Join us for a community book discussion of Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down with author and cultural anthropologist, Anand Pandian and community leader and activist Gabrielle Hill. The book is based on stories from more than a dozen places around the country including Newburgh itself, where the book focuses on the inspiring  water-related advocacy work of the Newburgh Clean Water Project. Copies of the book are available at the Main Library at the circulation desk with the other book discussion books. If you prefer, you can also read a copy of the ebook with your Newburgh Free Library card with the Hoopla app

In 2016, Anand Pandian was alarmed by Donald Trump's harsh attacks on immigrants to the United States, the appeal of that politics of anger and fear. In the years that followed, he crisscrossed the country―from Fargo, North Dakota to Denton, Texas, from southern California to upstate New York―seeking out fellow Americans with markedly different social and political commitments, trying to understand the forces that have hardened our suspicions of others. The result is Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down, a groundbreaking and ultimately hopeful exploration of the ruptures in our social fabric, and courageous efforts to rebuild a collective life beyond them.

Through vivid encounters with Americans of many kinds―including salesmen, truck drivers, police officers, urban planners, and activists for women's rights and environmental justice―Pandian shares tools to think beyond the twists and turns of our bracing present.