Join us for an evening celebrating three highly acclaimed journalists and their recently published books. We're welcoming Karen Abbott, Susannah Cahalan, and Ada Calhoun to Rough Draft for readings of The Ghosts of Eden Park, The Great Pretender, and Why We Can't Sleep.

Sob Sisters is a journalists' club founded in 2018 to celebrate women reporters. Once a month, they convene 20-40 journalists in a bar or a bookstore to talk shop.

This event is free with food, drink, or book purchase. Seating is first-come, first-serve, but RSVPs via Eventbrite are appreciated. (They help us stay in touch in case of changes, and they give us an idea of how many people to expect.) Come for the readings, stay for the book signings, mingling, and merriment to follow!

The featured authors' books can be purchased at Rough Draft, and will be for sale on event night. Please note: Rough Draft is an all-ages establishment; however, this event may contain adult language and content.

This event is part of Women’s History Month Kingston.

ABOUT THE BOOKS:

The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America

by Karen Abbott

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new cars for the women.

Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the Justice Department hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences. With the fledgling FBI on the case, Remus is quickly imprisoned for violating the Volstead Act. Her husband behind bars, Imogene begins an affair with Dodge. Together, they plot to ruin Remus, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder.

Combining deep historical research with novelistic flair, The Ghosts of Eden Park is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and a long-forgotten heroine, of the excesses and absurdities of the Jazz Age, and of the infinite human capacity to deceive—named by Smithsonian as one of the best ten history books of 2019.

The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness

by Susannah Cahalan

Susannah Cahalan, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire and "one of America's most courageous young journalists" (NPR), investigates the shocking mystery behind the dramatic experiment that revolutionized modern medicine.

Doctors have struggled for centuries to define insanity--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, healthy, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.

But, as explosive new research shows in this real-life detective story, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors?

Why Can't We Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

by Ada Calhoun

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?

Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked. Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to "have it all," Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take "me-time," or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.

In Why We Can't Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X's predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss--and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.