Anand Giridharadas with Tina Brown: Man in the Mirror

What can one man’s tragic death on a New York subway reveal about what ails American society?

Award-winning journalist Anand Giridharadas talks to legendary editor Tina Brown about his new book, Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City, a searching new work of narrative nonfiction about one death in a New York subway car and the uneasy national portrait it revealed — “a gripping American tragedy” (Min Jin Lee).

In 2023, a homeless man named Jordan Neely, known locally for his Michael Jackson impersonations, was killed following an emotional outburst on a New York subway by Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine attempting to subdue him. In Man in the Mirror, Giridharadas reconstructs the incident and its aftermath through the lives surrounding it: lawyers and witnesses, subway performers and outreach workers, city officials and grieving families. The result is a layered portrait of New York on the brink — beset by anxieties about public safety, race, masculinity, spectacle, and moral judgment — and a homeless population wracked by mental illness and neglect.

In the tradition of recent conversations with Patrick Radden Keefe, Jon Krakauer, and David Grann, hear another master of modern nonfiction discussing what Neely’s story reveals about America’s fears for public safety and a fraying social safety net.

How can great nonfiction writing recover the moral complexity that public spectacle and outrage often erases? Join Giridharadas and Brown as they explore how Neely’s death became a screen onto which Americans project their deepest fears — and an interrogation of what reporting on America’s most vulnerable citizens demands.

“Anand Giridharadas has done it again — making us think in new ways about the ever-sharper divisions of modern America. Man in the Mirror is a tour de force of sharp-eyed reporting, powerful narrative, and heartbreaking tragedy… Brilliant and spellbinding.” — Robert B. Reich

A book signing with Anand Giridharadas will follow the conversation.

This program is part of the Unterberg Poetry Center.