Click here for our events calendar to preview upcoming events through the end of September.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.

 

SEPTEMBER EVENTS
Welcome back from vacation and welcome to our fall lineup! Our printed September events calendars have finally arrived and if you are a member, you will be receiving them in your mailboxes shortly! This month not only brings a star-studded array of authors, with fiction from Jonathan Franzen, Gary Shteyngart, Howard Norman, and Sara Gruen; topical and political non-fiction by Robert Reich, Richard Rhodes, and President Jimmy Carter; Mem Fox, Norton Juster, Jules Feiffer, and Suzanne Collins for the children and teens; and a Storewide Member Sale scheduled on September 10-12. Pick up a print calendar in the store, watch for it in your mail, visit our September events calendar online, and mark the events you most want to attend. This is not a month to miss!

SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS CLUB
Politics & Prose has welcomed Nobel laureates and Booker Prize winners, debut novelists and established stars in the literary firmament.  Now we’re offering you a chance to be a part of literary history and build an impressive and irreplaceable library through the P&P Signed First Editions Club. Each month a first edition, first printing of a newly released book will be delivered directly to your door. There is no enrollment fee. The cost of each book ($35 or less, including shipping) is the only charge, which will be processed every month when the books arrive at Politics & Prose.

We are excited to begin the program with Jonathan Franzen's new book Freedom (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28) which will be released next Tuesday and which Michiko Kakutani has endorsed wholeheartedly with a glowing review in the New York Times. We will showcase novels and literary nonfiction from authors whom we read and love, and who inspire us with contagious enthusiasm.  This program is a chance to collect and cherish these "first firsts" for years to come.

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!

 

2011 CALENDARS /
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.

Our initial order of 2011 calendars is also in stock now. Come and browse our selection!

A FRIENDLY REMINDER

While visiting the bookstore, please keep an eye on your belongings.  In recent weeks, a rash of thefts from unattended pocketbooks has plagued the neighborhood.

 

PARKING LOT TO BE RESURFACED

Our landlord will be resurfacing the parking lot behind the building on Sunday, September 5.  Therefore, it will be generally unavailable to customers on that day. All cars must be off the lot on Saturday evening, after close-of-business at 10 p.m. Very early on Sunday morning, the work team will remove the bike rack and planters.  The surface will be laid that morning and needs sufficient time to dry.  Probably by 2 p.m. on Sunday, it will be firm enough for pedestrian traffic, but not cars.  By Monday morning at 8 a.m., we expect that it should be ready for vehicular traffic.

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I enjoyed John Vaillant's new THE TIGER: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (Knopf, $26.95) so much so that I spent an hour after I finished reading it going on Googlemaps to see satellite views of this wooded region in northeast Russia where man and tigers coexist on an edgy basis. Vaillant successfully manages to create a suspenseful tale of the hunted and the hunter - filled with the tension of love and revenge between man and beast. Like the best of mystery authors, he spices his tale with a lot of miscellaneous but fascinating information about not only tigers, but also the many colorful woodsmen who co-inhabit the region, anthropology, archeology, and the scrapping together of a life in post-Perestroika Russia. This is one of those special books that pull you in and keep you turning the pages reading about something you never thought you would possibly be interested in. - Barbara Meade

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We are currently highlighting our display - Around the World with Books - featuring novels for travelers. This week we want to draw your attention to books by Nancy and Jessica Mitford, as well as to biographies written about them and their sisters.

The Mitford Sisters: Lives of Notoriety

The Mitford Sisters, descended from a long line of English aristocrats, achieved contemporary notoriety for their disparate politics and public feuds during the Second World War.

Nancy and Jessica (Decca) became well-known writers. Nancy wrote mostly novels, many of which were recently reprinted by Vintage, with introductions from a cast of contemporary writers. These introductions really add value to revisiting these classics. In her introduction to Nancy’s most autobiographical novel, The Pursuit of Love ($14.95), novelist Zoe Heller notes that, much like the sisters, Nancy’s writing often met with fervor: “Mitford’s fiction is strong meat. Readers who love it....tend to love it with a dotty passion; others, who escape the enchantment, are apt to despise it...”

