Ben Bradlee, Jr.

Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed journalist and writer BEN BRADLEE, JR.—former reporter for Boston Globe and author of The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams—for a discussion of his latest book, The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America.

About The Forgotten

In The Forgotten, Ben Bradlee Jr. reports on how voters in Luzerne County, a pivotal county in a crucial swing state, came to feel like strangers in their own land—marginalized by flat or falling wages, rapid demographic change, and a liberal culture that mocks their faith and patriotism.

Fundamentally rural and struggling with changing demographics and limited opportunity, Luzerne County can be seen as a microcosm of the nation. In The Forgotten, Trump voters speak for themselves, explaining how they felt others were 'cutting in line' and that the federal government was taking too much money from the employed and giving it to the idle. The loss of breadwinner status, and more importantly, the loss of dignity, primed them for a candidate like Donald Trump.

The political facts of a divided America are stark, but the stories of the men, women, and families in The Forgotten offer a kaleidoscopic and fascinating portrait of the complex on-the-ground political reality of America today.

Praise

"This is a book that should be absorbed by the millions of Democrats who still cannot understand how Donald Trump won in 2016. Bradlee did what the brightest editors in New York and California did not assign their reporters to do—he spent months talking to white working-class Americans in a rural county in Pennsylvania—a nominally blue state—and learned the hard way, on the job, that Trump was a far more viable candidate than the elite thought. This is a real reporter's book." ―Seymour M. Hersh, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter

"Ben Bradlee's The Forgotten is an eyeopening look at the American electorate in the Age of Trump. By honing in on a singular Pennsylvania county Bradlee brilliantly dissects the myriad of reasons behind our Great Political Divide. A must read!" —Douglas Brinkley, historian and professor of history at Rice University

"Pennsylvania has long fancied itself 'the keystone state'—the piece that holds together the arch of the nation. In 2016, when the nation came apart in disturbing ways, this state's role was especially revealing. Ben Bradlee Jr.'s meticulous reporting illuminates the riveting story of how people who felt forgotten discovered how to get the nation's attention." ―George F. Will, Washington Post syndicated columnist