Man in the Mirror
Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Se espera: 29 sept 2026
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- USD 11.99
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- Pedido anticipado
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
From acclaimed journalist Anand Giridharadas, a groundbreaking feat of reporting on a tragic encounter in a New York subway car that held up a mirror to a troubled and divided nation
“A tour de force of sharp-eyed reporting, powerful narrative, and heartbreaking tragedy. . . . Brilliant and spellbinding.”
—Robert B. Reich, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Coming Up Short
In 2023, New York was already a city under strain, racked by panic about crime, mistrust of police, and a broken system of care for homeless and mentally ill people. Then the lives of two men—Jordan Neely, a homeless man known in better days for his Michael Jackson impersonations, and Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine who had moved to the city seeking more than Long Island could offer—collided tragically in the subway. In Man in the Mirror, award-winning reporter and bestselling author Anand Giridharadas tells the riveting story of this deadly encounter and its aftermath, revealing through painstaking, on-the-ground reporting the depth of the rage, violence, and division that have defined 2020s America.
Man in the Mirror recounts Neely’s death and Penny’s prosecution through the perspectives of an unforgettable cast of characters: among them, a lawyer avenging his failed campaign for district attorney; a Michael Jackson impersonator trying to make her mentee’s death matter; a father who leads homeless outreach work even as his son languishes on the street; a city official struggling to enact a serious mental healthcare agenda under a scandal-plagued mayor. In weaving these individual experiences into a vivid, immersive narrative tapestry, Giridharadas delivers human dimension and complexity to a chapter of American history that has been so often served up as divisive clickbait.
At once panoramic in its scope and finely detailed in its emotional immediacy, Man in the Mirror is a tour de force of narrative reporting and an indispensable portrait of an age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On May 1, 2023, white ex-Marine Daniel Penny choked to death Jordan Neely, a Black unhoused and mentally ill former Michael Jackson impersonator, on a New York City subway. This outstanding revisitation of that fatal incident from bestseller Giridharadas (The Persuaders) begins with profiles of both Penny, who grew up in West Islip, Long Island, where residents see N.Y.C. as "a place of danger," and Neely, whose childhood was shattered by his mother's murder—eerily also by a chokehold. But the author also delves into an expansive web of individuals connected to the event, among them Moses Harper, a fellow Michael Jackson tribute artist; formerly unhoused anarchist Johnny Grima, who struggles with guilt after seeing Neely's corpse on the subway floor; and health commissioner. Ashwin Vasan, who challenges Mayor Eric Adams's draconian approach to homelessness. The author follows these individuals into New York's post-pandemic struggle with how to care for "its most desperate citizens," from social workers' plucky attempts to get unhoused people into shelters to destructive and ultimately futile encampment sweeps that result in camps relocating mere blocks away. The author's impressionistic observations about the city's economic contradictions, as when he describes a "hard-up" man with no feet lying down near a restaurant offering a "$368 ten-course dinner," set the tense stage for a concluding look at Penny's 2024 acquittal, which hinges, per Giridharadas, on "who gets to be granted the assumption of humanity." This is an indelible meditation on American inequality.
