The Booksmith is very excited to host Emily Witt for the release of Health and Safety! She will be joined in conversation by Anna Wiener. Please join us!

About the book

From the New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed author of Future Sex (“introspective and breathtakingly honest”—New York Times Book Review), a memoir about drugs, techno, and New York City.

In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon publish her first book on sex in the digital age, had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to catch glimpses of the clandestine nightlife scene thrumming around her.

In Health and Safety, Witt charts her immersion into New York City’s dance music underground. Emily would come to lead a double life. By day she worked as a journalist, covering gun violence, climate catastrophes, and the rallies of right-wing militias. And by night she pushed the limits of consciousness in hollowed-out office spaces and warehouses to music that sounded like the future. But no counterculture, no matter how utopian, could stave off the squalor of American politics and the cataclysm of 2020.

Affectionate yet never sentimental, Health and Safety is a lament for a broken relationship, for a changed nightlife scene, and for New York City just before the fall. Sparing no one—least of all herself—Witt offers her life as a lens onto an era of American delirium and dissolution.

About the authors

Emily Witt has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2018. She has covered breaking news and politics from around the country, and has written about culture, sexuality, drugs, and night life. She is the author of the books Future Sex and Nollywood. Her journalism, essays, and criticism have appeared in n+1, the Times, GQ, Harper’s, and the London Review of Books.

Anna Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and the author of Uncanny Valley (2020). She lives in San Francisco. 

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Masks are not required, but can be provided upon request.
• Check-in begins at 6:45. Unclaimed seats are given up beginning at 7:10.
• There will be a 30 minute post-show signing as time allows. Books will be for sale on the night of the event, but you can also purchase additional copies straight from our website.
• Please be aware of the ticket tier you are selecting. The free general admission tier does not guarantee a seat and may be standing room if our seated tiers sell out first.
• Questions? Accessibility requests? Write to us at [email protected].