Commonwealth Club: Francis Fukuyama: In the Realm of the Last Man

Francis Fukuyama, a leading public intellectual—including repeated popular appearances at the Club—is well-known for his significant, bestselling works of political philosophy and history. Now, for the first time, he examines his own political and intellectual evolution across five transformative decades.  In his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, Fukuyama invites us to follow him from the circle of students around the conservative intellectual Allan Bloom at Cornell, into the halls of power in Washington and at the RAND Corporation, and into private conversations with world leaders from Muammar Qaddhafi to China’s powerful elite. Fukuyama touches on his family’s story, including his relatives’ internment during World War II along with other Japanese Americans. And, in surprisingly personal terms, he reflects on the experiences that led him to reevaluate his own thinking, most notably his dramatic public break with the neoconservative movement over the invasion of Iraq. Join us as Francis Fukuyama returns to the Commonwealth Club World Affairs stage to share his look at his own personal history as political history―the story of a life that illuminates the troubled fate of democracy and liberalism over the last 50 years. Returning to and developing the concepts that have been central to his work―recognition, thymos, trust, identity, human nature, institutions, and the Last Man―Fukuyama brings the depth and richness of personal experience and pathbreaking scholarship to illuminate the crises of the 21st century. Come see how a major thinker grapples in real time with the convulsions of history—and looks ahead to our possible future.