Click here for our events calendar and preview upcoming events through March.
 Click here for more complete descriptions and to buy signed copies online.
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Greetings to all our customers who are just beginning to emerge from their seemingly endless, snowbound existence.  On the bright side, everyone, except those who lost power, got a lot of reading done.  The coffeehouse has been fully packed with stir-crazy neighbors, and our events have been reasonably well attended.  We hope we will be able to successfully reschedule all the events that we had to postpone.

This week we are looking forward to hosting some phenomenal authors whom you won't want to miss. Rebecca Skloot has received unrestrained critical attention for THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, a true story which is beautifully and compellingly written as it investigates the scientific and economic ethics, inequalities, and injustices which surround Henrietta Lacks' life and death, and the extraordinary benefits that her cell tissue cultures have continued to provide over the last fifty years.

Lynne Olson has followed her acclaimed book Troublesome Young Men with CITIZENS OF LONDON about the prominent Americans living in London who helped ensure American support for Britain during WWII. A skilled storyteller and historian, she brings this period of history to life.

John Banville's THE INFINITIES will not arrive in the store until next Tuesday, just before his visit on the 25th, but the reviews from England indicate that it will be as fascinating to read as his previous books, although very different in subject. The book delves into parallel realities and the life of the mind, and features Greek gods who continue to be at play in the midst of human affairs. Comic, insightful, and wide-reaching in its themes and subjects, we can't wait to read it. Mark your calendars now!

Last night, we hosted an extraordinarily interesting talk by Wade Davis about his new book THE WAYFINDERS (House of Anansi, $15.95), which has been a favorite of many of our booksellers.  Davis is an anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and Explorer in Residence at the National Geographic Society. Lately, he has been heard on radio and television providing background on Haitian culture due to his critically acclaimed The Serpent and the Rainbow about anthropological investigation the role of zombis and vodoun in Haitian history.  

Davis's new book brings together in one volume five Massey Lectures that he delivered in 2009 on Canadian Broadcast Radio.  This series was founded to be a forum for major contemporary thinkers to address important issues of our time.  The 40-minute talk that we heard last night touched on the highlights of these lectures that argue the importance of maintaining indigeneous cultures in our increasingly monochromatic world.  Aside from the fascination of the topic, Wade Davis is an impressive public speaker, and the CDs of his talk are going to be a hot item.  Call us or click here to reserve a copy of this recorded event.

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E-books and the impact of technology on the publishing industry were an important ongoing conversation at the Winter Institute for booksellers in San Jose, but I came away thinking that reports of the death of print are greatly exaggerated.

The week of the conference, Macmillan titles briefly vanished from Amazon’s shelves in a dispute over e-book pricing.  The writer Caleb Crain noted, "They're fighting to see who can lose more money. This is a very peculiar battle."  This peculiar battle has a very definite provocation with the appearance of Apple's new iPad.

Yet there are abundant reasons to be hopeful that creative, passionate people have not given up on print culture.  That same week we received our shipment of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern # 33: THE SAN FRANCISCO PANORAMA ($16)  The new issue of Dave Eggers's (always elaborate, often whimsical) periodical is enough to warm the heart of even the most cynical ink-stained wretch.  With writing and artwork from the likes of Andrew Sean Greer, Stephen King, George Saunders and Art Spiegelman it is the ideal newspaper as lavish, tangible object.

The medium is also the message in CODEX IN CRISIS (The Crumpled Press, $25), the scholar-of-scholars Anthony Grafton's meditation on the Republic of Letters in the 21st century.  Each copy is hand bound in Brooklyn, New York in a happening akin to a literary quilting bee.

Just as photography freed portraiture to be more than - or differently - representational, one can hope that Kindles and iPads will stretch the possibilities of the book.  One cause for hope is THE SELECTED WORKS OF T. S. SPIVET (Penguin, $27.95) by debut novelist, Reif Larsen.  There is no sense spoiling Spivet's wonderful American picaresque by exposition.  The cross country journey of its eponymous 12-year-old cartographer-hero is ingeniously interpolated with maps and diagrams integral to the plot.  It borrows equally from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.   It is, in brief, an utterly unique book.

~ Michael Allen

Visit www.politics-prose.com/staff-reviews to browse and purchase more of our recommended books.

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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 February 18

Katharine Weber - True Confections
7 p.m. Weber’s wit comes to the fore in her new comic novel about the Ziplinsky family and its candy business. Like any family, this one has secrets, and as Alice, recently married into the clan, tries to understand her new relatives, she uncovers a story involving Hungarian immigrants and a runaway slave from a cacao plantation.

Friday February 19

Kristen Clarke (ed.) - Barack Obama & African-American Empowerment
7 p.m. With co-editor Manning Marable, Clarke, a civil rights attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, has assembled a roster of distinguished thinkers to consider the evolution of black leadership and politics from the Civil Rights movement to the election of President Obama. Kristen will be joined by contributors Sherrilyn Ifill and Bill Fletcher.

