Events

The world is now at a hinge moment in its history, according to veteran
international correspondent Paul Starobin in his new book, After America: Narratives for the Next Global Age. A once-dominant America has
reached the end of its global ascendancy, and the question of what will
come next, and how quickly, is not completely clear. Already the global
economic crisis, in exposing the tarnished American model of unfettered
free-market capitalism, is hastening the transition to the next After America phase of global history.

According to Starobin, the After America
world is being driven less by virulent anti-Americanism than by
America’s middling status as a social, economic, and political
innovator; by long-wave trends like resurgent nationalism in China,
India, and Russia; and by the growth of transnational cultural,
political, and economic institutions. While what is going to come next
has not been resolved, we can discern certain narratives that are
already advancing. In this sense, the After America age is already a
work in progress—pregnant with multiple possibilities.

In this
book, which masterfully mixes fresh reportage with rigorous historical
analysis, Starobin presents his farsighted and fascinating predictions
for the After America world. These possibilities include a global chaos
that could be dark or happy, a multipolar order of nationstates, a
global Chinese imperium, or—even more radically—an age of global
city-states or a universal civilization leading to world government.
Starobin feels that the question of which narrative will triumph may be
determined by the fundamental question of identity: how people
determine their allegiances, whether to the tribe, nation-state,
city-state, or global community.

There will be surprises, Starobin thinks. In the After America
world, both the nation-state and the traditional empire may lose ground
to cosmopolitan forces like the city- state and the universal
civilization. California—the eighth largest economy in the world and
the most future- oriented place in America—is becoming an After America
landscape, as illustrated by postnational, multicultural Hollywood.
Prestigious educational institutions like Harvard are migrating from an
American to a global identity and thus becoming part of an After
America universal civilization. While these changes may feel
unsettling, our best hope for adapting to an After America world is by
becoming better borrowers of the best ideas and practices developed all
around the planet.

Thought provoking and well argued, After America
offers a way to think about a dramatically changing world in which the
United States is no longer number one. Starobin’s tone is sober but in
the end hopeful—the age after America need not be a disaster for
America, and might even be liberating.

Paul Starobin is a staff correspondent for the National Journal and a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly. He was Moscow bureau chief for BusinessWeek from 1999 to 2003 and has also written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Geographic.

They were the children of France’s most celebrated men of
nineteenth-century letters and science, the celebrity heirs and
heiresses of their day. Their lives were the subject of scandal,
gossip, and fascination. Léon Daudet was the son of the popular writer
Alphonse Daudet. Jean-Baptiste Charcot was the son of the famed
neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, mentor to a young Sigmund Freud. And
Jeanne Hugo was the adored granddaughter of the immortal Victor Hugo.
As France readied herself for the dawn of a new century, these
childhood friends seemed poised for greatness.

In Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle Epoque,
Kate Cambor paints a portrait of a generation lost in upheaval. While
France weathered social unrest, violent crime, the birth of modern
psychology, and the dawn of World War I, these three young adults
experienced the disorientation of a generation forced to discover that
the faith in science and progress that had sustained their fathers had
failed them.

With masterful storytelling, Cambor captures the hopes and
disillusionments of those who were destined to see the golden world of
their childhood disappear -- and the universal challenges that emerge
as the dreams of youth collide with the realities of experience.

Kate Cambor received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University. She has written for The American ScholarThe American Prospect, among other periodicals. Cambor lives in New York City. This is her first book.

Rich Levy is a poet and (since 1995) executive director of Inprint,
a nonprofit literary arts organization in Houston. He earned his MFA at
the Iowa Writers Workshop, and his poems have appeared in Boulevard, Gulf Coast, Pool, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. A jazz obsessive, he and his wife have three children, two dogs, and one sleepy cat.

Why Me?, Levy's debut collection, published in Fall 2009 by Mutabilis Press,
reveals an original, and often humorous voice, that of husband, father,
artist and executive, the voice of the aging modern man confronting the
often absurd and hilarious dichotomies in our society. Brazos is
thrilled to present Rich Levy, an invaluable resource to Houston's
literary life and a beloved friend to many.

Texas singer/songwriter Vince Bell's story begins in the 1970s.
Following the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Bell and his
contemporaries Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, and Lucinda Williams were
on the rise. In December of 1982, Bell was on his way home from the
studio (where he and hired guns Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson had just recorded three of Bell's songs) when a drunk driver broadsided him at 65 mph. Thrown over sixty feet from his car, Bell suffered multiple
lacerations to his liver, embedded glass, broken ribs, a mangled right
forearm, and a severe traumatic brain injury. Not only was his debut
album waylaid for a dozen years, life as he'd known it would never be
the same. In detailing his recovery from the accident and his
round-about climb back on stage, Bell shines a light in those dark
corners of the music business that, for the lone musician whose success
is measured not by the Top 40 but by nightly victories, usually fall
outside of the spotlight. In One Man's Music, Bell's prose is not unlike his lyrics: spare, beautiful, evocative, and often sneak-up-on-you funny. His chronicle of his own life and near death on the road reveals what it means to live for one's art.

Join us at Brazos for a talk and a few songs by Vince Bell, then take the half-a-block walk for an after-party at Under the Volcano. Don't miss Bell at the Texas Book Festival and at Houston's Anderson Fair the night of November 6.

E.L. Doctorow, whose work has been translated into more than
thirty languages, is one of America’s most celebrated writers, with a
career spanning half a century. The Book of Daniel, published
in 1971 and based on the espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
placed Doctorow in the literary limelight and was hailed by Joyce Carol
Oates as “a nearly perfect work of art.” His next book, Ragtime, “as exhilarating as a deep breath of pure oxygen....[and] enormous fun to read” (Walter Clemons, Newsweek),
became an international bestseller and was made into a film and a
Broadway musical nominated for eight Academy Awards and twelve Tony
Awards, respectively. His other major works include the bestselling
novels Billy Bathgate, World’s Fair, The March, City of God, Loon Lake, and Welcome to the Hard Times, as well as several volumes of essays and stories. He is the recipient
of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, three National
Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, and the
President’s National Humanities Medal. He will be reading from his new
novel, Homer & Langley, which is inspired by the Collyer brothers, famous for their compulsive hoarding.

General admission tickets: $5, on sale October 1, 2009

Buy season tickets to the Brown Reading Series online.
See the 2009/2010 Brown Reading Series schedule.