How do you measure a reporter’s life?
By the number of times he has won the Pulitzer Prize or the bestselling books he’s written?
By his ability to survive a plane crash in Congo, and then to escape from a warlord as he exited the country?
By the Cambodian teenage girls he saved by purchasing them from their pimp, or the dissident he smuggled out of China?
That is Nicholas Kristof’s life as a reporter: two Pulitzers, five bestsellers, two Cambodian girls liberated, one dissident freed from harm . . . and four decades of harrowing adventures across 160 countries.
The awards and dramatic escapes are hardly Kristof’s passion. Shining a light on human rights abuses and social injustices in unnoticed places is his raison d’être.
Upon the release of his memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life, Mr. Kristof joins us to discuss his 40-year career at The New York Times, covering the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, being detained in Iran for asking young people there whether they supported the Islamic revolution, risking death as he wandered through Darfur and using his pen to force attention to the drug crisis in his home state of Oregon. In the process, he’s become known as the Indiana Jones of journalism.
In addition to the two Pulitzer Prizes he has won, Kristof was a finalist on five other occasions. He is the co-author of five books, all bestsellers, with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, and is currently an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.
Kristof will be in conversation with memoirist and historian Tara Westover. Her first book, Educated (2018), debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and was a finalist for a number of awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. The American Booksellers Association named it the Nonfiction Book of the Year, and to date, the book has been translated into 47 languages. For her staggering impact, TIME magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and in 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.