Man in the Mirror
Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City

Quotes

“An extraordinarily wide-ranging investigation. . . . The remarkable scope of this book is demonstrated in a series of involving portraits. . . . An exhaustively reported book by a ferociously talented writer.”
—Scott Turow, The New York Times

"Destined to become one of the decade’s defining works of narrative reporting."
—Chicago Tribune

"A kaleidoscopic look at the city, at us, at what our society is, what it could be, who it fails, and who it doesn't fail. . . . Giridharadas spent two years chronicling this story in as rich, nuanced, and textural a way as you can imagine. . . . You will fly through this book. It reads like a novel."
—Chris Hayes, "Why Is this Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast"

"Dickens on the subway. . . . A masterful work of narrative nonfiction. . . . Anand has done for nonfiction what Tom Wolfe did in The Bonfire of the Vanities with fiction.”
—Tina Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Palace Papers

“Whereas some in the media reduced Neely to a trope—the mentally ill homeless man—Man in the Mirror invests his life with complication and nuance. . . . It is a virtue of this book that Giridharadas . . . applies an empathy for New Yorkers who try to thread their way through the divides created by this case.”
—The Atlantic

“The book is a model of a kind of journalism you don’t see much of, journalism that shows compassion for everyone involved.”
—Semafor

"Investigating Daniel Penny’s 2023 killing of Jordan Neely on the New York subway, and its aftermath, Giridharadas assembles a rich cast of characters whose intertwined lives straddle the fault lines that define our unsettled era."
—The Drift

"Stunning. . . . The reporting is spectacular. . . . Although the Penny trial is central to Man in the Mirror, the book is not really about re-litigating the case. What it's really about is taking this encounter and its aftermath and using them as a portal into post-pandemic New York, and ultimately, contemporary America"
—John Heilemann, Impolitic with John Heilemann

“In Man in the Mirror, Anand Giridharadas traces a legal battle that set safety and order for the majority against protection and care for the neediest. He writes with sympathy for both sides, recognizing despair among the advantaged and the powerless. This book’s moral complexity feels especially urgent as polarization threatens to undermine territory far beyond Giridharadas’s central narrative. This is a brave volume, profoundly researched, beautifully written, moving, and deeply felt.”
—Andrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author of Far From the Tree and The Noonday Demon, a National Book Award Winner and Pulitzer Prize Finalist

“Man in the Mirror is a gripping American tragedy—a profoundly human story of systemic failures, unequal judicial access, and the complexity of mental health care and individual choice. Anand Giridharadas captures how when rugged individualism, neoliberalism, and populism collide, people struggle to see each other until it is too late. Giridharadas is a powerful and compassionate writer of extraordinary conviction. This is a tremendous achievement.”
—Min Jin Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, a National Book Award Finalist

“Anand Giridharadas has done it again—making us think in new ways about the ever-sharper divisions of modern America. Man in the Mirror is a tour de force of sharp-eyed reporting, powerful narrative, and heartbreaking tragedy. Its cast of characters are riveting, their stories compelling, and the moral impact of what happened to them as inescapable as the tangled, troublesome times in which we now live. Brilliant and spellbinding.”
—Robert B. Reich, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Coming Up Short

“Like the very finest works of narrative nonfiction, Man in the Mirror is both riveting and deeply moving. Anand Giridharadas was on the ground from the very first days after the death of Jordan Neely and tirelessly and empathically followed the sprawling cast of characters involved through the verdict and its aftermath. In his deft hands, the tragic collision of an ex-Marine and a mentally ill homeless man on an uptown F train becomes a profound, lyrical meditation on the chasms dividing not only New York but all of America. It's hard to imagine a more timely book, or a more timeless one.”
—Jonathan Mahler, author of The Gods of New York

“Man in the Mirror is a deeply sobering reminder of all that is lost when a nation writes off its most vulnerable citizens as but a threat. A page-turner and a powerful wake-up call.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water and Fear and Fury

“Man in the Mirror is a map: Anand Giridharadas’s panoramic reporting on the death of Jordan Neely charts not only the forces of how systems operate in a city, but how individual people bring us closer to our common humanity—or pull us away from it. You can find so much of what you need to know here—and much more, depending on how brightly you want to shine the light.”
—Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family

"Man in the Mirror is the kind of humane, deeply reported, morally complex nonfiction that deserves to be called novelistic. It illuminates a world that was always right in front of me but I might not have wanted to see. Now I can’t forget it."
—George Packer, National Book Award-winning author of The Unwinding

“Man in the Mirror is a crisply written and compelling journalistic deep dive—into the internecine politics in which the killing of Jordan Neely was used to advance other agendas, the many social institutions that were unable to help save Neely’s troubled life, and a country at war with itself.”
—Richard Price, author of Lush Life

“An extraordinary book. . . . It gets at so much of who we are right now. . . . It reads like a novel.”
—Terry Moran

"Outstanding. . . . This is an indelible meditation on American inequality."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A stark and haunting snapshot of modern America, Man in the Mirror reflects our divided nation and the costs of our disconnection from one another."
—BookPage