Click here for our events calendar to preview upcoming events through the end of August.
Click here for more complete descriptions and to buy signed copies online.
Members always save 20% on event books. Click here to register!
During the month of the August, we have no scheduled weekend events.

 

At least a dozen times a week, we hear the comment, "I'm so sorry to hear that you are closing."  POLITICS & PROSE IS NOT CLOSING.

To the contrary, Carla and Barbara have decided that after 26 years of bookselling that it is time for us to step down and make room for new ownership. We completed our 2010 fiscal year on June 30th and posted the best sales in our history, a spectacular accomplishment by our large staff of experienced and knowledgeable booksellers who will stay on with a new owner. We are determined to find just the right person or people, so perfect that most customers won't even feel that the ownership has changed.  Because we are committed to finding exactly the right person, nothing is going to happen quickly.  We anticipate that it will be at least nine months before any changes.  So if anyone ever says to you, "Did you hear Politics and Prose is closing?" please help us by setting them straight: POLITICS AND PROSE IS STILL VERY MUCH ALIVE. We're OPEN thirteen hours from 9 a.m. - 10 p.m. every day except Sunday, when we are open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

 

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CRUDE WORLD: The Violent Twilight of Oil,
by Peter Maass
(Vintage, $15.95)
I recommend Peter Maass's balanced, extremely well researched analysis of the way in which petroleum distorts the actions of the countries that possess it, the countries that desire it, and the corporations that move it from one to the other. The author of Love Thy Neighbor - about the civil war in Bosnia - traveled around the world surveying large countries like Russia and Nigeria, medium-sized ones like Venezuela and Ecuador, and tiny ones like Equatorial Guinea. In every case, he found that when oil dominates the economy, not only is there endless opportunity for graft and corruption, but other sectors like agriculture and manufacturing often suffer from neglect. Maass also reveals the relationship between the United States and the oil-producing countries: we tolerate corruption and graft in order to keep the oil flowing. He has done an admirable job of presenting a vast amount of material in a brief and readable account. Now in paperback.

- Carla Cohen

Click here to see more of our recommendations for summer reading.

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JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER (ART)

The recent release of Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary (the Good, the Bad . . .) has truly confirmed how dedicated Penguin is to creative, smart, and beautiful cover art. 

In the publishing house's newest collaboration, tattoo artists have taken to their brushes (or needles, as it were) to illustrate the covers of some fantastic books.  Martin Amis's Money gets a Sailor Jerry-esque treatment from Burt Krak, while Keri Hulme's The Bone People is inspired by Maori tribal design. Other titles include David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System, and looking sweet and scheming is Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding illustrated by Tara McPherson.  Click here to browse and buy the INK series.

 

NEW HARDCOVER FICTION

THE TOWER, THE ZOO, AND THE TORTOISE by Julia Stewart (Doubleday, $24.95) is a truly charming read. Balthazar Jones, a Beefeater living and working at The Tower of London, is charged with taking care of the menagerie of animals given as gifts to the Queen of England. Hijinks, involving both animals and humans, ensue. Stewart weaves together several threads: the comedy of keeping the zoo, the tale of a soft-spoken clergyman with a literary secret, and the bizarre world of the London Tube Lost Property Office. Scenes between Balthazar and his wife anchor the story with real emotional weight. Like a piece of treacle cake, The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise is the perfect companion for a quiet afternoon and a cup of tea.

- Sarah Baline

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

THE CHILDREN'S BOOK by A.S. Byatt (Vintage. $16.95)

This big, bold, and ambitious novel tells the story of a group of artists—playwrights, potters, puppeteers, and writers—in the last years of the 19th century and leading up to the onset of the First World War. At the center is Olive Wellwood, a writer of fairy stories, her large family, and a close-knit group of Fabians (a progressive British political movement that laid the foundation of today’s Labour Party) and their children. The branches of the Wellwood family share parties, vacations, artistic workshops, and trips abroad, oblivious of the dark political clouds that will so dramatically change everything. This is a rich historical novel of ideas and aesthetics, showcasing a fascinating and too-little-explored period. - Mark LaFramboise

OPEN: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi (Vintage, $15.95)

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P&P Members always save 20% on our top twelve FICTION and NON-FICTION hardcover bestsellers. To read more about these books and to buy them from Politics & Prose, click the titles.

