How should we evaluate the Obama administration’s handling of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s? Noam Scheiber, New Republic senior editor and White House reporter, will discuss his book The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery, which provides an inside look at President Obama’s struggle to revive the economy and the key to understanding whether his team will succeed in bringing us back from the brink. Roger Lowenstein, a prolific financial journalist and writer, will moderate discussion.

The Escape Artists features previously undisclosed internal documents and extensive, original reporting from the highest levels of government. Tracking the administration’s efforts deep into the fall of 2011, The Escape Artists provides a gripping look inside the meeting rooms, inboxes, and minds of the men who tried to manage the defining crisis of the Obama Presidency: how the very qualities that made these men escape artists in the 1990s ultimately misled them.

This event is part of the Social Enterprise Program's Research Meets Practice speaker series.

Biographies
Noam Scheiber is a senior editor at The New Republic magazine in Washington, D.C. He holds a masters degree in economics from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. He covered the 2008 presidential campaign and the Obama White House.  

Roger Lowenstein is an American financial journalist and writer. He graduated from Cornell University and reported for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, including two years writing its Heard on the Street column, 1989 to 1991. Lowenstein has published five books and co-authored one. In addition, he has written for many publications, including Smart Money and The New York Times. Lowenstein is a regular book reviewer for The New York Times and has written a number of major articles and cover stories for The New York Times Magazine.