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.

 

SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS CLUB

You are probably already familiar with our Book-A-Month Gift Program in which our booksellers hand-pick a monthly gift for a reader in your life.

We are now excited to announce a new featured aspect to this program - the P&P Signed First Editions Club - an option that you might like consider for yourself or for a book-loving friend or family member.

Sign up for 6 months or 12 months, and receive the selected first edition, first printing, signed book every month. We will charge your account each month and ship the books to you - or you can choose to collect your books in the store and save shipping costs.

Each month, we will emphasize autographed first printings of the first editions of books and authors that we have read and loved, and about which we wish to share our enthusiasm. We expect that these books will be selections that you will enjoy collecting and cherishing over the years to come.

Our audience is lovers of literature. ; the program will highlight novels and literary nonfiction. We are excited to kick off the program with Jonathan Franzen's new book Freedom, which Michiko Kakutani has already endorsed wholeheartedly with a glowing review,

Jonathan Franzen’s galvanic new novel, "Freedom," showcases his impressive literary toolkit — every essential storytelling skill, plus plenty of bells and whistles — and his ability to throw open a big, Updikean picture window on American middle-class life. With this book, he’s not only created an unforgettable family, he’s also completed his own transformation from a sharp-elbowed, apocalyptic satirist focused on sending up the socio-economic-political plight of this country into a kind of 19th-century realist concerned with the public and private lives of his characters.

This is what we have scheduled for the fall, and you can expect similar quality books as we proceed into 2011. Click the titles to read more about these books and authors.

SEPTEMBER: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)
OCTOBER: Great House, by Nicole Krauss (W.W. Norton, $24.95)
NOVEMBER: Travels in Siberia, by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)
DECEMBER: Luka and the Fire of Life, by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $25)

P&P members will receive 20% off on all selections.

If you are not currently a member, we encourage you to register for a membership. You will save in the long run, and also receive all of the other member benefits - discounts on bestsellers, author event books, our notifications of the events by mail and email, the opportunity to participate in our four annual storewide member sales, and other discount promotions.

Call or email Liz Sher at the store for more information about the Politics & Prose Signed First Editions Club, or click here to register today!

HIGH HOLY DAYS - Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

We have Jewish New Year cards and calendars on display now, along with a nice selection of cookbooks and religious writing. Come and browse our selection!

 

Go back to top of email

 

 

I just finished reading an unusually fascinating new book from Farrar Straus, Melanie Thernstrom's THE PAIN CHRONICLES: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering ($27).  As the title suggests, the book is partly personal, but only a very small part.  It was the author's personal encounters with pain that led her to extensively research the whole area of chronic pain, "a serious, widespread, misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and undertreated disease."  Thernstrom interviewed the most distinguished pain specialists in the country and visited seven of the top pain clinics, where "most of all [she] was struck by the contrast between the physician's and the patient's point of view: the difference between the patient's understanding of their suffering and the doctors' understanding , and the complex nature of the medical encounter."  In the medical world, chronic pain has only recently been recognized as a disease instead of a symptom, and medical research has discovered that untreated pain not only pathologically changes the central nervous system but those changes in turn cause even greater pain, even after the original cause is no longer present.  These are just a few of the discoveries in the new field of pain medicine that Thernstrom writes about it in this absorbing book.

Go back to top of email

 

 

Two weeks ago we highlighted our display - Around the World with Books - featuring novels for travelers. This week, a new book from Australia has just arrived, a graphic novel from Paris was recently released, and we wanted to remind you of an older favorite from the American South.

 

THE PAGES, by Murray Bail (Other Press, $14.95)

The old adage claims that the unexamined life isn't worth living. But just as there are many ways to live, there are countless ways to examine that living. In his elegant, beguiling novel, told with great economy and sly wit, the Australian author of Eucalyptus considers questions of how to live and how to think. Wesley Antill, a sheep rancher turned philosopher, sets out to write a theory of emotion, only to see his philosophy turn into memoir. He dies before he completes his work and his family calls in an academic to assess the manuscript. As Erica delves into the mind and life of a man she never met, she finds, as Wesley had, that life keeps interfering with her efforts to understand it at a peaceful remove. Love, strained and patched friendship, accidents, chance—these are some of the prisms Bail's narrative employs to test the viability of "philosophy as a natural force." - Laurie Greer

