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Episode #15: "Shut Up, Lindsey"
with Bakari Sellers and Jonathan Martin

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On this episode, we're excited to bring you Bakari Sellers in conversation with Jonathan Martin.

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This episode debuts an occasional special series called "Live At…" wherein we record a live conversation at an independent bookstore. From Charleston, South Carolina, we bring you Live at Buxton Books.

 

CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers, author of the NY Times bestseller My Vanishing Country, speaks with  CNN political analyst and NY Times national correspondent Jonathan Martin

 

Set against the backdrop of the Jan. 6th hearings, these two friends and colleagues discuss Jonathan’s new book This Will Not Pass, which he co-authored with Alexander Burns. This riveting work presents an inside look at the political events leading up to the Jan. 6th insurrection, first hand reporting inside the Capitol on that fateful day and a detailed look at the political aftermath over the past 15 months. You will hear never before revealed stories, both hilarious and horrifying, of current figures who have been at the center of this political maelstrom.

Read Along!

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The shocking, definitive account of the 2020 election and the first year of the Biden presidency by two New York Times reporters, exposing the deep fissures within both parties as the country approaches a political breaking point.


This is the authoritative account of an eighteen-month crisis in American democracy that will be seared into the country’s political memory for decades to come. With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden’s first year in the White House.

From Donald Trump’s assault on the 2020 election and his ongoing campaign of vengeance against his fellow Republicans, to the behind-the-scenes story of Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and his bitter struggles to unite the Democratic Party, this book exposes the degree to which the two-party system has been strained to the point of disintegration. More than at any time in recent history, the long-established traditions and institutions of American politics are under siege as a set of aging political leaders struggle to hold together a changing country.

Martin and Burns break news on most every page, drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before-seen documents and recordings from the highest levels of government. The book asks the vitally important (and disturbing) question: can American democracy, as we know it, ever work again?

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New York Times Bestseller

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What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst  and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women.

Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.

Anchored in in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father’s rise to become, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , to explore the plight of the South's dwindling rural, black working class—many of whom can trace their ancestry back for seven generations.

In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting the other “Forgotten Men & Women,” who the media seldom acknowledges. For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He humanizes the struggles that shape their lives: to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. 

My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood—to Sellers' father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and honor its legacy.

We are proudly supported by:

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The Book Club

What'd you think about the episode?

Have you read the books discussed in this episode?

What authors would you like to hear on future episodes?

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