Join us to discuss best-selling author Kim Ghattas' new book 'The Best Kind of American', in conversation with CNN's Clarissa Ward.

We are excited to welcome Kim Ghattas, one of the most highly regarded journalists and authors working on the Middle East today, to discuss her latest book The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America’s Undoing in the Middle East. Kim will be in conversation with Clarissa Ward, Chief International Correspondent for CNN.

The Best Kind of American is a work of true crime following one American family’s search for answers after a 1984 murder of Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University, in war-torn Beirut.

Four decades later, the question of who killed Malcolm and why is still not fully resolved. With nuance, clarity, and storytelling, Ghattas embarks on a quest to shed more light on Kerr’s assassination, weaving together the family’s story with that of Lebanon’s warlords and peacemakers, Hezbollah hostage takers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and American presidents from Reagan to Trump. She also tells the definitive story of how Beirut came to be the point of origin for the policies and people who went on to shape the Middle East for decades.

Kim Ghattas is an author and journalist with more than twenty years’ experience covering the Middle East, international affairs and US foreign policy. She is a contributing editor at the Financial Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and has previously worked for the BBC, reporting from across the Middle East and as State Department correspondent in Washington. Her reporting has won an Emmy. She is also the author of Black Wave, an era-defining work on the Middle East, and The Secretary, A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power, a New York Times bestseller.

Clarissa Ward is CNN’s Chief International Correspondent. She has spent nearly two decades reporting from front lines in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Ukraine. She has won nine Emmy Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards for distinguished journalism, honors from the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association, the 2017 David Kaplan Award from the Overseas Press Club, and the Excellence in International Reporting Award from the International Center for Journalists.

Tickets include complimentary drinks. Doors open at 6.40pm for a 7pm start.

If you want to attend but are unable to afford this event right now, please email us at hello@lalabooks.london. We are happy to offer free tickets and books available under our community pay it forward scheme.

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