Events

The Plague Year: America in the time of COVID-19

Hosted by the LSE Phelan United States Centre

Online public event

Speaker

Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright

Chair

Professor Peter Trubowitz

Professor Peter Trubowitz

Join us for this event discussing Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright’s new book, The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid.

From the fateful first moments of the outbreak in China to the storming of the US Capitol to the extraordinary vaccine rollout, Lawrence Wright’s The Plague Year tells the story of COVID-19 in authoritative, galvanising detail and with the full drama of events on both a global and intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political, and social ramifications of the pandemic. A vivid, sweeping, panoramic account of the pandemic’s origins and the missed opportunities and mistakes in the ongoing global fight to contain it.

Meet our speaker and chair

Lawrence Wright (@lawrence_wright) has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. He is also an author, a screenwriter and a playwright. Wright has published twelve books, including The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda's Road to 9/11, which was translated into twenty-four languages and won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. In 2018, the book was adapted into a Hulu original drama.

Peter Trubowitz (@ptrubowitz) is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Phelan US Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

More about this event

The LSE's Phelan United States Centre (@LSE_US) is a hub for global expertise, analysis and commentary on America. Our mission is to promote policy-relevant and internationally-oriented scholarship to meet the growing demand for fresh analysis and critical debate on the United States.

You can order the book, The Plague Year: America in the time of COVID-19, (UK delivery only) from our official LSE Events independent book shop, Pages of Hackney.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series imagining what the world could look like after the crisis, and how we get there.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEUSPandemic

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from The Plague Year: America in the time of COVID-19.

A video of this event is available to watch at The Plague Year: America in the time of COVID-19.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.

Live captions

Automated live captions will be available at this webinar. Once you join the Zoom webinar, you will be able to show or hide the subtitles by clicking on the “Live Transcript - CC” button, from where you can also change the font size and choose to view the full transcript. Please note that this feature uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology, or machine generated transcription, and is not 100% accurate.

Podcasts

We aim to make all LSE events available as a podcast subject to receiving permission from the speaker/s to do this, and subject to no technical problems with the recording of the event. Podcasts are normally available 1-2 working days after the event. Podcasts and videos of past events can be found online.

Social Media

Follow LSE public events on Twitter for notification on the availability of an event podcast, the posting of transcripts and videos, the announcement of new events and other important event updates. Event updates and other information about what’s happening at LSE can be found on the LSE's Facebook page and for live photos from events and around campus, follow us on Instagram. For live webcasts and archive video of lectures, follow us on YouTube

LSE in Pictures is a selection of images taken by the school photographer.

LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of The London School of Economics and Political Science.

From time to time there are changes to event details so we strongly recommend that if you plan to attend this event you check back on this listing on the day of the event.