Join us on Tuesday, May 27, to celebrate journalist Ross Halperin’s BEAR WITNESS: THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE IN A VIOLENT LAND.

Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat at the event. Seating is limited, and any unreserved standing room will be available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.

About the book

American sociologist Kurt Ver Beek and Honduran schoolteacher Carlos Hernández had devoted their lives to helping the poor. But it wasn’t until they moved to Nueva Suyapa—an extraordinarily dangerous neighborhood in the Honduran capital—that they came to a radical conclusion: The charity world was combating poverty incorrectly.

In gripping prose, Ross Halperin chronicles how these two best friends became quasi vigilantes and charged into a series of life-and-death battles through their grassroots organization, The Association for a More Just Society: first with the gang that terrorized their community, then with a notorious tycoon who commanded about a thousand-armed men, and finally with a police force whose corruption and brutality defied credulity. Their efforts made some of the most violent neighborhoods on earth safer and arguably improved the functioning of a national government, but in the process of pulling that off, they compromised their principles, precipitated collateral damage, and acquired their share of outraged critics.

A remarkable and dangerous feat of reportage, BEAR WITNESS is a thrilling account of an unorthodox mission to establish justice in a place thought to be beyond the reach of the law.

About the author

Ross Halperin attended Harvard University, worked on Wall Street, led a campaign to reconstruct the library in his hometown, and worked under Mark A.R. Kleiman, one of the world’s leading criminal-justice scholars. He started reporting BEAR WITNESS in 2018 and has since spent much of his time in Honduras.

Ross will be joined in conversation by Jill Leovy, a longtime Los Angeles Times crime correspondent and the author of the international bestseller Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. Her work has appeared widely, including in the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.