Ruler of the Ruins: Absolute Power and the Breaking of America

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT journalist Maggie Haberman (Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, co-authored by Jonathan Swan) and National Book Award-winning author George Packer (The Emergency) for a cross-genre conversation about unfettered executive power and institutional erosion in an age of polarization. Combining Packer’s allegorical lens of fictional societal collapse with Haberman’s unsparing forensic reporting on the dismantling of our democratic infrastructure, the authors go far beyond standard political talking points. The two thinkers will map the terrifying intersection where top-down political consolidation meets a bottom-up fracturing of our shared American reality. Leading the conversation is Anand Giridharadas (Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City), who brings his own vital perspective on civic fracture and renewal.