Alexis Madrigal: THE PACIFIC CIRCUIT (with Anand Pandian)

Presenting an evening with journalist Alexis Madrigal, spotlighting his new book, The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City! Putting the history of Oakland in global context, Madrigal’s book demonstrates the way that looking closely at Oakland can help us explain the modern world. Anand Pandian, Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, and someone who spent many years in Oakland, will join Alexis in conversation.

It’s an intricate tableau that is at once a groundbreaking big-idea book, a deeply researched work of social and political history, and an intimate portrait of an essential American city that has been at the crossroads of the defining themes of the twenty-first century– and one whose overlaps with and diversions from the systems at play in Baltimore’s history make it an important one to discuss in our city in particular.

We hope to see you there!

Preorder The Pacific Circuit Here!

RSVP Here!

Alexis Madrigal is a journalist who lives in Oakland, California. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a cofounder of the COVID Tracking Project. Previously, he was the editor in chief of Fusion and a staff writer at Wired. He has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Information School and its Center for the Study of Technology, Science, and Medicine as well as an affiliate with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

Anand Pandian is a professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include A Possible Anthropology: Methods for Uneasy Times, and Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down, forthcoming from Stanford University Press. A former department chair of anthropology, he serves now as President of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. He also serves as a curator of the Ecological Design Collective, a community for radical ecological imagination and collaborative practice. He lives with his family in Baltimore, where he is currently working on a new book project on decay, waste, and the crafting of ecological futures.