Click here for our events calendar and preview upcoming events through August.
Click here for more complete descriptions and to buy signed copies online.
Click here to become a Member and save on all event books and the Member Sale!

 

 

This coming weekend, June 4-6, we invite you all to spend some time with us during our Summer Storewide Member Sale! If you can't fit us into your schedule, you can still get the benefits by shopping online over the weekend or by coming by the store before the sale and dropping off your shopping list. We'll complete the purchases for you during the sale, and you can pick the books up later!

We also invite you to pick up a copy of our 2010 Summer Favorites, in which our booksellers tell you about many of their recommendations for summer reading. All of these titles will be discounted to members all summer long.  In addition, audiobooks will be discounted throughout the month of June to give you the opportunity to listen to books on CD during family car trips or leisurely days while on vacation.

This week our booksellers are especially excited about hosting Karl Marlantes, a Vietnam vet, for his newly released novel MATTERHORN. By writing this novel, he spent an additional 30 years with the war, composing a story about 2nd Lt. Waino Mellas and Bravo Company. The soldiers struggle to secure a hilltop fortress, only to retreat, and then later attack and destroy what they’d built. This is a gritty, powerful evocation of war’s grinding effects on both body and soul; and it has had the effect of making the war utterly present and compellingly real for its readers. Sebastian Junger, who recently visited P&P to present his book WAR, contributed a review for the New York Times in which he called it "a raw, brilliant account". We hope you will join us next week for this debut novel from a talented author.

Finally, for a bit of whimsy, one of our booksellers found this on the internet. www.bookshelfporn.com This is what really turns a bookseller on!

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The Library of Congress is preparing to host C.G. Jung's Red Book this month. And the Member Sale is the perfect time to take $39 off the cover price and acquire one of your own! THE RED BOOK: LIBER NOVUS (W.W. Norton, $195) is an astounding and beautiful full-color reproduction of psychologist Carl Jung's fascinating and personal exploration into the subconscious; and it comes with explanatory essays and a full translation by Jungian scholar Sonu Shamdasani.

See a video of how the book was reproduced here. You may also be interested to listen to this 45 minute On Point NPR documentary with Tom Ashbrook, or read Sara Corbett's article "The Holy Grail of the Unconscious" from last fall's New York Times Magazine.

Come in the store and take a look at The Red Book before visiting the original downtown, we have just a few left!
- Andrew Getman

DAVID SEDARIS & SARAH VOWELL TICKET GIVEAWAY

Humorists, nerds, and public radio superstars David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell are speaking at GW Lisner Auditorium this fall (October 7 and November 13, respectively.) Right now, tickets are on sale as a package to both shows, and Politics & Prose has a pair of these ticket packages to give away - that is, two tickets to David Sedaris and two tickets to Sarah Vowell for one very lucky reader.

David Sedaris is the author of numerous bestselling titles, including Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You are Engulfed in Flames. His newest book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary with illustrations by Ian Falconer (Little, Brown, $19.99), will be published October 2010.

Sarah Vowell is the New York Times' bestselling author of five nonfiction books on American history and culture, including The Wordy Shipmates and Assassination Vacation.

To enter send a message to BOOKS@politics-prose.com with SEDARIS/VOWELL in the subject field. The winner will be chosen on Tuesday, June 15. For more information on these events, visit www.lisner.org.

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P&P Members always save 20% on our top twelve FICTION and NON-FICTION hardcover bestsellers. To purchase these books, click the titles.

FICTION

1. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95)
2. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (The Dial Press, $25)
3. Innocent by Scott Turow (Grand Central, $27.99)
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn, $24.95)
5. Private Life by Jane Smiley (Knopf, $26.95)
6. A Question of Belief by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press, $24)
7. Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes (Atlantic Monthly Press, $24.95)
8. Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, $26.99)
9. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Knopf, $26.95)
10. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (Random House, $25)
11. My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira (Viking Adult, $26.95)
12. The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $25)

NONFICTION

1. THE PROMISE: President Obama, Year One by Jonathan Alter (Simon & Schuster, $28)
2. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre (Harmony, $25.99)
3. Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush (Scribner, $30)
4. War by Sebastian Junger (Twelve, $26.99)
5. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton, $27.95)
6. Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve, $26.99)
7. The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick (Knopf, $29.95)
8. Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (HarperCollins, $27.99)
9. 13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (Pantheon, $26.95)
10. Crisis Economics by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm (Penguin Press, $27.95)
11. The War Lovers by Evan Thomas (Little, Brown, $29.99)
12. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (HarperCollins, $25.99)

 

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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.