 

CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC, by Tony Horwitz (Vintage, $16)

Join journalist Tony Horwitz on the most unusual American road trip you can imagine. Horwitz journeys throughout the former Confederacy to investigate the lingering, persistent fascination with the Civil War—and shows us why we should pay attention. Among other adventures, he brunches with the Daughters of the American Revolution and enlists with a particularly zealous bunch of "hardcore" reenactors (the guys who even other Civil War reenactors think are crazy). Tony Horwitz is ever mindful of the subtext of race, rural poverty and the strange, powerful beast of public memory. The War Between the States is not as over as you might think. - Elizabeth Sher

 

ON THE ODD HOURS by Eric Liberge (NBM/ComicsLit, $14.95)

Co-published with the Louvre Museum, On the Odd Hours, continues NBM's exciting series centered on one of the great art museums. Bastien is a deaf student seeking an internship at the museum, when one of the night guards pulls him into assisting with a special duty that only he can accomplish. Bastien's job entails speaking with the pieces of art, giving them attention, and listening to their desires. Bastien thinks this sounds crazy, but he goes along with the idea and descends deep into a world of hidden knowledge. This is a great addition to the Louvre's series of graphic novels. Liberge's clean line work, and toned-down colors add a graceful effect to the tale - and if you ever wondered how a deaf / mute man might communicate in a graphic novel, then check this out, it's nothing short of amazing! - Adam Waterreus

 

If you are interested in graphic literature, you might join the Graphic Novel Book Group on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Click here to see more Graphic Literature recommendations.

Click here to see our booksellers' recommendations, sorted by regions of the world.

Go back to top of email

 

 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.

FUN WITH PROBLEMS, by Robert Stone (Mariner, $13.95)

THE BIG BURN: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America by Timothy Egan (Mariner, $15.95)

Go back to top of email

 

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. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95)

2. Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, $26)
3. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn, $24.95)
4. The Rembrandt Affair, by Daniel Silva (Putnam, $26.95)
5. The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman (Dial, $26)
6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (Random House, $26)
7. My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson (Knopf, $26.95)
8. Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking, $25.95)
9. What Is Left the Daughter, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25)
10. Rich Boy, by Sharon Pomerantz (Twelve, $24.99)
11. Island Beneath the Sea, by Isabel Allende (HarperCollins, $26.99)
12. The Passage, by Justin Cronin (Ballantine, $27)

NONFICTION

1. Composed, by Rosanne Cash (Viking, $26.95)
2. Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, by Andrew Bacevich (Metropolitan, $25)
3. Ill Fares the Land, by Tony Judt (Penguin, $25.95)
4. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, $26)
5. Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 36th President, 1963-1969, by Charles Peters (Times, $23)
6. Spoken from the Heart, by Laura Bush (Scribner, $30)
7. Four Fish, by Paul Greenberg (Penguin, $25.95)
8. More Davids Than Goliaths: A Political Education, by Harold Ford, Jr. (Crown, $25.99)
9. The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, by Sonia Shah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26)
10. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, by Sam Wasson (HarperCollins, $19.99)
11. Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life, by Dave Kindred (Doubleday, $26.95)
12. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach (W. W. Norton, $25.95)

Go back to top of emaii

 

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 Horst again.

Monday August 23

Louise Shelley - Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective
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: Six Kinds of Eden and the Search for a Better Paradise
7 p.m. The vision of the ideal life takes many forms, and Hallman, author of The Chess Artist, investigates six communities 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: How My Mississippi Hometown Lost It All and Found What Mattered
7 p.m. Hurricane Katrina hit full force along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and devastated the community of Bay St. Louis, Koch's hometown. With the skill of a seasoned reporter and the passion of an insider, Koch - an award-winning documentary filmmaker and former CNN correspondent - 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.

Friday -Tuesday August 27-31

NO EVENTS

Wednesday September 1

Michael Kellogg - Three Questions We Never Stop Asking7 p.m. Kellogg's inquiries of perennial interest are: What can I know? What may I hope? What ought I to do? Counterpoising the views of two philosophers for each question, Kellogg offers fresh perspectives on Plato and Wittgenstein concerning knowledge, Kant and Nietzsche about the existence of God, and Aristotle and Heidegger on virtue.

