Laura Beers — Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century

Watch author Laura Beers' book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

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George Orwell dedicated his career to exposing social injustice and political duplicity, urging his readers to face hard truths about Western society and politics. Now, the uncanny parallels between the interwar era and our own--rising inequality, censorship, and challenges to traditional social hierarchies--make his writing even more of the moment. Invocations of Orwell and his classic dystopian novel 1984 have reached new heights, with both sides of the political spectrum embracing the rhetoric of Orwellianism.

In Orwell's Ghosts, historian Laura Beers considers Orwell's full body of work--his six novels, three nonfiction works, and brilliant essays on politics, language, and the class system--to examine what "Orwellian" truly means and reveal the misconstrued thinker in all his complexity. She explores how Orwell's writing on free speech addresses the proliferation of "fake news" and the emergence of cancel culture, highlights his vivid critiques of capitalism and the oppressive nature of the British Empire, and, in contrast, analyzes his failure to understand feminism.

Timely, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking, Orwell's Ghosts investigates how the writings of a lionized champion of truth and freedom can help us face the crises of modernity.

Laura Beers is a professor of British history at American University and is also the author of Your Britain and Red Ellen. She is particularly interested in the ways in which politics both influences and is shaped by cultural and social life, and in the role of the mass media in modern society. Her writing has appeared in the New Republic and Washington Post, among other publications, and on CNN.com. She lives in Washington, DC.

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Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.