Three author events from Third Place Books this week

Third Place Books, with locations in Lake Forest Park, Ravenna, and Seward Park, has transitioned some of its author events online with three this week.

• Protecting consumers to save democracy
• The truth about America's "Deep State"
• A Black Man's view of race

The links are with each event description. How long each event is available online after the live event depends on each author.

All are presented in Partnership with Town Hall Seattle

Monday, April 20 at 7:30pm - Watch link

Richard Cordray
Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy

Many consumers feel cheated or mistreated when engaging with credit cards, mortgages, and loans, but do not have the resources or expertise to fight back on their own. When these increasingly one-sided finance markets blew up the economy in 2008, Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to safeguard the marketplace and enforce consumer protections. Richard Cordray, former Director of the CFPB, joins us with stories of the individual consumers whose interests the Bureau represented—and the ways the agency made a difference in the lives of Americans.

Cordray draws from his book Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy, telling a hopeful story of a time when our economic system was overhauled to fit the needs of the people.

He recalls critical moments where the agency fought to preserve the rights of the consumer—simplifying mortgage paperwork, putting limits on predatory lenders, and stepping in to help solve problems suing big banks for cheating or deceiving consumers.

Join Cordray for a discussion of the fight to establish a new baseline of economic fairness in our democratic society. Cordray will also answer questions about the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on consumers and what can be done to protect them in these challenging times.

No purchase is required to view this event, but attendees are encouraged to make a donation in support of Town Hall Seattle, and to purchase Watchdog from Third Place Books

Tuesday, April 21 at 7:30pm - Watch link

David Rohde in Conversation with Steve Scher

In Deep: The FBI, The CIA, and the Truth About America’s “Deep State”

President Trump blames the “deep state” for his impeachment. But what is the American deep state, and does it really exist? Journalist David Rohde takes us into the heart of the debate over the deep state with reporting from his book In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America’s “Deep State.”

He reveals how the spectre of the deep state has been evoked to embody different intangible fears and crises by America’s different ideological factions. To conservatives it is a government bureaucracy that relentlessly encroaches on the individual rights of Americans, while Liberals fear the “military-industrial complex”— a cabal of generals and defense contractors who they believe routinely push the country into endless wars.

Rohde presents a sweeping exploration of the presidential power struggles and CIA and FBI scandals of the past fifty years ― from the Church Committee’s exposure of Cold War abuses, to false intelligence about Iraq’s WMDs, to NSA mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden.

Rohde investigates the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era and the relentless spread of conspiracy theories both online and on-air. While Trump says he is the victim of the deep state, Democrats accuse the president and his allies of running a de facto deep state of their own that operates outside official government channels and smears political rivals.

Through dozens of interviews with career CIA operatives and FBI agents, Rohde shines a light on fraught the trends of mistrust of the politicians, unelected officials, and journalists who many believe unilaterally set America’s agenda.

David Rohde is an executive editor of The New Yorker website and a former Reuters, New York Times, and Christian Science Monitor reporter. He is also a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

No purchase is required to view this event, but attendees are encouraged to make a donation in support of Town Hall Seattle, and to purchase In Deep from Third Place Books

Thursday, April 23 at 7:30pm - Watch link

Clifford Thompson

What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues

African-American writer Clifford Thompson was raised to believe in treating every person of every color as an individual—and he decided as a young man that America, despite its history of racial oppression, was his home as much as anyone else’s.

Thompson joins us for a heartfelt livestream conversation exploring the war between the values he has always held and the reality with which he is confronted in twenty-first-century America.

Thompson presents thoughts from his book What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues, offering a powerful framework for navigating race in America, carrying on the tradition of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me.

As a middle-aged, happily married father of biracial children, Thompson finds himself questioning his most deeply held convictions when the race-baiting Donald Trump ascends to the presidency — elected by whites, whom Thompson had refused to judge as a group, and who make up the majority in this country Thompson had called his own.

He reflects on the wisdom of the writers he admires, and grapples with the understanding that the answers to his questions about America ultimately lie in America itself. Tune in for perspectives from an acclaimed writer in the grip of contradictory emotions — trying to find his own answers based not on conventional wisdom or on what he would like to believe, but on what he sees.

Clifford Thompson received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction in 2013 for Love for Sale and Other Essays. His personal essays and pieces on books, film, jazz, and American identity have found homes in publications including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The Times Literary Supplement , and many others.

No purchase is required to view this event, but attendees are encouraged to make a donation in support of Town Hall Seattle, and to purchase What It Is from Third Place Books