As in the Frank Sinatra torch song, "That Old Black Magic," the protagonist of Richard Russo’s THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC (Vintage, $15) spirals down and down under the pressure of love. Unable to let his past go, he drives around New England with his parents’ urns in the trunk of his convertible. Searching for a suitable burial place, he also tries to reconcile his crumbling life with the fact that he has attained every goal he set himself when he married: he has a beautiful house on the Cape, a successful career at a posh college, happy children--yet he's in the throes of a divorce and endures a miserable professorship while pining to return to life on the West Coast. Russo recounts the tale with humor, pathos, and hilarity. - Anne Armstrong

It isn't often that you find literature offering an extended treatment of work. Which is odd, because work is where most of us spend the (at times disheartening) preponderance of our energy and time each day, each year. Perhaps books neglect labor because we turn to literature for the very purpose of “’forgetting” our daily toil? Be alienated no longer! With THE PLEASURES AND SORROWS OF WORK (Vintage, $15.95), Alain de Botton (The Architecture of Happiness, How Proust Can Change Your Life) reports on ten distinct occupations and industries. It is a "hymn to the modern workplace," evoked in rich, wry detail with anthropological care, all the while seeking to answer the question, "when does a job feel meaningful?" - Lila Stiff

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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 June 3

Matt Gallagher - Kaboom
7 p.m. Gallagher, an Army lieutenant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, began a blog shortly after his deployment. Intended for his friends and relatives, the postings—chronicling the daily experiences of his platoon, code-named The Gravediggers—drew the attention of the Army, which shut it down in June 2008.

Friday, June 4

Sasha Polakow-Suransky - The Unspoken Alliance
7 p.m. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967 ruptured its relations with many of its earlier allies. In this detailed history based on archival research and interviews with high-level military figures in Israel and South Africa, Polakow-Suransky, senior editor at Foreign Affairs, reveals the many ties--including extensive arms deals--Israel formed with the apartheid state.

Friday - Sunday, June 4-6

P&P SUMMER STOREWIDE MEMBER SALE
All weekend long, from Friday, June 4 at 9 a.m. - Sunday, June 6 at 8 p.m., nearly everything currently in stock and on our store shelves is discounted for Politics & Prose Members. Most books are 20% off, most CDs and DVDs are 15% off. If you are not yet a member, it's a great time to sign up and take advantage of these and other discount opportunities. 

The same discounts available in-store will be applied to members' purchases, which are completed online between Friday, June, 4 12:01 a.m. and Sunday, March 6, 11:59 p.m.! Discounts can not be applied to specially ordered items, or items which are not currently in stock in the store. Also, please note: Online orders using the "Pay in Store" option will obtain the member discount only if payment is completed by close of business on Sunday, June 6.

Monday June 7

Wilbert Rideau - In the Place of Justice
7 p.m. In 1961 the 19-year-old Rideau was convicted of murder. During his 44 years in the notoriously violent Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, he became an award-winning journalist, whose work helped bring reform to Angola and exposed the brutality of prison life and the racism of the American penal system. Eventually, he won a new trial which acquitted him of murder and instead convicted him of manslaughter. This conviction carried a 21-year sentence; having served 44, he was freed on the spot.

Tuesday June 8

Karl Marlantes - Matterhorn
7 p.m. Marlantes, a Vietnam vet, spent an additional 30 years with the war, writing this novel about 2nd Lt. Waino Mellas and Bravo Company. The soldiers struggle to secure a hilltop fortress, only to retreat, then later attack and destroy what they’d built. This is a gritty, powerful evocation of war’s grinding effects on both body and soul.

Wednesday June 9

Robert McCrum - Globish
7 p.m. The Associate Editor of The Observer follows his The Story of English with this history of the language’s global dominance. From British colonialism to American hegemony, in politics and in literature, English has left its stamp on the tongues it came into contact with, even as it appropriated from them. 

Thursday June 10

Christopher Hitchens - Hitch 22
7 p.m. In this memoir of his first 60 years, Hitchens, provocative author of God is Not Great, recounts his experiences in a family that functioned best in the company of guests or pets. A passionate young socialist, he abandoned dreams of a “radiant future” to become the enemy of “absolute certainty.” His Hitch 22 is the need “to combat the absolutists and the relativists at the same time.”

Friday June 11

Dave Jamieson - Mint Condition
7 p.m. Before baseball cards were tucked into bubble gum packages, they were put into cigarette packs. Jamieson’s history of these quintessentially American collectibles begins in the 19th century. He shows how the cards helped sell their vehicle products and he reveals the odds of finding that priceless treasure in a dusty collection.

Saturday June 12

Adele Logan Alexander - Parallel Worlds

1 p.m. Alexander’s history of blacks in the Foreign Service focuses on William Hunt and Ida Gibbs-Hunt. Members of the Talented Tenth, the couple married in 1904 and Hunt served as a U.S. representative in France, Madagascar, Guadalupe, and Liberia through the 1930s, while his wife became a writer and activist.

