Readers - Books and Conversation with Nick Bryant

Celebrating books and readers, this is a monthly series of in-depth and relaxed conversations with authors about their latest work, and their body of work, their writing process and the ideas that inspire them.

Michaela Kalowski is an interviewer, moderator and curator for writers and ideas festivals. Highlight interviews include Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Michelle de Kretser, Amos Oz, Stan Grant, Holly Ringland & Etgar Keret. She's the curator of ABC RN’s on-air writers festival, Big Weekend of Books, now in its 4th year. In 2022 she was curator of International Author events for Brisbane Writers Festival. Michaela has conducted radio interviews for ABC RN’s The Music Show, Big Ideas & The Bookshelf, ABC Classic and has presented programs across ABC radio.

Our featured author: Nick Bryant

During a career spanning almost thirty years, Nick Bryant came to be regarded as one of the BBC’s finest foreign correspondents and was described as ‘the new Alistair Cooke’. He has been posted in Washington, South Asia, Australia and, most recently, New York, where he covered the Trump years. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Monthly and The New Statesman. He broadcasts regularly on the BBC and ABC. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. He now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. His book, When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present, currently resides on Joe Biden’s bookshelf in the Oval Office.

Nick's latest accomplishment The Forever War tells the story of how America’s political polarisation is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be found in its troubled past. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the American experiment is failing. Division, mistrust and misinformation are now its defining characteristics. The storming of the Capitol, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the increasing spotlight on Second Amendment rights raise the spectre of further political violence, and even the possibility of a second civil war. In The Forever War Nick Bryant argues that the hate, divisiveness and paranoia we see today are in fact a core part of America’s story. Combining brilliant storytelling with historical research, Bryant argues that insurrections, assassinations and massacres – from the American Civil War through to JFK and the inner-city race riots of the late ’60s, up to the more recent school shootings and the murder of George Floyd – should sadly not be seen as abnormalities. The compromises originally designed to hold the union together – the Amendments made in the Reconstruction era to give rights back to former enslaved people, the apportionment of political power – have never truly been resolved. Today, a country that looked confidently to the future has become captive to its contentious past. 

'Bryant writes as both a keen political reporter and a first-class historian, interweaving past and present to supremely powerful effect. It’s a superb achievement.' DOMINIC SANDBROOK, host of The Rest is History.

Berkelouw books Leichhardt will have copies of Nick's works for sale on the night and there will opportunities for signings as well.