Andy Borowitz at First Parish Church

Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning comedian and New York Times bestselling author ANDY BOROWITZ to celebrate the paperback release of Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber. He will be joined in conversation by MARGERY EGAN and JIM BRAUDE—hosts of WGBH's Boston Public Radio.

Ticketing

Please Note: Tickets to this event are sold out. There is no waitlist for this event. People interested in waiting in a stand-by line at the door for this sold-out event are welcome to. If any seats are still open five minutes before the event begins, we will turn them over to those in the stand-by line and have them purchase tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. Of course we can’t guarantee that those in the stand-by line will get in, but we are often able to let in some of those patiently waiting. 

Book-Included Ticket: Includes admission for one and one paperback copy of Profiles in Ignorance signed by the author.

Admission-Only Ticket: Includes admission for one.

About Profiles in Ignorance

Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column “The Borowitz Report.” Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he delivers “a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of American politics from grounds for gravitas to festival of idiocy” (The New York Times).

Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades.

Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.

Praise for Profiles in Ignorance

“How did we slide into the abyss of liking our politicians to be—or to act—dumb rather than smart? In this funny but serious book, Andy Borowitz chronicles our embrace of anti-intellectualism.” —Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker

“This is one of these brilliant books that makes you laugh until you cry. Borowitz masterfully throws light (and shade) on the confederacy of dunces who have fumbled their way into power. His writing has never been smarter, sharper, or more necessary.” —Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book

“Highly recommended. Can't remember the last time I read something so maddening that was also so hilarious. Also, it is diagnostically astute about the rise of ignorance in American politics.” —Kathryn Schulz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize