so week at kirkus. thank you, herb and mark championing the magazine, the prize and, the literary community at large. this is our second year hosting the ceremony. many here in new york, home of the publishing industry where, so many editors, agents, publicists and book people can gather with us and for the fourth consecutive year, we're streaming the events on youtube so that many more book lovers at home can watch. thanks to of you for being here tonight. now i'd like to introduce the publisher and ceo of quercus media, meg keen. meg's in the importance of kirkus reviews to the book world and. her leadership of the company. we're vital to the development of the kirkus prize and it's safe to say that none of us would be here tonight without her vision. thank you, meg. the hardest working man in publishing a tom beer. thank you for celebrating with us tonight. either here in new york or virtually from the world. okay. i'm going to open tonight's program with a little fun fact. it is impossible for you t

and to the publicist for the kirkus prize. kimberly burns of broadside pr. tonight's playlist is hers too. thanks to all of you watching at home on youtube. and for those of those with us here in new york, we invite you to stay and enjoy food and drink from the buffets stations set up around the room. please stop by the hive. mind books table where signed copies of the kirkus prize finalists winners are for sale. have a very good but they had to. congratulations on writing a most engaging book. the last kilo fills in important gaps in public history, in public knowledge about drug trafficking and organized crimes in the united states and globally. names such as white female chapo guzman, pablo escobar, and of course, al capone are household names. the criminals that you deal with are far less so. and yet, in many ways, they were astound ingly successful criminal. so who are los muchachos about whom? your book is? yeah. los muchachos was a cocaine distribution organization that started in the late seventies and throughout the 1980s and into the early nineties

yeah, i think regal has does submit to the trades you know like library journal kirkus, etc., which i think is fairly standard but b and they organize what i would call sort of group opportunity days to do certain conferences but beyond that, you know not all that much i would say as far as individual reviews and for my second book, i hired a publisher, which is probably one of the best things that i did because it's really hard to pitch. i mean, she got me coverage and npr and the ap picked it up, which meant it like appeared in a lot of newspapers. also like they help with podcasts and things like that that are thematically related to your book. so i definitely credit her with a lot of that. but that being said, i mean, publicist per se don't do a lot of, you know, they'll do some of your events, but they're not as much of an organizer for that. so you still end up doing a lot on your own. you're definitely doing your social media on your own. writers do a lot more on their own. i think overall so, yeah. and i think that's both big publishers and smaller publishers. it's just the is

kirkus reviews calls the a spirited, encouraging handbook for progressive organizing. you will be in conversation with dorian warren. dorian is the co-president of community change and community change action and co-founder of the economic project. he taught for over a decade at the university of chicago and columbia university. he's the coauthor of the hidden rules of race, coeditor of race and american political and have spent numerous academic articles. he previously worked as a guest host and contributor at msnbc and his work has appeared in the new york times, newsweek and ebony.com among. others. everyone, let us all welcome and dorian warren. thank you. politics and prose good evening, everyone. that was. very vigorous. so we're going to do it again. good evening, everyone. all right. this is an organizers crowd. i can tell already. marshall, it's such honor to be in conversation with you, and i want to jump right in and just say that this book is part a love letter to tocqueville's democracy. it's part distillation of a lifetime of organizing. born from experie