FICTION

1. Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, $26)
2. Everything , by Kevin Canty (Nan A. Talese, $25.95)
3. The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman (Dial, $26)
4. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95)
5. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (Random House, $26)
6. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn, $24.95)
7. Star Island, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $26.95)
8. The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer (Knopf, $26.95)
9. The Rembrandt Affair, by Daniel Silva (Putnam, $26.95)
10. What is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25)
11. The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, by Beverly Jensen (Viking, $25.95)
12. Father of the Rain, by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly, $24)
    
    
    

NONFICTION

1. The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, by Sonia Shah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26)
2. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, $25.99)
3. Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 36th President, 1963-1969, by Charles Peters (Times Books, $23)
4. Spoken from the Heart, by Laura Bush (Scribner, $30)
5. Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization, by Spencer Wells (Random House, $26)
6. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, by Sam Wasson (HarperCollins, $19.99)
7. The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter (Simon & Schuster, $28)
8. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (HarperCollins, $27.99)
9. The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, by Peter Beinart (HarperCollins, $27.99)
10. Ill Fares the Land, by Tony Judt (Penguin, $25.95)
11. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, by Diane Ravitch (Basic Books, $26.95)
12. Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Mary McDonagh Murphy (HarperCollins, $24.99)

 

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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 August 12

Peter Miller - The Smart Swarm
7 p.m. Miller, a senior editor with National Geographic, looks to insects for insight into human social behavior. Ants, termites, locusts, along with flocks of birds and schools of fish, all demonstrate complex group dynamics that we can learn from. One airline, for instance, used the African ants’ specialized communication system to improve its seating system.

Monday August 16

Dave Zirin - Bad Sports
7 p.m. Franchise owners and fans don't share the same view of the game, Zirin contends. Sports coumnist for The Nation and author of A People's History of Sports in the United States, Zirin speaks out against the arrogance of team owners who care more for profit and grand stadiums than for athleticism and old-fashioned fun at the balll games.

Tuesday August 17

Paul Greenberg - Four Fish
7 p.m. Today’s seafood market concentrates mainly on salmon, tuna, bass, and cod. Are these merely commodities for the table, or should these species be preserved as wildlife? Greenberg, a New York Times journalist, lays out the history of our taste for these fish and considers whether fish farming is the answer to overexploited wild fisheries. 

Wednesday August 18

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Summer Reading Ice Cream Truck
12-2 p.m. Join Politics & Prose as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Summer Reading Ice Cream Truck rolls into town on Wednesday, August 18. Starting at 12:00 noon, come get a free frozen treat to celebrate the upcoming publication of DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, BOOK 5: The Ugly Truth, which is on sale Tuesday, November 9. Other free goodies will be handed out. Please note: Jeff Kinney will NOT be present at this event.

Jonathan Weiner - Long For This World
7 p.m. The dream of living forever may be within reach, according to various scientists and researchers involved in studies of human aging. Weiner, the author of The Beak of the Finch and other acclaimed popular-science books, visits labs around the world, sorting the scientific thinking from the merely wishful. 

Thursday August 19

Frank DeFord - Bliss, Remembered
7 p.m. The commentator and Sports Illustrated senior writer is also a novelist, and in his latest fiction Deford tells the story of an American swimmer at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She falls in love with a German, but politics cut short their relationship. Later, back home and married to a soldier fighting in Europe, she unexpectedly meets the man she had met at the Olympics again.

Monday August 23

Louise Shelley - Human Trafficking
7 p.m. The founder and director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center at George Mason University, Shelley exposes human trafficking as a global enterprise, one that follows different business models in different regions. The result of 16 years of travel, interviews, and academic research, this study finds that human trafficking is likely to grow in coming years.  

Tuesday August 24

J.C. Hallman - In Utopia
7 p.m. The vision of the ideal life takes many forms, and Hallman, author of The Chess Artist, investigates six of them here. From Front Sight, where all the citizens bear arms, to Pleistocene Rewilding, where lions play the role of the long-gone saber-toothed tigers, to Twin Oaks, modeled on the theories of B.F. Skinner, this is an entertaining tour of human dreams in action.

 

Wednesday August 25

 

Kathleen Koch - Rising From Katrina
7 p.m. Hurricane Katrina hit full force along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and devastated the community of Bay St. Louis, Koch’s hometown. An award-winning documentary filmmaker and former CNN correspondent, Koch with the skill of a seasoned reporter and the passion of an insider tells the story of Bay St. Louis’s ruin and rebuilding.

Thursday August 26

Susan Gregg Gilmore - The Improper Life Of Bezellia Grove
7 p.m. The second novel from the author of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen is set in 1960s Nashville. The latest in a long line of Bezellias in the Grove family, Gilmore’s protagonist is feisty and irreverent; where love is concerned, she refuses to knuckle under to the rigid rules of her class- and race-bound society.

