The Book Club With Jeffrey Sachs launches with Martin J. Sherwin's Gambling with Armageddon

28 January 2021 — Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University Professor, President of SDSN, and UN SDG Advocate launched his new Book Club today with a lively and compelling conversation with Dr. Martin J. Sherwin, author of Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis .

During the hour-long conversation, Prof. Sachs and Dr. Sherwin explored the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world. They discussed the choices of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over the course of the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s positions during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the often-overlooked role of US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson—and luck—in preventing a nuclear world war. The conversation was captivating, riveting, and eye-opening for its global audience of 700 viewers.

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs aims to provide “the chance to talk to world-leading authors who are writing fantastic, scintillating, inspiring, and incredibly informative works about human nature, about social justice, and about the inequities that we have inherited from the past that we have to overcome in the future,” said Prof. Sachs. In addition to the monthly live conversations, the Book Club offers a number of different avenues for engagement, including joining the Book Club on edXto access excerpts, supporting resources, and discussions with more than 3,000 fellow Book Club members from around the world. Recordings of each live conversation can be found in the edX platform, in the SDG Academy Library, or on the SDG Academy YouTube Channel. A series of podcasts based on the live conversations will launch shortly.

February’s book is Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law , which discusses segregation in America and the forgotten history of government policies that continue to affect the Black community today. The live conversationwill take place on 24 February at 8 am EST / 13:00 UTC .

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachsis a free global forum to discuss the most relevant topics for humanity. It is an initiative of the SDG Academy.

For more information, visit www.bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org or contact the SDG Academy at sdgacademy@unsdsn.org.