Gulf of Maine Books will host author Anthony Walton at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, to celebrate his new book “The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with his Life and his Nation,” published by Godine Publishers.

“This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complications of racism and its effects on political polarization in America today,” journalist Molly Jong-Fast wrote. “Anthony Walton is a teller of difficult truths, and you cannot read this book without finding that it has given you new knowledge about your own life.”

Walton is a resident of Brunswick and teaches at Bowdoin College. His previous work of nonfiction was “Mississippi: An American Journey.” He has published a book of poems, “Cricket Weather,” and has co-editd two anthologies of poetry with poet/teacher Michael Harper, “The Vintage Book of African American Poetry” and “Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep: An Anthology of Poetry by African Americans Since 1945”. He has also co-authored “Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion” with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and “Go and Tell Pharoah: The Autobiography of Reverend Al Sharpton.”

His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The Black Scholar, the Oxford American, the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Ireland Review, Notre Dame Magazine and the Library of America: African American Poetry, as well as being broadcast on NPR, CNN, C-Span and the BBC.

The Friday event is free and open to the public.