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

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CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

(20% off through 08/18/2010)
From "first one awake quiet" and "coloring in the lines quiet" to "trying not to hiccup quiet" and "sound asleep quiet," Deborah Underwood's THE QUIET BOOK (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $12.95) depicts a day's many moods and emotions. Illustrator Renata Liwska's sketchy, soft pencil drawings of the cast of young animals are just right in gesture and expression. The scenes are colored in muted shades, and the book's design, including a special illustration under the jacket, conveys the gentle theme. Ages 3-6 - Andras Goldinger

The Quiet Book is one of our 2010 Summer Favorites. Click here to shop more of them online.

Remember that we offer 10% discounts on all school reading list books. Bring your summer reading lists into Politics & Prose and we'll help you meet your requirements for the fall!

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

 

 

Wednesday August 18

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Summer Reading Ice Cream Truck

12-2 p.m. Join Politics & Prose as the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Summer Reading Ice Cream Truck rolls into town. Come get a free frozen treat to celebrate the upcoming publication of DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, BOOK 5: The Ugly Truth, which goes on sale Tuesday, November 9. Other free goodies will be handed out.

Politics & Prose will have a table in front of the store to pre-sell vouchers for the fifth book. We will also be giving away “golden tickets” in a random order that will entitle several lucky recipients to a free copy of the 5th book. The pre-sales will be 20% off the retail price for everyone.

PLEASE NOTE: JEFF KINNEY WILL NOT BE MAKING AN APPEARANCE OR SIGNING BOOKS AT THIS EVENT.

Story time takes a break during the summer.

Story time will resume after Labor Day on Monday, September 13 at 10:30 a.m.

JUST FOR OLDER TEENS

Check out our PG-15 section online! "Like" us on Facebook (Politics and Prose Teens), follow us on Twitter (@PnPteens), and read the teen book blog. We'll keep you up-to-date with news about events, new books, and reviews from our staff and from you! Just send reviews, written by you, of your favorite books to Dana at dchidiac@politics-prose.com. We will post at least one new review each week.

 

UPCOMING TICKETED EVENT

On Thursday, September 23, 3-4:30 p.m., best-selling teen author Suzanne Collins will be signing MOCKINGJAY (Scholastic, $17.99) at Politics & Prose. We are excited about hosting Suzanne Collins and look forward to having you join us. Click here to pre-order your copy of Mockingjay and to read more information about this book-signing event!

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

 

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TWO FREE HARMONIA MUNDI SAMPLERS & NEW RELEASES

Harmonia Mundi, started in France fifty years ago, is one of the world’s premiere classical labels. They are offering two samplers for our customers. The first is a HM NEWS: AUTUMN WINTER NEW RELEASES, which highlights from forthcoming releases by Anonymous 4, Stile Antico, a Alexander Tharaud Baroque box set, plus many more.

Also available is a 50-minute sampler of the forthcoming MAGIC FLUTE, conducted by René Jacobs.

Buy any Harmonia Mundi release, and both samplers are free.

The August Harmonia Munid new releases include SCHUMANN: SONATAS FOR VIOLIN & PIANO, with Daniel Sepec on violin, and Andreas Staier playing an 1837 Érard piano; METAMORPHIS: BARTÓK, LIGETI, KURTÁG by Quarteto Casals, plus the two spectacular Paul Lewis releases below. There are many mid-priced Harmonia Mundi Gold releases on display downstairs, as well.

 

PAUL LEWIS & MARK PADMORE: BEETHOVEN & SCHUBERT

On their September cover, Gramophone Magazine asks, “Today’s finest Beethoven pianist?,” and the editors then go on to pick pianist Paul Lewis’s BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE PIANO CONCERTOS (Harmonia Mundi, 3 CDs, $39.98), with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by Jiří Bělohlávek, as their Recording of the Month. It is Lewis’s follow-up his recent, highly praised complete recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas.

Another follow-up is by the team of tenor Mark Padmore along with Lewis. After their Winterreise from last year, they now tackle SCHUBERT: DIE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN Harmonia Mundi, $18.98).

NEW

Los Lobos, TIN CAN TRUST (Shout Factory, $14.98) – Ever since their start in East Los Angeles almost 30 years ago, Los Lobos have been consistently great: writing and performing originals rooted in rock and blues, as well as Mexican song forms. They return to their roots on their latest album.

Guillermo Klein, DOMANDOR DE HUELLAR (Sunnyside, $16.98) – Argentine pianist Guillermo Klein is one of the most innovative composers and arrangers on the jazz scene today. His latest small band project is devoted to the music of “Cuchi” Leguizamón. There’s a great background article and musical analysis, plus a sound excerpt and a video performance on the NPR jazz blog, A Blog Supreme.