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Ten Evenings

Lawrence Wright

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“Voting is a simple act, and an act of faith. It is a pledge of allegiance to the future of the country.”

Lawrence Wright, ‘The Plague Year’ for The New Yorker

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright whose best-selling novel The End of the October all but predicted our current pandemic, brings his momentous account of COVID-19: its origins, its repercussions, and the fight to contain it.

Wright takes us inside the CDC, where the first round of faulty test kits cost America precious time; inside the halls of the White House, where Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger’s early alarm about the virus was met with great skepticism; into a Covid ward in a Charlottesville hospital, with an idealistic young woman doctor from Little Africa, South Carolina; into the precincts of prediction specialists at Goldman Sachs; and even inside the human body, diving deep into the science of just how the virus and vaccines function, with an eye-opening detour into the history of vaccination and of the modern anti-vaxxer movement.

Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a playwright, a screenwriter, and the author of ten books of nonfiction, including The Looming Tower, Going Clear, and God Save Texas. His books have received many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower. He and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas.

“Set in the spring of 2020, [The End of October] tells the story of a fictional virus. . . . Reading the book now, amid a pandemic that has exposed the terrifying fragility of our social structures and political institutions, is a deeply unnerving experience.”

VULTURE

Books

Copies of Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid with signed bookplates are available from White Whale Bookstore

The Plague Year by Lawrence Wright Book Cover

WHEN

Monday, November 8, 2021
Virtual Event, watch anytime online for one week

TICKETS

Virtual Pass $15
$10 student tickets are available with promo code LS22STUDENT
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Video links will be emailed to all ticket holders on the day of the scheduled lecture. Closed captioning will be available.
Community access tickets are available if cost is a barrier to view this lecture. If you’d like to request a community access ticket please email us at info@pittsburghlectures.org.

WHERE

Online

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