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!

 

This past Saturday evening, in the middle of yet another snowstorm, author Barry Lynn gave a terrific and timely talk about his new book, CORNERED, arguing the dangers of the growing monopolization of business both domestically and globally. It was perfect timing because all weekend the telephone lines and emails among independent booksellers were humming with the news that Amazon had removed all the Macmillan Publishing Group's titles from their for-sale inventory. This meant that authors, like our own World-War-II historian Rick Atkinson, with books published by Macmillan, Holt, Farrar Straus, St. Martin's, Picador and others would lose the sales and royalties for their books that would have been sold by Amazon.

The heart of this contretemps was Amazon's demand that all ebooks be priced on their website at $9.99. Macmillan, fearing the attendant consequences on this distributor-imposed price structure and the impact on hardback book sales, was fiercely determined to protect the current author royalty levels and demanded a $15 retail price for many of their ebooks. Independent bookstores and authors cheered for Macmillan, but feared, at the gut level of this corporate standoff, that the sad facts were that Macmillan might need Amazon more than Amazon needed Macmillan.

Then, an astounding announcement came from Amazon on Monday morning that surprised us.  Here is the latest development:

Publisher Wins Fight With Amazon Over E-Books

By MOTOKO RICH and BRAD STONE
In a statement Sunday afternoon, Amazon said it would accept Macmillans decision. On Friday, Amazon removed buy buttons from thousands of titles published by Macmillan, including recent best sellers like WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel and THE GATHERING STORM, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Customers who wanted to buy print editions could do so only from third-party sellers. Digital editions made for Amazons Kindle device disappeared.

In a strongly worded message on its Web site on Sunday, Amazon said that while it disagreed with Macmillans stance, it would bow to the publishers plan. Apparently, Amazon decided that they did stand to lose too much by forgoing these sales. We see this as a victory against the corporate giant. You can read more about this industry battle in The New York Times.

Timothy Egan (author of THE WORST HARD TIME and THE BIG BURN) writes a weekly column for The New York Times Online called The Opinionater.  In a timely comment, he offered an eloquent re-framing this week of the book industry's domestic fallout. 

The traditional book, judging by [Steve] Jobss announcement (of Apple's new ipad), and a recent eulogy of sorts by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is headed for that cultural compost pile of long-playing albums, Kodachrome film and boxy computers nicknamed Hal. This raises two issues: what the loss of book stores does to communities, and what the brave new publishing world will mean to authors and readers.

... if Denver were to lose Tattered Cover, or Portland lose Powells, or Washington, D.C., lose Politics and Prose, it would be like ripping one lung from a healthy body. These stores are cultural centers, shared living rooms; no virtual community on the Web, or even a well-run library, can replace them.

The good news, the recession shows, is that most of the iconic independents will survive. Again, there are no limits to our appreciation of so many of our customers' loyalty to Politics and Prose when they are choosing where to purchase a book. Your purchases support a local, independent bookstore as well as the essential services, including the public schools, in the District of Columbia. As you may remember, we provide jobs in the local economy, offer all of our employees health benefits, and pay taxes to our local government. An online retailer such as Amazon pays no local taxes and takes your money out of the neighborhood.

Cheers for Bob Lehrman and The Political Speechwriters Companion

It was quite an accomplishment for Bob Lehrman, that we sold out of his book, The Political Speechwriter's Companion at his author event earlier on Saturday.  Within the week we will have additional copies and the ever-cooperative author will be back in to sign and personalize copies of his book for those who left empty-handed.  Call us or click this link to our website to reserve your copy.

 

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If you cant 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 February 4

Douglas Rogers - The Last Resort
7 p.m. Rogers’s account of returning to his childhood home in Zimbabwe is a kaleidoscopic narrative of political repression, endurance against the odds, natural beauty, and squalor. A New York-based travel writer, Rogers 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.

Monday February 8

Julian Zelizer - Arsenal Of Democracy
7 p.m. A Princeton professor of history and public affairs, Zelizer shows that partisan fighting has always shaped American foreign policy, while national security has always been part of our domestic conflicts. Rather than a new phenomenon of the Bush/Obama years, U.S. domestic politics and foreign affairs have been intertwined for the last six decades.

