A joint-author event, Kristian Williams and Eric Laursen will be sharing their work on George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Williams' book, Between the Bullet and the Lie, highlights the relationship George Orwell saw between aesthetics, ethics, and politics; the difference between honesty and integrity; the corruption of language; the importance of observation and evidence; and the many failures of the Left. The result is not a study of sacred decrees from Orwell, but an application of his thought to political and literary questions that trouble us today.

Laursen’s book examines the arguments that divided George Orwell and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex—during WWII. Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain’s war against fascism, was “objectively pro-fascist." Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government’s atrocities—in Britain’s case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers—had “sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity.”

Please join us for this fascinating presentation, followed by a discussion, and book signing.