Friday, February 22, 2019
7:45-8:15am Continental Breakfast
8:15-9:15am Talk
(Please note this is a morning event)
Breakfast with
Bernard-Henri Lévy
The Empire and the Five Kings:
America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World
Gensler
Downtown Los Angeles
500 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90071
PURCHASE TICKETS
$46 General Admission Seat + Book
$20 General Admission Seat
One of the West’s leading intellectuals offers a provocative look at America’s withdrawal from world leadership and the rising powers who seek to fill the vacuum left behind
Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker and author of more than thirty books including The Genius of Judaism, American Vertigo, Barbarism with a Human Face, and Who Killed Daniel Pearl? His writing has appeared extensively in publications throughout Europe and the United States. His documentaries include Peshmerga, The Battle of Mosul, The Oath of Tobruk and Bosna! Lévy is co-founder of the antiracist group SOS Racisme and has served on diplomatic missions for the French government.
“Bernard-Henri Lévy puts his deep first-hand knowledge of the world together with his extraordinary gift for horizontal thinking―leaping easily from epoch to epoch and from one philosophical idea to the next―to offer a startling and persuasive picture of this moment of decisive historical transition.”―Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon and At the Strangers’ Gate
In is new book, The Empire and the Five Kings, Bernard-Henri Lévy says that the United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western world, and to oppose autocracy and repression. Even when America did not live up to its ideals, it still recognized their importance, at home and abroad.
But as Lévy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence. Lévy shows how these five—Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism—are taking steps to undermine the liberal values that have been a hallmark of Western civilization.
The Empire and the Five Kings is a cri de coeur that draws upon lessons from history and the eternal touchstones of human culture to reveal the stakes facing the West as America retreats from its leadership role, a process that did not begin with Donald Trump’s presidency and is not likely to end with him. The crisis is one whose roots can be found as far back as antiquity and whose resolution will require the West to find a new way forward if its principles and values are to survive.
Terrence McNally is a communications consultant who helps organizations tell better stories. You may recognize him as the longtime host of Free Forum on KPFK. He now hosts a weekly interview show on the Progressive Voices Network on TuneIn and a monthly podcast for a science institute at Harvard. All his podcasts can be found at iTunes and TerrenceMcNally.net