Tuesday February 9

Roz Schanzer - What Darwin Saw
10:30 a.m. In his round-the-world voyage of1830, Darwin observed huge turtles and an earthquake’s after-effects. Schanzer uses Darwin’s words—from his letters and journals—and her own colorful drawings to tell the story of this history-changing adventure.

Basharat Peer - Curfewed Night
7 p.m. A journalist born in Kashmir, Peer chronicles the devastating effects of the region’s conflict that since 1989 has killed some 70,000 people. From terrorist training camps to villages planted with land mines, from peasants to politicians, Peer’s book is a comprehensive and vivid account of a war-torn land.

Wednesday February 10

Peter Hessler - Country Driving
7 p.m. The author of River Town and Oracle Bones completes his trilogy on contemporary China with a report on that country’s love affair with cars. Hessler, Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, got a Chinese driver’s license in 2001 and spent six years driving some 7,000 miles around China.. His narratives of driving lessons, use of the horn, and traffic violations are funny and frightening.

Thursday February 11

Stuart Stotts - We Shall Overcome
10:30 a.m. The anthem for the Civil Rights movement and a rallying cry for the Vietnam War protests, “We Shall Overcome” today is familiar around the world. Stotts’s history of the song goes back to its origins in hymns and gospel music and its role in demonstrations against many different injustices.

Philip Pomper - Lenin's Brother
7 p.m. In 1886 Alexander Ulyanov, a brilliant biology student, joined other students at St. Petersburg University to plot the assassination of Russia’s tsar. The mission failed, and its leaders, Alexander included, were executed. His younger brother, Vladimir, was deeply affected by these events and later led the October Revolution of 1917 under his revolutionary pseudonym “Lenin.”

Friday February 12

Vanda Felbab-Brown - Shooting Up
7 p.m. A fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, Felbab-Brown argues that the “narcoguerilla” premise—which assumes a symbiotic relationship between drug trafficking and terrorist organizations—that underlies much U.S. policy is mistaken and counterproductive. She draws on specific case studies from around the world as evidence for effective sequencing of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and counternarcotics efforts.

Saturday February 13

Ronald D. Asmus - A Little War That Shook The World
1 p.m. In his examination of the brief war between Russia and Georgia of August 2008, the former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State presents evidence that Moscow had been planning such an action for some time. He argues that it was intended to alert the West that Russia is a force to contend with in the 21st century. 

William Cohen & Janet Langhart Cohen - Race And Reconciliation In America
6 p.m. Cohen, a Jewish-Irish Protestant former Maine Senator, collaborates with his wife, an African-American Southern Baptist former television personality from Indiana, to argue for  an open dialogue on racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice. In 2008 the couple convened a multicultural group, which included Douglas Blackmon, Deepak Chopra, Sam Donaldson, Louis Gossett, Jr., and the Honorable John Lewis, to start just such a discussion.

Sunday February 14

James McGrath Morris - Pulitzer
5 p.m. A biography of Joseph Pulitzer and a history of modern journalism, Morris’s book charts Pulitzer’s life from his birth in Hungary and his emigration to the United States in 1864,  to his involvement in journalism, which began when Pulitzer moved to St. Louis after the war. In 1879 he bought two newspapers, combined them into The St. Louis Post- Dispatch, and proceeded to transform the landscape of American news and politics.

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

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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, 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, 12:30 p.m.

Congregation Har Shalom
11510 Falls Road
Potomac, MD
DAVID MAKOVSKY
MYTHS, ILLUSIONS, & PEACE (Viking, $27.95)
A cogent analysis -- co-authored by Dennis Ross -- of what went wrong in Middle East policy and offering guidelines for an effective course of future action. A fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Makovsky, together with Ross, brings fresh focus to a range of difficult issues with their profound grasp of Middle East realities.  For more information please contact Jerry Miller at 301-279-7413 or e-mail at jmsm803@aol.com.

Wednesday, February 10, 7 p.m.