Thursday September 2

Aviva Kempner - Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
7 p.m. Kempner's film uses vintage clips, behind-the-scenes-footage, and interviews to trace the life and work of Gertrude Berg, who wrote, starred in, and produced the first successful American sitcom, "The Goldbergs," which ran from 1949 to 1956, and earned Berg the first Best Actress Emmy. Kempner will be joined by Susan Stamberg, NPR special correspondent and a contributor to the film. Copies of the DVD will be for sale.

Friday - Monday September 3-6
LABOR DAY WEEKEND - NO EVENTS

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

 

Go back to top of email

 

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK

(20% off through 08/25/2010)
"Hurry up! Come one – come all! We're off to watch the bats play ball!" It's time for baseball, and you're invited to stay up all night with the BATS AT THE BALLGAME (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99). Grab some Cricket Jack and watch while the bats swing and strike out and swoop toward home in their biggest game of the season. This third book in Brian Lies's (Bats at the Beach, Bats at the Library) picture book series is another rhyming read-aloud with hilarious illustrations. Ages 4-7 - Dana Chidiac

Click here to shop more of our 2010 Summer Favorites online.

Tuesday, August 24, 9 a.m.

Next Tuesday is the release date for MOCKINGJAY (Scholastic, $17.99), the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy by best-selling teen author Suzanne Collins. Mockingjay is discounted 20% to everyone who buys it at P&P. Reserve your copy now!

Then on Thursday, September 23, 3-4:30 p.m., come back to Politics & Prose when Suzanne Collins will be signing MOCKINGJAY. We are excited about hosting her and look forward to having you join us. Even though Ms. Collins is not talking before the signing, she is eager to meet her fans and very much wants to answer your questions as you go through the signing line. Make sure you pick up your signing line ticket when you buy your book. You must buy your book from P&P to participate in this event. Click here to pre-order your copy of Mockingjay and to read more information about this book-signing!

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.

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. 

Story time takes a break during the summer and will resume after Labor Day on Monday, September 13 at 10:30 a.m.

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

 

Go back to top of email

Go back to top of email

HONORING ABBEY LINCOLN
Abbey Lincoln was a fearsomely singular artist: singer, actress, composer, civil rights activist. Her voice was instantly recognizable, and she used it to create dramatic narratives with each song – first interpreting the work of others; and then increasingly her own works. Ms Lincoln passed away this Saturday at the age of eighty.

Though many of her greatest recordings are out of print or hard to find, we’re featuring some great titles: From 1991, YOU GOTTA PAY THE BAND (Polygram, $14.98) includes Stan Getz, Hank Jones, and Charlie Haden, and features “Bird Alone,” and her version of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” ABBEY SINGS ABBEY (Verve, $18.98), from 2007, revisits some of her greatest compositions. Next week, we hope to have copies of ABBEY IS BLUE, from 1959.

NEW
Esperanza Spalding, CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY (Concord, $17.98) – Young bassist, vocalist, and composer Esperanza Spalding has been profiled in the New Yorker, played at the White House, and is one of the jazz world’s new stars. For her new album, she put together a string section and a “lean rhythm section” for a quiet but percolating and colorful suite of songs, featuring vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Milton Nascimento on one song each.

Ola Belle Reed, RISING SUN MELODIES (Smithsonian Folkways, $17.98) – Ola Belle Reed, who died in 2002, was a vocalist, claw-hammer banjo player, songwriter, and mentor to many musicians. She, along with her husband, ran the New River Ranch in Maryland, where leading country and bluegrass stars of the 1950s and 1960s performed. This collection includes performances from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, as well as from her two Folkways records. As with all SF productions, the CD has great notes and photos.

Brian Wilson, REIMAGINES GERSHWIN (Disney Records, $13.98) – Evidently, Beach Boy Brian Wilson had a childhood fascination with Rhapsody in Blue, and now brings his signature arranging skills to Gershwin tunes. The stacked harmonies, the lush wall-of-sound instrumentals are all here.

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

• András Goldinger