TRIO OF YOUNG ADULT AUTHORS - Jenny Han, Kieran Scott, and Elizabeth Scott @ Bethesda Library

Jenny Han - It’s Not Summer Without You @ Bethesda Library
2 p.m. For 20 years, two mothers and their four children have spent every summer in a beach house at Cousin’s Beach. After the owner dies, three of the teenage children return for one last visit. The book explores the characters’ complicated feelings of loss and love.
(Ages 14 and up)

Elizabeth Scott - The Unwritten Rule @ Bethesda Library
2 p.m. Sarah and Brianna are BFF, but there’s one hitch: Sarah has a crush on Brianna’s boyfriend, Ryan. The unwritten rule is that boyfriends of best friends are off limits. Ryan doesn’t understand this rule and pursues Sarah, creating new tensions in the girls’ friendship.
(Ages 14 and up)

Kieran Scott - She’s So Dead To Us @ Bethesda Library
2 p.m. Ally Ryan lived a life of privilege and wealth until two years ago, when her father’s hedge fund crashed. Ally and her mother moved to Maryland to avoid the shame, and lost contact with Ally’s father. Now Ally is returning to Orchard Hill; will her old friends accept her?
(Ages 14 and up)

Dan Ariely - The Upside Of Irrationality
3:30 p.m. The author of Predictably Irrational, which demonstrated the undesirable outcomes of decisions made irrationally, here looks at some of the surprising benefits of letting reason give way to emotion. The product of carefully designed experiments, Ariely’s results pertain to situations both in the workplace and at home.

Stephen J. Rose - Rebound
6 p.m. The labor economist and author of Social Stratification in the United States examines the current economic downturn less for the weaknesses of the system that caused it than for the  strengths—the prospect of financial regulation; new investments in education, health care, and energy—we can build on to come back as a robust and thriving economy.

Sunday June 13

Aífe Murray - Maid As Muse
1 p.m. Emily Dickinson was a famous recluse, but she wasn’t alone in her father’s house. Murray, a scholar who has worked at the Emily Dickinson Museum, looks at the poet’s relationship with the various maids and cooks who were her near-constant companions and finds evidence of their cultural and linguistic influence in Dickinson’s writing.

Prof. Will Gardner - From Mountain Witches to Virtual Unicorns: The Fantastic Mode in Modern Japanese Literature
5 p.m. How have Japanese writers used the fantastic mode to explore their evolving modern identities and their cultural past? Examples will range from an archetypal tale by Izumi Kyôka of a pilgrim’s encounter with a mountain sorceress, an idyllic but sinister garden created by Tanizaki Junichirô, and an intriguing mental landscape poised between a dystopic near-future cityscape and a mythical medieval village, as mapped by contemporary writer Haruki Murakami. The talk will also address the development of the fantastic mode in Japan as a foil to the dominant realist and confessional modes of writing, and the surprising affinities between fantastic literature and the detective, crime, and mystery genres.

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Politics & Prose supplies books for this book signing event.
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 link below.

Wednesday, June 16, 7 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW|

SPENCER WELLS
PANDORA’S SEED: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization (Random House, $26)
As director of National Geographic’s Genographic Project, renowned geneticist and anthropologist Spencer Wells has traced human evolution back to our earliest ancestors, creating a remarkable and readable map of our distant past. His new book offers a powerful and provocative globe-trotting tour of human history, back to the time when humans became farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. This episode enabled civilization but also set unforeseen costs in motion - from ill health and overpopulation to inequality and conflict. He suggests altering our lifestyle, changing our priorities and curbing self-destructive appetites to achieve better personal and global health.

Click here to purchase $10 tickets ($8 for NG Members) and for more information. For a chance to win two free tickets to this presentation, please send an e-mail to PGibson@politics-prose.com no later than noon on Thursday, June 10, 2010.  Put PANDORA in the subject line, and be sure to include a phone number so that we can reach you.  Winners will be notified by the close-of-business Friday, June 11th. 

 

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(20% off through 06/09/2010)

In Arthur Geisert’s illustrated journey through America’s farmland, machines are everywhere, not just in Traffic when everyone is stuck behind a loaded tractor, Rusted on an old fence, and Grinding feed. In other aspects of country life, Winter afternoons are spent playing cards and in the 4th of July parade there are always more machines, animals, people, and plenty of action. D should be for the Delight in the Details of COUNTRY ROAD ABC: An Illustrated Journey Through America's Farmland (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17). Ages 2-6. Dara La Porte

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

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

 

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GUEST REVIEW: REUBEN JACKSON ON KEITH JARRETT & CHARLIE HADEN
The late avant garde saxophonist Albert Ayler once told a puzzled interviewer that his music was “about feelings, not about notes. Ayler’s memorable quote also accurately describes the eight arresting selections found on JASMINE (ECM, $17.98) featuring pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden. For while the collection includes familiar evergreens such as "For All We Know" and the collection’s highlight – a reading of Cy Coleman’s “I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out Of My Life – Jarrett and Haden quietly recast and reinvent these standards. Their respective lyrical and melodic gifts consistently serve the music’s thematic and harmonic contours. The pianistic excess that has occasionally marred Jarrett recordings such as The Sun Bear Concerts was not invited to these sessions. The end result is a recording that is quiet, unabashedly romantic but never syrupy. I highly recommend this bittersweet delight.

Reuben Jackson worked for 21 years as an archivist with the Smithsonian Institution's Duke Ellington Collection, and has taught a poetry workshop at The Writer’s Center for 10 years. His commentaries are frequently heard on WAMU’s Metro Connection.

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

• András Goldinger