Robert Kuttner at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store welcomes bestselling author and political analyst ROBERT KUTTNER for a discussion of his new book Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy. He will be joined in conversation by LIZABETH COHEN—the Howard Mumford Jones Professor of American Studies at Harvard University.

A Return to In-Person Events

Harvard Book Store is excited to re-introduce in-person programming this season, beginning this March. To ensure the safety and comfort of everyone in attendance, the following Covid-19 safety protocols will be in place at all of our Cambridge Public Library events until further notice:

• Face coverings are required of all staff and attendees when inside the store. Masks must snugly cover nose and mouth.

About Going Big

Joe Biden has found his way back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. After four decades of diminishing prospects for ordinary people, the public likes what Biden is offering. Yet American democracy is in dire peril as Republicans, increasingly the national minority, try to destroy democracy in order to cling to power. It is the best of times and the worst of times. In Going Big, bestselling author and political journalist Robert Kuttner assesses the promise and peril of this critical juncture.

Biden, like FDR in his time, faces multiple challenges. Roosevelt had to make terrible compromises with racist legislators to win enactment of his program. Biden, to achieve the necessary governing coalition, needs to achieve durable multiracial coalitions. Roosevelt had to conquer fascism in Europe; Biden must defeat it at home. And after four decades of neoliberal policy disasters reflecting Wall Street’s political influence, Biden needs to go beyond what even FDR achieved, to restore a democratic economy of broad possibility.

From a writer with an unparalleled understanding of the history and politics that have made this moment possible, this book is the essential guide to what is at stake for Joe Biden, for America, and for our democracy.

Praise for Going Big

“The latest from one of the most tenacious and principled journalists in American politics has arrived at just the right moment. This should be required reading among Democrats in Washington and across the country. ” —Heather McGhee, New York Times bestselling author of The Sum of Us

“As Joe Biden might put it, Going Big is a BFD—one with an urgent, essential, and ultimately hopeful message. If I could convince the president to read just one book at this perilous moment, this would be it. ” —Jacob S. Hacker, co-author of Let Them Eat Tweets

“Can Joe Biden and the Democrats take a page from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to ‘go big’ and thereby reconstruct America and its politics? Robert Kuttner, the nation’s most perceptive critic of the predatory capitalism that so bedevils us, answers with a resounding and insightful YES!” —Nelson Lichtenstein, author of State of the Union