He was punched in the jaw in Taiwan, kidnapped in Ecuador, and left adrift in the Great Barrier Reef. He stared down the tanks that ended the Soviet Union, caroused all night with musicians in Kabul, and was questioned by police forces in Qaddafi’s Libya. And perhaps most miraculously, he lived to tell about it.

Far and Away, a new book by Andrew Solomon, gathers nearly 30 essays across 30 years about places undergoing seismic shifts – political, cultural, spiritual. Traveling across 87 countries on seven continents – including post-9/11 Afghanistan, President Paul Kagame's Rwanda, and a liberalizing Myanmar – Solomon demonstrates how both history is altered by individuals, and how individuals are altered when governments are pushed into change. We've entered a global world where what happens everywhere affects what happens everywhere else. Deep inside the incessant news reports of chaos and isolation, there's a larger truth: the world is a great sum of its parts.

Join New America NYC for a conversation with Andrew Solomon and Lydia Polgreen on some of the most crucial transformations of the past-quarter century and on the immersive storytelling that engraves them into our collective memory.

Introduction:

Brigid Schulte @BrigidSchulte

Director, Better Life Lab and The Good Life Initiative, New America

Discussion:

Andrew Solomon

President, PEN American Center

Author, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change: Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years

Lydia Polgreen

Editorial Director, NYT Global, The New York Times

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