Click here for our events calendar and preview upcoming events through March.
 Click here for more complete descriptions and to buy signed copies online.
Members always save 20% on event books. Click here to register!

 

 

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

We were delighted to see that so many of our event authors appeared on the list of finalists for the National Book Critics' Circle awards.  Both Mary Karr and Kati Marton spoke about their Autobiographies LIT and ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE to large, spellbound audiences. Benjamin Moser spoke to a full house about WHY THIS WORLD: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, the celebrated Ukrainian-Brazilian author, while Blake Bailey spun a long and fascinating tale of CHEEVER: A Life, complete with impressions!

In the category for Criticism, we cheered for Morris Dickstein’s DANCING IN THE DARK, his cultural history of the Depression; and in General Nonfiction, we remember the large crowds who came to hear Tracy Kidder’s STRENGTH IN WHAT REMAINS and his heart-rending tale of Deo, who fled from war-torn Burundi with nothing and struggled to eventually become a doctor in New York.

Meanwhile, another memoir SOMEWHERE TOWARDS THE END by Diana Athill was a personal favorite for Carla, which makes it an especially rich category this year. Since we loved all of these books, we are rooting for all of these authors and their chances to win this prestigious award.  The awards will be announced the second week of March, so there is plenty of time for you to review the selections for yourself and decide on your own favorites!

Click here to browse the complete list of nominees.

TICKETS NOW ON SALE FOR TED LEONSIS - THE BUSINESS OF HAPPINESS

Wednesday, February 24, 7 p.m.
Politics & Prose hosts TED LEONSIS
at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street NW
THE BUSINESS OF HAPPINESS: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Work (Regnery, $27.95)
Leonsis was already a successful entrepreneur at age 25, when he survived a plane crash and realized he wasn’t truly happy. He began to apply his analytical skills to the question of personal fulfillment and studied satisfaction in fellow business executives, successful entertainers, and professional athletes, as well as typical Americans. According to Albert Schweitzer, "Happiness is the key to success." In his book, Leonsis, a business, sports, and media mogul (he is the owner of the Washington Capitals), proves Schweitzer's point, explaining that success may or may not make one happy, but happiness will almost always make one more successful.

Click here to pre-order your book and reserve tickets to this event.
Two author event admission tickets are free with book purchase from P&P (use the checkout comments field to indicate how many tickets are required). Tickets without the book are $12 each.

Go back to top of email

 

If you can’t attend a talk, but would like to reserve a signed copy or a recorded author talk,
click the title links to purchase online. P&P members save 20% on these author event titles.

Thursday January 28

David M. Walker - Comeback America
7 p.m. Framing his call to fiscal action from traditional values of responsibility and stewardship for future generations, the former head of the Government Accountability Office and current CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation offers specific proposals to control spending, save Social Security, dramatically alter Medicare, and simplify the tax code.

Friday January 29

Kathy Orton - Outside the Limelight: Basketball in the Ivy League
7 p.m. With no athletic scholarships, poor facilities, and demanding course loads, Ivy League students who play basketball do it for the sheer love of the game. Orton, The Washington Post’s long-time reporter on college basketball, presents a season in the lives of unsung college athletes.

Saturday January 30

Robert Lehrman - The Political Speechwriter's Companion: A Guide for Writers and Speakers
1 p.m. Geared specifically to politicians, this manual focuses on speechmaking as advocacy. Lehrman, former chief speechwriter for Al Gore and for organizations ranging from the Democratic National Committee to corporations and nonprofits, brings his extensive experience to bear in his LAWS of speechwriting - with tips on Language, Anecdotes, Wit, and Supporting Evidence.

Barry Lynn - Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction
6 p.m. Lynn, a frequent contributor to Harpers and the Financial Times (“Tom Friedman for grown-ups,” according to a Washington Post review), argues that obscure but growing industrial monopolies in America threaten our democracy and basic freedoms.

Sunday January 31

Kyoko Mori - Yarn: Remembering the Way Home
5 p.m. Born in Japan, Mori learned to knit as preparation for marriage and subservience. Later, living in the American Midwest, she used the craft to help her endure the double loss of a failed marriage and her mother’s suicide. This memoir is both a personal history of knitting and a story of strength and survival.

