From China and Kyiv, to Afghanistan and Israel, to elections in Iran and the debacle of Brexit, for over forty years New York Times Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen has journeyed to all corners of the world to cover everything from truth and dissent, to dictatorship, revolution, and displacement.

Now, in An Affirming Flame: Meditations on Life and Politics, Cohen’s finest columns, dispatched from Tehran, China, Cairo, Libya, Vietnam, Gaza, Ukraine, Munich, Hungary, and Poland, and more, have been compiled together for the first time, accompanied by a never-before-seen essay on the state of the world. In these writings, offering an assessment of politics and journalism in the twenty-first century, Cohen traces out a path for the future of democracy. He will appear in conversation with European history expert Jacques Rupnik. 

This event will be followed by a cocktail reception.

Learn more:

Roger Cohen was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. Reporting for the New York Times, he recently traveled from Moscow to Siberia to the Ukrainian border, seeking to understand the “nationalist lurch into an unprovoked war and its mood more than 17 months into a conflict conceived as a lightning strike, only to become a lingering nightmare.” Discover what he found.

Watch Cohen’s appearance on CNN to discuss An Affirming Flame. When asked why he describes himself as a “stubborn optimist,” Cohen responded: “We have to believe in our capacity to improve the world.” 

The title of Cohen’s book, An Affirming Flame, is the last line of a poem written by W.H. Auden on the eve of World War II. In the poem, Auden writes, “We must love one another or die.” Read it here. 

About the speakers:

In 2023, Roger Cohen and a team of New York Times reporters were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and a George Polk Award in Foreign Reporting for their coverage of the war in Ukraine. Cohen is the Paris bureau chief for the New York Times, where he began working in 1990. He has also worked for the Times as bureau chief in Berlin and in the Balkans, where he covered the Bosnian war and received the Eric and Amy Burger Award from the Overseas Press Club of America. In 2021, he received the Légion d’Honneur from the French Republic for his work over four decades. 

Jacques Rupnik was educated at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and at Harvard, is currently Research Professor at CERI-Sciences Po in Paris as well as visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Executive director of the International Commission for the Balkans  he was previously advisor to president Vaclav Havel.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Cohen and Rupnik will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

Copies of An Affirming Flame will be available for purchase at the Library in the week leading up to this event and while the event takes place, generously provided by Smith&Son. All sales support this local independent bookstore.

Attendees will have the opportunity to have their copy signed following the conversation.