What was the point of the slash-and-burn cuts by Elon Musk’s DOGE? In compassionate and detailed reporting, academic and journalist Sasha Abramsky suggests that the cruelty and erratic methodology of those cuts was the point — a way to undermine government by creating deep fear and permanent uncertainty in the extraordinary workforce that keeps public institutions strong.
Join us at Library Shop Mission Hills as Abramsky explores the impact of the DOGE cuts in 2025, in conversation with Madhushree Ghosh. Register early to reserve a seat. Abramsky will share reporting from American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government. This event will include a Q&A and book signing.
Readers with a book receive priority if the event fills up early. Both RSVPs and book purchases are added to the guest list by first and last name. Proceeds from all book sales support the San Diego Public Library. Your book purchase can be picked up at Library Shop Mission Hills from now until the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
American Carnage follows eleven federal workers, in eight government agencies, from the time they were fired in the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidential administration through to the summer of 2025. After Trump empowered the world’s richest man, Elon Musk to make dramatic cuts to many of the country’s most important agencies through the “Department of Government Efficiency,” what unfolded in these months was a cascading tragedy of historic proportions.
Their stories, which show a country in a profound moment of crisis and dislocation, are America’s stories. What happened to them — the bullying, the intimidation, the deliberate removal of financial stability — also happened to hundreds of thousands of other employees. A fierce reckoning with the intimate and far-reaching effects of these layoffs, both on the individuals who lost their jobs and on the millions of Americans who found their access to basic government services curtailed, American Carnage is the first book-length account of how these cuts dulled and denuded our city on the hill, leaving a morally impoverished landscape in their wake.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SASHA ABRAMSKY is The Nation’s Western correspondent and authors a weekly political column for the magazine. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker Online, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He is the author of eleven books, including The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, The House of Twenty Thousand Books, Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar, and Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America. Abramsky teaches writing at UC Davis. Follow him on Bluesky at @sashaabramsky.bsky.social.
MADHUSHREE GHOSH is the author of the award-winning KHABAAR: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (2022). Her new book, Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture Through Punjabi Food in the American West, publishes in June of 2026. Ghosh presents at major book festivals and her work has been published in 2023 Best American Essays in Food Writing, as well as Pushcart-nominated and published in The New York Times, Vogue India, Washington Post, LA Times, The Writer, Longreads, Catapult, BOMB, Guernica, LA Review of Books, LitHub, Panorama Journal, The Rumpus, Brevity, Hippocampus Magazine, Atlas Obscura, The Chicago Quarterly Review, DAME Magazine, Le Sirenuse, Garnet News, The Surfers Journal, Del Sol Review, D&O magazine and others. She is an Oakley Hall scholar, actor, and screenwriter, and her award-winning plays have been performed at San Diego Actors Alliance festivals. A frequent speaker on “Women in Science” panels globally, Ghosh also hosts cooking classes on Indian cuisine here in San Diego, focusing on the science and health behind those culinary treats. In 2024, Ghosh launched KhabaarCo, a curated literary conversation and salon around food, our roots, social justice, and our words. She can be reached at @writemadhushree.