Arts Club of Washington
2017 I St, N.W.
DYLAN LANDIS
NORMAL PEOPLE DON’T LIVE LIKE THIS (Persea, $15)
& JOANNA SMITH RAKOFF
A FORTUNATE AGE (Scribner, $15)
Meet two of our brightest emerging talents in contemporary fiction. 2009 Pulitzer-Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, called Normal People Don’t Live Like This “a wonderful, intriguing and original debut.” Booklist praised A Fortunate Age for its “heartbreaking clarity,” later naming it one of the Top Ten Debut Novels of 2009. Readings will be followed by a Q&A, then a light reception and booksigning.For more information contact: Sandra Beasley, ACW Literary Chair at 703-994-3166 or sandrabeasley@earthlink.net.

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.

 

Tuesday, February 16, 7:30 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW
STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER  
SCIENCE AS A CONTACT SPORT: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate (National Geographic, $28)
Stephen H. Schneider, a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (with Al Gore) in 2007, offers a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the political battles over climate change in his new National Geographic book, Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate. Find out how special interests were able to exploit scientific uncertainties to block measures against climate change, and hear why this visionary thinks it is not too late to take action. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets. ($18; $15, NG Member)

Wednesday, February 17, 8:30 a.m.

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center - Rotunda
1300 Pennsylvania Ave N.W.
DANIEL H. PINK
DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead, $26.95)
Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people-at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind, Free Agent Nation) explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. This event is being hosted by HooksBookEvents and Greater Washington Board of Trade. For more information and to register, visit hooksbookevents.com.

 

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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:  THE HELP
 by Kathryn Stockett

#1 NONFICTION: FREEFALL: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz

 

 

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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.

ALL THE LIVING by C.E. Morgan

UNDRESS ME IN THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN  by Susan Jane Gilman

 

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Are you a mushy romantic inclined to give TOMIE’S LITTLE BOOK OF LOVE (Putnam, $7.99) by Tomie DePaola or the classic I LIKE YOU (Houghton Mifflin, 6.95) by Sandol Warburg?  Or are you a pragmatic Valentine who prefers to express your sentiments for your little one with I LOVE YOU WHEN YOU WHINE (FSG, $15.00) by Emily Jenkins.  However you say “I love you,” the children and teens’ department has a large display of Valentine’s Day books and packs of cards suitable for classroom giving.

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

(20% off through 02/10/2010)
Tilly and her friends all live together in a little yellow house.  Tilly takes care of everyone.  In DOODLE BITES (Candlewick, $12.99), Doodle, the alligator, wakes up “feeling bitey.”  She chews the mail and nibbles on the lamp.  When Doodle’s biting hurts Tumpty, he retaliates and all of the friends come to their rescue.  In GOOD NIGHT, TIPTOE (Candlewick, $12.99), Tiptoe, the bunny, refuses to go to bed, interrupting the bedtime routine.  He squeezes the tube of red-and-white striped toothpaste everywhere while Tilly brushes Doodle’s teeth, and he accompanies Hector’s lullaby on his drum.  Rest assured:  this story has a happy ending.  British author and illustrator Polly Dunbar has created a delightful world where a little girl and her unusual friends face not such unusual predicaments.  Ages 3-5. - Heidi Powell

Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children 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.

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

 

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ELLA FITZGERALD: 12 NIGHTS IN HOLLYWOOD

The New York Times article last November on a brand new set of live recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, 12 NIGHTS IN HOLLYWOOD (Hip-O Select, 4 CDs, $69.98), resulted in the most customer requests that I’ve ever had at Politics & Prose. Unfortunately, the record label did not have enough copies to meet the great demand, leading to great frustration all around. Now, at last, there’s a steady supply, and it is finally in stock. The four CDs contain the best performances of 76 songs taken from two engagements at the Crescendo, a small jazz club in Los Angeles, in 1961 and 1962, — and none of it has ever been released until now. Critic Gary Giddins, co-author of the recently-issued, JAZZ(Norton), said, “this ranks on the top shelf of her live recordings…it’s about as good as it gets.” There was a review last week on Fresh Air with some nice song excerpts.This box set is 15% off for P&P members.

Click here for more reviews and news about the Grammys. Please call us at 202-364-1919 to order these CDs.