A Political Education with André Schiffrin

André Schiffrin was born the son of one of France's most esteemed publishers, into a world that included some of the day's leading writers and intellectuals, such as André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Join VINGT PARIS for an evening of readings from his memoir, A Political Education - an absorbing account of the tumultuous political times that shaped him.

The memoir recounts the surprising twists and turns of a life that saw Schiffrin become, himself, the publisher of some of the world's leading writers, from Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault, and Eric Hobsbawm, to Simone De Beauvoir, Studs Terkel, Art Spiegelman, and Marguerite Duras.

A question and answer session and a book signing will follow the reading.

“A beautifully written and melancholy update, if you will, of Democracy in America by the Frenchman de Tocqueville, this book also written by a man born in France, but one who has spent most of his life in America, most famously as a publisher of books in support of peace and we the people.” --Kurt Vonnegut

“This remarkable work is more than a flesh-and-blood tale of growing up. It is the stunning and revelatory road map of a a seeker. It is an autobiography of ideas.”
--Studs Terkel

"André Schiffrin's life story is a riveting journey, from the `commanding heights' of American culture in the 1940s through the culture crash of the Reagan-Bush era. Along the way we meet the `great and the good'--heroes like André Gide, who really cared about freedom--as well as villains who just didn't give a damn. This is the best literary and political memoir I've read in years--an indispensable text for understanding what we've lost."
--John R. Macarthur