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Ali Velshi is an MSNBC Anchor and Business Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.

Velshi has covered a wide range of breaking news events and global affairs throughout his career, including U.S. presidential elections, ISIL and the Syrian refugee crisis, the Iran nuclear deal from Tehran, the tensions between Russia and NATO from Eastern Europe and the High Arctic, the debt crisis in Greece, the funeral of Nelson Mandela, and the global financial crisis.

Before joining NBC News and MSNBC, Velshi hosted “Ali Velshi On Target,” a nightly primetime show on Al Jazeera America. Before that, he served as CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent, anchor of CNN International’s “World Business Today” and host of CNN’s weekly business roundtable “Your Money.” Velshi also co-hosted CNN’s morning show, “American Morning.”

An award-winning journalist, Velshi was honored with a National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting for “How the Wheels Came Off,” a special on the near collapse of the American auto industry. His work on disabled workers and Chicago’s red-light camera scandal in 2016 earned him two News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations, adding to a nomination in 2010 for his terrorism coverage. Additionally, Velshi has taken his economic analysis to “Oprah,” “The View,” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

Velshi is the author of Gimme My Money Back (Sterling and Ross, 2008) and co-author with CNN’s Christine Romans of How to Speak Money (Wiley, 2010).

Born in Kenya and raised in Canada, Velshi graduated from Queen’s University in Canada, which bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Laws upon him in 2016. Velshi splits his time between New York City and Philadelphia. Active in the community, Velshi serves on the Board of Trustees of the Chicago History Museum, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also volunteers with New York’s Center for Urban Community Services homeless outreach program

Jared Yates Sexton is the author of The Man They Wanted Me to Be and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. His political writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and Salon.com. Sexton is also the author of three collections of fiction and is an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University.

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From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes a journey through the history of the United States, from the nation’s founding to the twenty-first century, which examines and debunks the American myths we’ve always told ourselves. 

In recent years, Americans have faced a deluge of horrifying developments in politics and culture: stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity: This isn’t who we are.

In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations. Working through each era of American growth and change, Sexton weaves together the origins and perpetuation of these narratives still in the public memory, and the acts we have chosen to forget. 

Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine our own misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American.

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