Kai Bird, the Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of American Prometheus, inspiration for the Oscar-winning sensation Oppenheimer, will sit down with Society Leader Dr. Richard Koral to talk about his new book, American Scoundrel, a biography of Roy Cohn — one of the most corrosive influences on the arc of American political life, from his role as Chief Counsel to Joe McCarthy during the witch-hunts and blacklists of the Second Red Scare and Lavender Scare, to his close mentorship of Donald Trump in the 1970s and 1980s.
Kai Bird is an acclaimed biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer.
Bird is the executive director at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History and is the recipient of numerous fellowships.
His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He is an elected member of the prestigious Society of American Historians.
The AEU presentation will be held on Zoom, but the building is open for those who wish to join the AEU presentation in person.
There is no cost to attend, but all participants must register to receive the Zoom link.