Monday February 1

Chris Farrell - The New Frugality
7 p.m. The personal finance correspondent for NPR’s Marketplace Money shows how the economic downturn can be an opportunity to reconsider what, why, and how much we consume. Defining “frugality” as a focus on quality rather than quantity, Farrell offers advice on a range of practical matters, from household accounts to planning for college expenses.

Tuesday February 2

Paula Young Shelton - Child of the Civil Rights Movement
10:30 a.m. The daughter of Andrew Young knew Martin Luther King, Jr., as “Uncle Martin,” and she and her sisters were carried in their parents’ arms on the march to Selma. This memoir culminates with passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965; Paula watched Uncle Martin on TV with Lyndon Johnson as the President signed the act into law.

Garry Wills - Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State
7 p.m. Looking back to the Manhattan Project, Wills argues that the secrecy surrounding the invention of the atomic bomb led to the growth of a larger institutional apparatus for covert operations, including the CIA and the NSA. It also initiated a profound change in the nature of the presidency, with security as the primary focus.

 

Wednesday February 3

Anne E. Kornblut - Notes From The Cracked Ceiling
7 p.m. Kornblut, a veteran of three presidential campaigns who currently covers the White House for The Washington Post, analyses why women still have not been elected to the highest public offices. Drawing on extensive interviews with women of both major parties, Kornblut examines the strategies and assumptions that need to change to make politics truly gender-equal. Anne will be in conversation with CNN’s Candy Crowley.

Thursday February 4

Douglas Rogers - The Last Resort
7 p.m. A New York-based travel writer, Rogers relates an account of returning to his childhood home in Zimbabwe is a kaleidoscopic narrative of political repression, endurance against the odds, natural beauty, and squalor. His tale is vivid and moving as he reports on changes to his birthplace and on his parents’ hardships under the Mugabe regime.

Friday February 5

Joel Kotkin - The Next Hundred Million
7 p.m. From the author of The City: A Global History, this look at America in 2050 foresees a population greater by 100 million people, living mostly in suburban areas rather than in cities like New York and Chicago. With technology enabling more people to work from home, families and local communities will define the social fabric.

Saturday February 6

Georgia Irvin - Georgia Irvin’s Guide to Schools: Metropolitan Washington, Independent and Public/Pre-K—12
10:30 a.m. Irvin served for 15 years as Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Sidwell Friends School. Her guide to D.C.-area public and private schools—now in its third edition—has long helped parents find the right schools for their children. This updated edition includes reviews for 82 preschools, a feature that has been missing from school guides in the past and will be of particular interest and value to parents today.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench
1 p.m. In her powerful debut novel, Perkins-Valdez revisits pre-Civil War America. Centering on an Ohio resort that caters to Southern plantation owners and their slave mistresses, the book presents a complex, polarized society from the perspective of three slave women. Seemingly resigned to their situation, they’re jolted into a new sense of possibility when a newcomer talks about running away.

Michael Kranish - Flight From Monticello
6 p.m. Legends now, the Founding Fathers in their day were as fallible as anyone else. Kranish’s investigation into Jefferson’s actions during a British military incursion in the Revolutionary War reveals the then-governor of Virginia as a deficient military leader and poor planner.

To see the complete schedule and to purchase any of the above books, click here.

Go back to top of email

Politics & Prose supplies books to the following book signing events.
Reservations and tickets should be acquired from the hosting organization.
If you can’t attend a talk, but would like to purchase a signed book, call
202-364-1919 or 1-800-722-0790 or click the title links below.

Thursday, January 28, 12 noon

The Ritz-Carlton
1150 22nd Street NW
MEG WHITMAN AND JOAN O'C. HAMILTON
THE POWER OF MANY: Values for Success in Business and in Life (Crown, $26)
During her decade at the helm of eBay, Meg Whitman transformed it from a tiny start-up into a nearly $8 billion global powerhouse, revolutionizing the way goods are bought and sold online. Now, with the vitality, candor, and often self-effacing humor that is her trademark, Meg lays out the ten core values to which she not only credits her strategic success, but also the many of the joys and satisfactions of her private life. For more information and to register, visit hooksbookevents.com.

Thursday, January 28, 6:45 p.m.

