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Greetings From Politics and Prose! Author Events with General Tony Zinni, Richard Russo,
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Shortcut Bar: Click below to skip to popular destinations |
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UPCOMING EVENTS - 10 DAY SUMMARY |
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Thursday August 6 Monday August 10 Tuesday August 11 Wednesday August 12 Thursday August 13 |
Monday August 17 Tuesday August 18 Wednesday August 19 Thursday August 20
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LETTER FROM CARLA & BARBARA |
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We started our business in September 1984 with two employees -- us. As we began to add employees in 1985 and 1986, it became apparent that we had to have health insurance. By 1987 we were carrying some insurance for ourselves and our six or seven employees. We simply believed that was the cost of doing business. We didn't want employees to refuse to see a doctor when they were ill because of cost. We didn't want employees to worry about broken limbs or other emergency treatment. We wanted and continue to want a work environment where the staff feel assured that their lives will go forward smoothly. Sure, it costs. We estimate now that that the cost of health insurance for each employee is about $1/hour for the business. Retail does not pay a lot. It's fun and gratifying to work in a bookstore, but nobody will be well off. We hope that our employees will stay in the job for more than two years if possible. Indeed about a third of our staff has been with us for more than 5 years. Employee retention is a way that we provide better service for customers. You see familiar faces; the staffers are confident about their knowledge and abilities. However, skilled employees won't stay if they can't depend on health insurance. The cost of books is roughly 56% of the sales. Out of the remaining 44% that we earn, we have to pay rent, salaries, and supplies. Politics and Prose also pays approximately 75% of the health insurance premiums for its 50-some employees. We don’t regard any of these costs as optional if we want to operate a good business – as well as one that gives pleasure to ourselves, to our employees, and to our customers. Without pleasure, we don’t see the point to our work. We do have some choices in running a business. For instance, many times we have been asked to expand -- to Arlington, to Falls Church, downtown. Expansion is one way of making more money by spreading some of the basic costs over more business income. Each time we have resisted because we personally don't want to be in another location. We both enjoy our store in Chevy Chase, and we cannot open another store without paying a lot of attention to it. These are our choices. They are not everybody's choices. However, no business should have a choice about whether or not to provide health care for its employees. Granted -- maybe a one or two year waiver while the business gets started. Granted -- maybe a certain minimum number of employees -- five, ten, but certainly no more. We gladly would be in a pool. We gladly would pay the government and let them provide basic insurance. Fundamentally, we believe that health insurance is a right for workers, and we want to help promote universal coverage.
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BARBARA'S BYLINE | |
LAST CALL FOR SUMMER READING IN THE LOUNGE CHAIR 
There are only about three weeks left before the lazy days of summer will be gone, and I'm going to make one more pitch for Louis DeBernière's Birds Without Wings, a big story filled with memorable characters, a raft of personal histories, and an epic ethnic clash and Ottomans and Greeks. Just this morning I have an email from a customer saying, "I want to thank you for your recommendation of Birds Without Wings. I may never have read this book without your stellar review. The stories within stories were wonderful, characters fabulous, and it was entertainingly educational about the history of that part of the world (about which I'm completely ignorant) and many problems we have today. Thank you for giving us guidance on wonderful books!" I've never heard so much positive feedback about a book that I've enjoyed. Even Olive Kittteridge, another title that I have promoted, brings me some responses (not many) from readers who just couldn't find any warm and fuzzy feelings for Olive. If you take the chance with Birds Without Wings, I promise you'll turn the last page with a great sadness that the story has come to the end. As a brief side note, I received an email about a WETA book group discussion about Olive Kitteridge that will take place via Twitter. It will be a unique opportunity to interact with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout, who will join the Twitter Book Club on Monday, August 10 from 9-10 p.m. to discuss her book and answer questions online. You can obtain more information about how to participate by clicking here. BENCHGATE ECLIPSED BY PHONEGATE Beware the little red Community PhoneBook, in which the listed number is not our number and never has been. Please let your neighbors know that we are alive and well at 202-364-1919. Click here to read about this Kafka-esque saga. |
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CARLA COMMENTS | |
Vacations are about catching up on reading, although, of course, books need to take second place to spouse, family, and friends. So I read between discussing baseball with our grandson, helping prepare meals in the large family house where we are staying, and cozy visits with my brother and his wife and our friends who are here for the summer. As Barbara did, I am reading for our busy fall. And what a great fall season it will be! I just finished Nothing Was the Same, Kay Redfield Jamison's new book about the death of her beloved husband Richard Wyatt. (She will be at the store on September 26). I also read Israel is Real (September 10), an excellent short history by Rich Cohen, an author we have hosted many times (Tough Jews, Sweet and Low) and Tracy Kidder's new book Strength in What Remains (September 15). Click here for more.
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BOOK NOTES | |
NON-FICTION RECONSIDERED
In the 1990 Summer Newsletter, Carla and Barbara wrote a Field Guide to P & P - "We moved across the street on July 29th, 1989. In an effort to display more books, to give some sections more space, and to create new sections, we have been moving around again - this time within the store." By another coincidence, Conor just oversaw a reorganization of the non-fiction books. Click here to find out what this involves.
