2020
  • Published: 25 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781847926944
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $36.99

2020

A Reckoning

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
25 Jun 2024
EBook
7 Mar 2024
Hardback
7 Apr 2024
Pre-order from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

Renowned sociologist Eric Klinenberg provides the ultimate overview of how different countries fared during the pandemic and why

The virus had the potential to kill, but the real threat to life came from us.

In this global overview of different countries' responses to the pandemic of 2020, we see that the key factors that determined success or failure were not to do with geography, preparedness or vaccines. They were social: how much we trust each other and our government; whether we value the collective or the individual; whose lives matter to us and who we're willing to leave in harm's way.

Through a deeply reported, character-driven account of seven lives - including a school principal, a bar manager, a transport worker and a political aide - in the global epicentre of the pandemic, New York, we see how different communities and sectors of society were affected by the decisions taken by governments and politicians. We see why some heeded the call for mask-wearing and social distancing while others rejected it, and how crucial factors such as race and age determined fates. Surrounding them is the panoramic overview: Klinenberg shows how leaders in London and Washington made the crisis so much more lethal than was necessary, while scientists, citizens and policy makers in Australia, Japan and Taiwan worked together to save lives, and how countries as various as South Korea, Germany and Brazil took their own particular paths.

This book is both mirror and roadmap: a reflection of who we are at this crucial moment in world history, and a set of principles for how we might approach the next catastrophe differently.
  • Published: 25 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781847926944
  • Imprint: Bodley Head
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $36.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Eric Klinenberg

Eric Klinenberg is the Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the co-author of the bestseller Modern Romance and author of Palaces for the People, Going Solo, Heat Wave and Fighting for Air. He has contributed to the Guardian, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic, Rolling Stone and Wired. He lives in New York City.

Also by Eric Klinenberg

Palaces for the People
Modern Romance
See all

Praise for 2020

A gripping, deeply moving account of a signal year in modern history, told through the stories of seven ordinary people trying to survive at the epicentre of the crisis. Klinenberg's narrative shows how the legacy of that year continues to shape us, our politics and our personal lives

Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies

A sociological investigation of an unforgettable year, 2020 compellingly reveals what the pandemic laid bare about our culture, our institutions, and ourselves

Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted

A book that's at once intimate and far-ranging, that reveals the importance of social solidarity and also its fragility

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

Elegantly written and well researched . . . filled with impressive detail

Economist

By bridging the gaps between individual, community and population, [Klinenberg] shows how pandemics alter society and exacerbate inequality. He follows the threads that connect the individual lived experience to the national phenomenon

Laura Spinney, New Statesman

Remarkable . . . full of intriguing insights

Literary Review