells a story of borders: borders between countries, between classes, between possibility and impossibility, and borders of the body. Lucky Boy, follows two stories: that of Soli Castro-Valdez, an undocumented Mexican woman; and that of Rishi and Kavya Reddy, an Indian-American couple who live in Berkeley, California. Rishi Reddy works as an air quality engineer at Weebies, a fictionalized Silicon Valley behemoth. It wrangles fiction to explore the ways in which the tech revolution reaches into areas of life not often associated with the tech industry. It interrogates the American Dream, boldly studying our country's privileging of some immigrants over others. Booklist calls it a "deeply compassionate exploration of the...insidious ways in which class divides us...and the explosive touch-point of today's headlines regarding illegal immigration, (with) penetrating insights into the intangibles of motherhood and, indeed, all humanity. 
The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas
The public intellectual, as a person and ideal, has a long and storied history. Writing in venues like the New Republic and Commentary, such intellectuals were always expected to opine on a broad array of topics, from foreign policy to literature to economics. Yet in recent years a new kind of thinker has supplanted that archetype: the thought leader. Equipped with one big idea, thought leaders focus their energies on TED talks rather than highbrow periodicals.
How did this shift happen? In "The Ideas Industry," Daniel W. Drezner points to the roles of political polarization, heightened inequality, and eroding trust in authority as ushering in the change. In contrast to public intellectuals, thought leaders gain fame as single-idea merchants. Their ideas are often laudable and highly ambitious: ending global poverty by 2025, for example. But instead of a class composed of university professors and freelance intellectuals debating in highbrow magazines, thought leaders often work through institutions that are closed to the public. They are more immune to criticism—and in this century, the criticism of public intellectuals also counts for less.
Three equally important factors that have reshaped the world of ideas have been waning trust in expertise, increasing political polarization and plutocracy. The erosion of trust has lowered the barriers to entry in the marketplace of ideas. Thought leaders don't need doctorates or fellowships to advance their arguments. Polarization is hardly a new phenomenon in the world of ideas, but in contrast to their predecessors, today's intellectuals are more likely to enjoy the support of ideologically friendly private funders and be housed in ideologically-driven think tanks. Increasing inequality as a key driver of this shift: more than ever before, contemporary plutocrats fund intellectuals and idea factories that generate arguments that align with their own. But, while there are certainly some downsides to the contemporary ideas industry, Drezner argues that it is very good at broadcasting ideas widely and reaching large audiences of people hungry for new thinking. Both fair-minded and trenchant, The Ideas Industry will reshape our understanding of contemporary public intellectual life in America and the West. Join us for an evening in celebration of literary sensation and feminist icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her newly released book, “Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions.” From Adichie, recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship and author of the best–selling titles “Americanah” and “We Should All Be Feminists,” comes a powerful new statement about feminism today, written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. “Dear Ijeawele” is Adichie’s letter of response. “Dear Ijeawele” goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the 21st century, and is sure to start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today. Adichie will be in conversation with Radhika Jones, The New York Times’s editorial director, books. 
Please join Carol Sanger, author of About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America, along with fellow authors and activists Amelia Bonow, Martha Plimpton, and Regina Mahone, for a panel discussion of the state of abortion rights in America.
In a 2010 Guardian column, writer Lindy West contemplated the stigma surrounding abortion: “I live in a progressive city, I have a fiercely pro-choice social circle and family, I write confessionally about myself for a living. . . And I know how all [in my social circle] feel about abortion, policy wise. But I don’t know who has had one, and they don’t know about mine.” West’s personal insights reflect a national trend: abortion is such a contentious subject in American society that most women are reticent to discuss their own experience.
Regulatory legislature treats abortion as a mistake, rather than a right. Women are forced to have ultrasounds and undergo "educational briefings" that many opponents view as scare tactics. In her book, About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in Twenty-First Century America, legal scholar Carol Sanger tackles these issues and more by making connections between abortion law and cultural opinion. Carol looks forward toward medical progress and the advent of more free speech on the subject of abortion, she hopes that the decision of whether or not to become a mother will be treated with as much respect as any other serious choice in a woman's life. In the current political climate of the United States, marked by revived determination to close clinics, defund Planned Parenthood, and reverse Roe v. Wade, Sanger’s original and much-needed book is more important than ever.
Carol Sanger is the author of About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in 21st Century America and a professor at Columbia Law School where she teaches courses on family law, contracts, abortion and motherhood. She has talked about About Abortion on all kinds of programs including WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, the Oxford University Human Rights Hub, and Sex Gets Real and is regularly interviewed about what is next with the Trump/Pence campaign against women’s reproductive health and rights.
Amelia Bonow is the Founding Director of #ShoutYourAbortion, a movement dedicated to broadening the existing cultural discourse around abortion. In 2017, #ShoutYourAbortion’s website won a Webby Award for activism. Bonow proudly serves on the Board of Directors of the Abortion Care Network and her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The New York Daily News, Salon, and The Stranger.
Regina Mahone is a Queens based writer and managing editor at Rewire, "an online publication providing evidence-based news, analysis, commentary, and investigative reporting on reproductive and sexual health and justice, including the effects of race, class, and poverty on access to care, health outcomes, and reproductive choices." She has also worked formerly with Philanthropy News Digest.
Martha Plimpton is a United States Citizen, actress, and sometimes writer based in New York. She has lobbied Congress on behalf of Planned Parenthood and has spoken out for women’s reproductive rights at campuses and rallies across the country. Martha is co-founder and board president of A is For, an organization dedicated to advancing reproductive rights and ending the stigma against abortion care. Martha will work to see that a woman’s right to physical self-determination becomes the standard in America for as long as it takes.