EXCITING FICTION RELEASES
- Andrew Getman
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COMING NOW TO YOUR FAVORITE BOOKSTORE |
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If you can’t attend a talk, but would like to reserve a signed copy,
Thursday, August 6 7 p.m. General Tony Zinni, retired head of CENTCOM, offers a contrarian primer on leadership addressed to heads of commerce as well as the military in Leading The Charge. With vertical hierarchical models flattened, leaders and their organizations must find new ways to operate and thrive by accommodating rapid changes in technology. Monday, August 10 7 p.m. Star New York Times journalist Helene Cooper marks the paperback publication of her remarkable memoir, The House At Sugar Beach. Born and raised in one of Liberia’s elite families, she escaped the wicked regime of Samuel Doe and came to the U.S. Cooper weaves the personal and the political into a story that is both touching and funny. Tuesday, August 11 7 p.m. Anthony Flint introduces Jane Jacobs in his biography, Wrestling With Moses. She was only one person, but she is credited with stopping the urban redevelopment king Robert Moses from remaking New York City in his image. Cities will assume greater importance now that fossil fuel is becoming scarcer and more expensive. The fiery debates of the ’60s have regained relevance. As The New York Times review points out, Flint provides the essential oppositional character never once mentioned in Robert Caro's The Power Broker. Wednesday, August 12 7 p.m. Griffin, in mid-middle-age, has achieved everything he envisioned for himself and his wife. Driving to the Cape for a wedding, he revisits the site of his honeymoon and his happy childhood summers. A year later, everything has changed. That Old Cape Magic, the latest novel from award-winning writer Richard Russo, is another masterpiece of storytelling. Thursday, August 13 4 p.m. From his unique perspective as a physician, former Vermont governor, and DNC chairman, Howard Dean takes on the obstacles to health care reform. Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform counters the hollow arguments and rhetorical charges of a socialist agenda and looks at rising health care costs and their impact on individuals and small businesses.
Monday, August 17 7 p.m. Meeting neighborhood boys in a pick-up ball game on the Lower East Side led to a six-year period during which Michael Rosen and his wife Leslie mentored a group of mostly Dominican-American youngsters. Rosen’s entertaining and powerful What Else But Home illustrates the challenges facing America in integrating low-income people into mainstream society. Tuesday, August 18 7 p.m. In a perfect blend of the personal and political, Eugenia Kim has written The Calligrapher’s Daughter based on her mother’s efforts to gain an education during a period when Korea chafed under cruel Japanese occupation. In the final chapters, we witness the changes from a static and highly structured culture to one of increasing modernity. Co-sponsored by The Asia Society, Washington D.C. Wednesday, August 19 7 p.m.A compilation of essays, many first published in The New Yorker, others the fruit of James Wood’s Harvard lectures in literature, How Fiction Works illuminates the many elements involved in the genre. Plot, narrative, the extent of the real in realism--Wood discusses these general features of fiction in the specific contexts of classic and contemporary writers from Homer and Flaubert to Updike and Kundera. Thursday, August 20 7 p.m. Alex S. Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning media critic currently at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, argues that the real problem with the media isn’t bias but an erosion of fact-based news. Losing The News suggests that, without the reliable pipeline of accurate reporting, we lack the information that will allow us to be capable watchdogs of government.
There will be only weekday author events during the month of August. |
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P&P CUSTOMERS ARE ALSO INVITED TO... | |
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Politics & Prose supplies books to the following book signing events. Friday, August 21, 7:30 p.m. 
"The Parthenon," the home of Chrissellen Petropoulos HAO-JIAN TIAN | |
P&P BESTSELLERS | |
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#1 FICTION: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
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NEW IN PAPERBACK | |
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Click FICTION or NON-FICTION to browse a complete list of recent paperback releases.
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FROM THE CHILDREN AND TEENS' DEPARTMENT | |
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BOOK OF THE WEEK For more recommendations for kids from our staff, pick up a copy of the Children and Teens’ Favorites Summer 2009 in the store or browse our summer selections for children and teens on the website by clicking here. For more from the Children and Teens' Department, click here.
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MARKDOWN BOOKS | |
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Among the many great books in this section you’ll find: From first-time novelist Michael Thomas, MAN GONE DOWN made a big splash when it was reviewed on the cover of The New York Times “Book Review.” It got another round of applause this past June when it won the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Ward. Thomas’s unnamed protagonist is a man down on his luck with only a little time left to turn things around. He’s a black man estranged from his white wife and three children, and struggling to fulfill the potential that earned him the nickname “Professor” when he was growing up. As he tries to work out his future, he thinks back on his past, reliving his father’s abandonment, his mother’s alcoholism, and the failed attempt at school integration by bussing in 1970s Boston. Available in paperback, $4.98. Martin Amis’s HOUSE OF MEETINGS is a powerful and moving novel about the extremes of human behavior, both good and bad. The narrator is a Russian man who spent the second part of his life in the United States, the first part in the Soviet Union. Now aging and burdened by his memories, he tells his story to his adopted American daughter, recounting his brutal stint in Stalin’s work camps, his first—and still enduring—love, and the rivalry with his brother, also a prisoner in the camp, for the woman they both wanted. While Amis’s vision is bleak, his prose is achingly beautiful and there is much to savor and ponder in this rich and disturbing narrative. Available in hardcover, $4.98. For more recently acquired remainders, click here. | |
MUSIC NEWS | |
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Click here for András’s reviews and Music News and to buy these albums. Free Harmonia Mundi Fall Release Sampler • András Goldinger | |
BOOK GROUPS | |
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Monday, August 10, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 11, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, August 13, 7:30 p.m.
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NEWS FROM THE COFFEEHOUSE | |
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EXHIBIT OPENING MEET YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD BAKER Read the full story on the Modern Times blog.
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Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, DC 20008 (202) 364-1919 or (800) 722-0790 Fax: (202) 966-7532 |
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We are following the debate on health care with interest. We are not impressed by those who claim to speak on behalf of small business and want to exempt small business from any responsibilities for health care.
As we prepare for our 25th Anniversary events next month, Floor Manager Conor Moran has been creating a database of past events. As he was looking through previous calendars and newsletters, he discovered an amazing coincidence - we moved from our location across the street exactly twenty years ago!
There are three new releases that have just arrived in the store which deserve your attention. Stieg Larsson’s sequel to 
