In-Store: Isaac Butler: The Perfect Moment w/ Emily Nussbaum

Event guidelines:

• Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/GxalnT8vElY
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

The prize-winning author of The Method reveals the forgotten origins of America’s culture wars—a story of late twentieth century art vs. censorship, brimming with intense drama and fierce moral urgency.

It’s 1988, the final year of the Reagan presidency, and the curtain is closing on the Cold War. In the absence of external adversaries, the American public is on the precipice of war with itself. The religious right, newly ascendant and emboldened, is determined to seize control of America’s future. And the first battles will be fought over, of all things, contemporary art.

In The Perfect Moment, cultural historian Isaac Butler reexamines this pivotal, misunderstood American era. Archconservatives like Jesse Helms, Pat Buchanan, and Pat Robertson fixed their sights on artists including Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, and Karen Finley, capitalizing on the provocative politics of their work to stir a nascent evangelical coalition into moral panic. It was at this moment, Butler argues, that the far right perfected the tactics it still uses today to whip its base into a frenzy—from banning books and sanitizing American history to spreading medical misinformation. All too relevant today, The Perfect Moment is an incisive and meticulously researched account of this crucial period and a stirring ode to the power of the creative spirit.

Isaac Butler is the author of the NBCC Award winner The Method and the coauthor of The World Only Spins Forward. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, Slate, American Theatre, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and more. He created the podcast Lend Me Your Ears, co-hosted the podcast Working, and co-created the multimedia production Real Enemies. Butler teaches theater history and performance at NYU. He lives in Brooklyn.

Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and previously, was the magazine's television critic. She worked as an editor and a writer at New York Magazine, where she created The Approval Matrix. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Clive Thompson and her two children.

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