Adam Gopnik: The Real Work

The bestselling author and New Yorker writer embarks on a wildly creative inquiry into how we learn new skills.

For decades, Adam Gopnik’s writing has offered searing insights into a wide range of subjects including art, food, family, Stefan Zweig, Philp Roth, Seinfeld and much much more.

He comes to JW3 to speak about his new book which is his attempt to decipher how people can nail skills and do them brilliantly.

In The Real Work - the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick - Gopnik apprentices himself to an artist, a dancer, a boxer, and even a driving instructor, among others, trying his late-middle-age hand at things he assumed were beyond him. He finds that mastering a skill is a process of methodically breaking down and building up, piece by piece-and that true mastery, in any field, requires mastering other people’s minds.

Exuberant and profound, The Real Work is ultimately about why we relentlessly seek to better ourselves in the first place.

Adam Gopnik is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He has won three National Magazine Awards for essays and for criticism. The author of numerous best-selling books, including Paris to the Moon, he lives in New York City.

Emily Kasriel is now focussing on Deep Listening - an approach to deliver more meaningful relationships, particularly across divides, conducting research as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College Policy Institute. She has extensive experience as a media executive and journalist at the BBC, producing and reporting across five continents. She also sits on the board of the Wingate Foundation, and oversees the Wingate Prize. More about her work and writing here.