Smithsonian Resident Associates
in Collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Avenue, NW
(Enter at 2100 C Street)
Photo ID required
R. DOUGLAS FIELDS
THE OTHER BRAIN:  From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science (Simon & Schuster, $27)
Neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields is a leading researcher on glial cells, which integrate communication networks in the brain and control electrical activity. Fields will lecture on recent and revolutionary research on glial cells and their links to health - including cancer, schizophrenia and depression, paralysis, and brain repair following injury and stroke.
Please call 202-633-3030 for tickets (Resident Members $15; Gen. Admission $25; Senior Members $13.

Monday, February 1, 7:30 p.m

Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street, S.E.
PEN/Faulkner Presents
SUSAN ORLEAN and GEORGE SAUNDERS
Introductions by Richard McCann and Matt Klam
New Yorker contributors and authors Susan Orlean and George Saunders read selections from the rich mélange of their combined repertoire. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased online at www.penfaulkner.org or by phone at 202-544-7077.

Wednesday, February 3, 7 p.m.

Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
ELAINE SHOWALTER, VINCA SHOWALTER LAFLEUR, and MICHAEL SHOWALTER
A JURY OF HER PEERS: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Vintage, $16.95)

On the occasion of the paperback release of Elaine Showalter's tenth book, A Jury of Her Peers: Celebrating American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx, three members of the Showalter family will talk about how they became writers and how being part of this family influenced their work. Vinca Showalter LaFleur is a former speechwriter for President Clinton and ghostwriter. Michael Showalter is a comedian, screenwriter, and comedy writer on Comedy Central. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 the day of the event, or receive one (1) free ticket with the purchase of the book ($17). Tickets and books can be purchased at www.sixthandi.org. Please call 202.408.3100 with questions.

Thursday, February 4, 7:30 p.m.

Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 S. Park Ave.
Chevy Chase, MD
CURTIS ROOSEVELT
TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: Growing Up in the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor (Public Affairs, $19.95)
Curtis Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, tells what life was like when he and his sister — known as "Buzzy and Sistie"— spent more than a decade of their formative years in the spotlight with their famous grandparents at the White House and at the Roosevelt family home at Hyde Park. Please sign up in advance for this FREE event by calling the Village Center at 301-656-2797.

 

Tuesday, February 9, 7:30 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW
SALEEM H. ALI
TREASURES OF THE EARTH: Need, Greed, and a Sustainable Future (Yale, $30)
Would the world be a better place if human societies curbed their desires for material goods? Scholar and environmental visionary Saleem H. Ali suggests that the answer is not so simple and proposes a new environmental paradigm that accepts our need to consume resources, while urging conservation as well. Click here for tickets. (NG Member: $15; General Public: $18)

Wednesday, February 10, 7:30 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, N.W.
JOHN GEIGER
THE THIRD MAN FACTOR: Surviving the Impossible (Weinstein, $24.95)
A mysterious phenomenon has been noted by survivors of traumatic events: the sense of the close presence of a guardian when “in fact” there is nobody there. Based on physiological, psychological, and historical research, Geiger’s book offers the latest discoveries in neurology as well as compelling human stories of survival. Click here for tickets. (NG Members: Event $15, 3-part series $39; General Public: Event $18, 3-part series $45)

Thursday, February 11, 7:30 p.m.

Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 S. Park Ave.
Chevy Chase, MD
ANNE E. KORNBLUT
NOTES FROM THE CRACKED CEILING:  Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win (Crown, $25)
Washington Post White House correspondent Kornblut explores the stunning twists of the 2008 election - with revelations about the Clinton and Palin campaigns - and the political landscape for women nationwide, including exclusive, in-depth interviews with such leaders as Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, and Janet Napolitano. Please sign up in advance for this FREE event by calling the Village Center at 301-656-2797.

 

Go back to top of email

 

FOOTNOTES IN GAZA: A Graphic Novel
signed by Joe Sacco
(Metropolitan Books, $29.95)
Hardcover - December 2009
First editions, first printings

Joe Sacco finally returns to Palestine with FOOTNOTES IN GAZA, a tome of investigative journalism and history. This book is concerned with the killing of 111 Palestinians in Rafah and Khan Younis in 1956, an incident slowly and painfully unraveled through a series of interviews and framed stories. Sacco has an unflinching eye for detail and exactness as he illustrates the story. Never ignorant of the ongoing violence in the region, Footnotes in Gaza explores the many differing and often contradictory accounts of a nearly forgotten incident, all the while offering an informative exploration of contemporary Palestine.   

This signing took place in New York. A big thank you to our friends at McNally Jackson Books for their generosity and hospitality.