Saturday February 20

Georgia Irvin - Georgia Irvin’s Guide to Schools
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.

Frank Aukofer - Never a Slow Day
1 p.m. A newspaper reporter, Aukofer covered the major events of the second half of the twentieth century, from the 1960s Civil Rights movement to President Clinton’s impeachment. This is his account of the adventure that was his life as a journalist and the extraordinary people he encountered along the way.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench
3:30 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.

Steven V. Roberts - From Every End of This Earth @ Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street, NE
5 p.m. As participants in Intersections: A New American Arts Festival, we are presenting Steve Roberts, who explores the contemporary immigrant experience through the accounts of thirteen families from various background. Visit http://intersectionsdc.org/ to purchase $5 tickets or call 202-399-7993 ext. 2 for more information about this and other events!  

Lillian Lincoln Lambert - The Road to Someplace Better
6 p.m. In her moving and inspiring memoir, Lambert recounts her upbringing in the rural, segregated South, her menial jobs in New York and Washington, and the hard work that made her the first black woman to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School. This rags-to-riches American success story charts Lambert’s rise from maid to CEO of a $20 million maintenance company.

Sunday February 21

Rebecca Skloot - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
1 p.m. Henrietta Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, buried in an unmarked grave, but her cells continue to outlive her. Taken without her knowledge and cultured by scientists at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s, they led to a lucrative industry in biological materials. Skloot’s account of this outrage looks at its effects on Lacks’s family and considers the larger history of experimentation on African Americans without their consent.

Paula Butturini - Keeping The Feast
5 p.m. Butturini’s husband was shot and wounded while reporting on an uprising in Romania, and as she helped him recover from the depression and psychic trauma that accompanied his injury, she learned that the physical damage of war is only the beginning.

Monday February 22

Lynne Olson - Citizens Of London
7 p.m. Olson follows Troublesome Young Men, her account of the renegade Tories who put Churchill in power, with another fine history of the period. She focuses on three resolute Americans who supported the British and helped bring the U.S. to their rescue: Edward R. Murrow; Averell Harriman, the millionaire politician; and John Gilbert Winant, American Ambassador and an admirable diplomat whose crucial role has been forgotten until now.

Tuesday February 23

Polly Horvath - Northward to the Moon
10:30 a.m. In the sequel to My One Hundred Adventures, Jane’s new stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job teaching French and, at loose ends, takes the family on more adventures in the United States. Horvath, a Newbery Honor and National Book Award-winner, focuses on the many meanings of family as her characters meet new relatives.

Shane Harris - The Watchers
7 p.m. Harris, an expert on intelligence matters who writes for National Journal, sounds an alarm about how our government has developed sophisticated surveillance spyware in the last thirty years.  Looking back to Admiral Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program, he charts the growth of covert intelligence systems that make it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on citizens.

Wednesday February 24

Ted Leonsis - The Business Of Happiness  @ Sixth and I Historic Synagogue
7 p.m. Applying his analytical skills to the question of personal fulfillment, Leonsis (owner of the Washington Capitals) studied satisfaction in fellow business executives, successful entertainers, and professional athletes, as well as typical Americans.  He proves Albert Schweitzer's point, "Happiness is the key to success," by explaining that success may or may not make one happy, but happiness will almost always make one more successful.

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 are $12 each without book purchase.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - One Amazing Thing
7 p.m. The latest novel from the author of The Mistress of Spices is a collage of stories that demonstrates narrative’s power to unite people and help them endure. When an earthquake traps nine strangers in an office building, they cope with the stress of waiting for rescue by taking turns relating something they’ve never told anyone before.

Thursday February 25

John Banville - The Infinities
7 p.m. Banville, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sea, returns to read from his 15th novel.  An elegant fiction about mortality and the immortals who may surround us, the book tells the story of the final days of Adam Godley, a renowned mathematician, the family who has gathered to see him off—and the invisible spirits hovering to make mischief.

Friday February 26

Shankar Vedantam - The Hidden Brain
7 p.m. Exploring questions such as to what extent we are in control of our actions and how large a role the unconscious plays in our decisions, Vendatam, The Washington Post columnist (“Department of Human Behavior”), combines cognitive science and psychology for a fascinating and illuminating look at why we do what we do.

Saturday February 27

David R. Dow - The Autobiography Of An Execution
1 p.m. Litigation director of the Texas Defender Service, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, and a staunch opponent of the death penalty, Dow has written a powerful account of capital punishment. His memoir offers an intimate look at all parties involved, from the overworked legal aid lawyers to their clients.

Judith Warner - We’ve Got Issues
3:30 p.m. In her important study of psychotherapeutic drugs for children, Warner, our friend, neighbor, New York Times “Domestic Disturbances” columnist, and author of Perfect Madness, explores questions surrounding over- and under-medication for learning and emotional problems, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the anguish of parents wanting to do what’s best amid confusing advice.

