Skidompha Library’s Chats with Champions will feature Arlie Russell Hochschild on Thursday, July 11 at 10 a.m. in the library’s Porter Meeting Hall. Please allow time for parking.

Hochschild is a renowned professor emerita of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Chat with Champions at Skidompha Library will focus on her latest title: “Strangers in Their Own Land, Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” a New York Times Best Seller and finalist for the 2016 National Book Award.

In an era in which most of us live in our own “political bubble,” Hochschild dared to venture from liberal Democratic Berkeley, California to conservative Republican Lake Charles, Louisiana. By the time Donald Trump had won election to the United States Presidency in 2016, Hochschild had spent five years immersed in the “deep story” of a nation grappling with its identity. Her Chat with Champions will unpack the political trends that elected Trump and offer solutions for moving forward.

Hochschild has been awarded Guggenheim, Mellon, and Fulbright Awards as well as the Ulysses Medal from the University College, Dublin. Her work appears in 17 languages. She spends summers in Maine with her husband, Adam, on land once her family’s dairy farm.  

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from your national award-winning Skidompha Library and is sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop. For more information call 563-5513.