"The text of Public Power in the Age of Empire is based on a public address that Arundhati Roy delivered to an overflow crowd at the American Sociological Association's 99th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, on August 16, 2004. The theme of the conference was "Public Sociologies." The talk quickly aired on C-SPAN Book TV, Democracy Now!, and Alternative Radio, reaching audiences throughout North America and beyond, and was circulated via e-mail around the world."--[taken from About the text}