Dean Haspiel (ed.) - The Act-I-Vate Primer
6 p.m. Including both well-known creators and fresh talent, Act-I-Vate.com has long functioned as one of the most renowned collectives of webcomix on the internet. Now, with its first print anthology, The Act-I-Vate Primer, the collective expands its ever increasing pool of original comic art.  Dean will be joined by contributors Jim Dougan, Simon Fraser, and Joe Infurnari.

Sunday February 28

Sarah Blake - The Postmistress
5 p.m. Set in 1940, this rich, historical novel opens with Frankie Bard, a radio journalist covering the war in Europe. Meanwhile, Iris James, a middle-aged postmistress on Cape Cod, falls in love.  Their paths cross when Frankie returns to the States determined to deliver a letter from a doctor killed during the Blitz.

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.

Sunday, February 21, 7:30 p.m.

Saint Mark Presbyterian Church
10701 Old Georgetown Road, Rockville, MD
Institute of Musical Traditions (IMT) presents
SI KAHN and friends’ Standing for Justice Farewell Concert
CREATIVE COMMUNITY ORGANIZING: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice (Berrett-Koehler, $17.95)
Singer, songwriter, activist, and retiring founder of Grassroots Leadership, Si Kahn is joined by America’s balladeer, John McCutcheon, and the Grammy award winning duo Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer for an incredible concert. The show celebrates the release of Si’s new book, Creative Community Organzing and his sixteenth CD, COURAGE.For information and tickets ($20 in advance, $25 door), call 301-754-3611 or visit http://www.imtfolk.org/

Monday, February 22, 7 p.m.

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
901 G Street, NW
GWEN IFILL
THE BREAKTHROUGH: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama (Anchor, $15)
Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week, surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential victory and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power. Ifill argues that the Black political structure formed during the Civil Rights movement is giving way to a generation of men and women who are the direct beneficiaries of the struggles of the 1960s. This FREE program is presented in celebration of Black History Month.

Wednesday, March 3, 7 p.m.

Arts Club of Washington
2017 I Street NW
TOM HEALY
WHAT THE RIGHT HAND KNOWS (Four Way Books, $15.95)

GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI 
THE LAST TIME I SAW AMELIA EARHART: Poems (Persea Books, $13.95)
APOCALYPTIC SWING: Poems (Persea Books, $22.95)
Poetry readings will be followed by a Q&A, a light reception, and booksigning. For more information contact: Sandra Beasley, ACW Literary Chair. Tel. 703-994-3166 or sandrabeasley@earthlink.net

 

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ON THE BRINK: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System
by Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
(Business Plus, $28.99)
Hardcover - February 2010
Not first printings. Signature is on a book plate attached to the fly leaf of the book.

The signing took place at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Thanks to our partner HooksBookEvents for these copies.

 

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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 POSTMISTRESS
 by Sarah Blake

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

 

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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.

THE VAGRANTS by Yiyun Li

THE ART INSTINCT: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton

 

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CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through 02/24/2010)

Wangari grew up in Kenya, listening to her elders tell stories of the trees that had once covered her country. When she grew older, she moved to the city and became a wise woman, planting trees in her garden. One by one, women from all over Kenya came to ask Wangari for help with their problems, and one by one, Wangari advised them to plant trees to feed their families, to protect their livestock, to create timber for building houses, and to clean their water. Donna Jo Napoli tells the story of how Wangari Maathai, now known as MAMA MITI (Simon & Schuster, $16.99), the mother of trees, changed her country’s landscape one tree at a time. Kadir Nelson’s breathtaking oil paint and fabric collage illustrations reflect the bright colors and textiles of East Africa and draw the reader into Wangari’s Kenya. Ages 4-8 – Dana Chidiac

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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DJANGO'S CENTENNIAL
PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND AND SPECIAL GUESTS
IN CONCERT: MIGUEL ZENÓN & MARIA CRISTINA KIER

DJANGO'S CENTENNIAL
Tom Cole, host of WPFW's perfect Sunday morning guitar show called "G Strings," did a wonderful piece on NPR recently celebrating the centennial of Django Reinhardt's birth. As he states in the piece, Django pioneered a style of jazz that's still going strong – there are "le jazz hot" bands all over the world, keeping his guitar tradition alive. Hear his amazing virtuosity and extreme swing on ONLY THE BEST (Varese Sarabande, 2CDs, $17.98).

PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND AND SPECIAL GUESTS
PRESERVATION (Preservation Hall Records, $13.98) is full of great performances: nineteen tracks of artists -- both young and old, crossing many genres -- collaborating with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The highlights include Dr. John, Merle Haggard, Del McCoury, and Richie Havens (a splendid version of "Trouble in Mind"). Tom Waits, Steve Earl, Ani DiFranco, and Andrew Bird feel right at home on the blues and Mardi Gras chants. Even Angélique Kidjo (backed by Terence Blanchard on trumpet) brings it back to New Orleans, singing a jazzy version of "La Vie En Rose." The album benefits Preservation Hall and the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program.

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