- Adam Waterreus

Go back to top of emaii

 

THE JOURNAL OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1837-1861 (NYRB, $22.95)

On the basis of his journals, Thoreau was earnest, witty, philosophical, a little pedantic, a little righteous, an untiring autodidact, a loner but not a misanthrope. His days consisted mainly of taking long walks and writing them up. In all weather conditions, he hiked (or paddled or ice skated) from Concord to Walden, to the Great Meadows and up the north River. He explored seasons as well as places, and kept detailed records of plants and animals, temperatures, precipitation. Thoreau’s lists and facts are a curiously compelling accompaniment to his lyrical descriptions and apt, striking images. Truly “a man’s knowledge added to a child’s delight,” this journal is a vivid and immediate portrait of Thoreau and his world.

- Laurie Greer

Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books by clicking here.

Go back to top of emaii

 

P&P members always save 20% on our top twelve FICTION and NON-FICTION hardcover bestsellers.
To see our complete bestseller lists, click on the titles below.

#1 FICTION:  36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
 by Rebecca Goldstein

#1 NONFICTION: GAME CHANGE: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

 

Go back to top of emaii

 

These two titles were both store favorites when they were in hardcover. Click FICTION or NON-FICTION  to browse a more complete selection of recent paperback releases.

CUTTING FOR STONE  by Abraham Verghese

THE LOST CITY OF Z : A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon  by David Grann

 

Go back to top of emaii

 

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through 02/03/2010)
When American troops pull out of Vietnam and North Vietnamese forces attack his village, 13-year-old Y’Tin must survive using his knowledge of the jungle and his skills as an elephant trainer.   Forced to make difficult choices, Y’Tin reflects that the jungle is A MILLION SHADES OF GRAY (Atheneum, $16.99), just like the hide of an elephant.  Newbery award-winning author Cynthia Kadohata brings to life a young man’s personal struggles over friendship, kinship, and change in the context of war-torn Vietnam.  Ages 12 and up  – Heidi Powell

Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books by clicking here.

Lisa Chaplin-Hobbs hosts story time for young children every Monday morning at 10:30 a.m.

For upcoming events and more from the Children and Teens' Department, click here.

Go back to top of email

Click here to browse more remainders that have recently become available.

 

Go back to top of email

LOTS OF NEW TITLES

Youssou N’Dour, I BRING WHAT I LOVE (Nonesuch, $17.98) — Last fall, the Avalon showed the documentary, I Bring What I Love, about the recording of Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour’s album, Egypt, and the reactions and repercussions in his country. The album features all new recordings of music from throughout N’Dour’s career, as well as two new songs.

Patty Griffin, DOWNTOWN CHURCH (Credential Records, $17.98) — Singer and songwriter Patty Griffin explores the gospel realm in her new album. The New York Times had a good article on her love of the Staple Singers and the genesis of the album.

Charlotte Gainsboug, IRM (NEK, $13.99) — Actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg’s collaboration with Beck, who wrote and produced. Gainsbourg’s musical legacy was discussed last Sunday in the Times.

Corinne Bailey Rae, THE SEA (Captitol, $17.98) — Corinne is back after a long hiatus; see the profile.

Pat Metheny, ORCHESTRION (Nonesuch, $17.98) — Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny updates the days of the player piano by assembling a small band of specialized, up-to-date mechanized instruments to back him on his tunes.

Magnetic Fields, REALISM (Nonesuch, $16.98) — Stephin Merritt’s droll and deadpan songs are given bright, acoustic treatments on the Magnetic Fields’s “folk” album. Merritt and friends are coming to town next Thursday, Feb. 4 at Lisner Auditorium.

 

R.I.P. KATE MCGARRIGLE
Singer and songwriter Kate McGarrigle, who died last week, came to prominence for co-writing (with her sister, Anna) “Heart Like a Wheel,” the title song on Linda Rondstadt’s 1974 smash album. The French Canadian sisters’ own album came out a few years later, showcasing their songs and sweet harmonies. Kate was also the matriarch of a strong musical family, the mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright. The extended families did many concerts and albums together, such as 1998’s THE MCGARRIGLE HOUR (Hannibal, $16.98), featuring Loudon, Rufus, and Martha Wainwright, plus friends Emmylou Harris, Linda Rondstadt, and many others.

To read more of Andras's reviews click here