Decca tended toward muckrakers and memoirs, writing several volumes of each. She was a prolific letter writer; and Peter Y. Sussman has collected her letters in Decca (Knopf, $35). Interest in the sisters and their lives over recent years have lead to frequent publication of biographies about the family, notably The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (W. W. Norton, $18.95), by Mary S. Lovell, and The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (Harper Pernnial, $19.95), edited by Charlotte Mosley.

Come and look at our display of books in the store. Click here to read more about books by - and about - the infamous Mitfords.

Click here to see books - sorted by regions of the world - recommended by our booksellers.

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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.

A GATE AT THE STAIRS (Vintage, $15), Lorrie Moore’s smart, funny and eccentric novel, introduces Tassie Keltjin a 20 year old college student at a fictional Wisconsin university, “the Athens of the Midwest.” Instead of returning to her parents’ farm at the semester break, she takes a job as would-be nanny for a restaurant owner/chef and her husband who are trying to adopt a child. Tassie’s easy-going manner, small town charm, and wry sense of humor seem to be the perfect complement to the obsessive, neurotic, demanding chef, Sarah. When Sarah does finally adopt Mary-Emma, a mixed race child, Tassie proves to be an able caretaker and learns a lot about herself and the world. I fell in love with A Gate at the Stairs in the opening pages, immediately attracted to the observant and intelligent narrator. - Mark LaFramboise

The first nonfiction book by the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, EATING ANIMALS (Back Bay, $14.99), is part memoir, part reportage, and all personal, Foer takes us behind the curtain, exposing some of the hardest truths about the American food industry. As a father facing the question of deciding what his children should eat, Foer weaves food traditions, pop culture, and diet myths into a deeply affecting story of how we all should eat. Like The Jungle and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Eating Animals speaks with an honesty and creativity all its own. - Conor Moran

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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. The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, by Beverly Jensen (Viking, $25.95)
2. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95)
3. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, , by David Mitchell (Random House, $26)
4. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn, $24.95)
5. The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman (Dial Press, $26)
6. My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson (Knopf, $26.95)
7. Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, $26.95)
8. What Is Left the Daughter, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25)
9. The Rembrandt Affair, by Daniel Silva (Putnam, $26.95)
10. Faithful Place, by Tana French (Viking, $25.95)
11. Crossfire, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis (Putnam, $26.95)
12. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson (Random House, $25)

NONFICTION

1. Four Fish, by Paul Greenberg (Penguin, $25.95)
2. Spoken from the Heart, by Laura Bush (Scribner, $30)
3. Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, by William Powers (HarperCollins, $24.99)
4. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach (W. W. Norton, $25.95)
5. Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship, by Gail Caldwell (Random House, $23)
6. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, $25.99)
   
7. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, $26)
8. Composed, by Rosanne Cash (Viking, $26.95)
9. Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 36th President, 1963-1969, by Charles Peters (Times, $23)
10. Through a Dog's Eyes, by Jennifer Arnold (Spiegel & Grau, $25)
11. Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries, by Emily Dickinson, Edited by Helen Vendler, (Belknap, $35)
12. Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, by Sam Wasson (HarperCollins, $19.99)

 

 

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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 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 Asking

7 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 are available for sale.

Friday - Monday September 3-6

LABOR DAY WEEKEND - NO EVENTS

Tuesday September 7

Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier (translators) - Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

7 p.m. Beauvoir’s monumental classic on the place of women in society originally appeared in English missing 15% of its text. Now, 60 years after that truncated edition (produced by a retired zoologist with college-level French), the complete work is available in English. Borde and Malovany-Chevalier will discuss the continuing relevance of Beauvoir’s book.

Wednesday September 8

ROSH HASHANAH - NO EVENT

 

Thursday September 9

Richard Thompson & Keith Knight

7 p.m. In conjunction with the Small Press Expo (September 11-12 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center), we’re delighted to host two artists who excel at contemplating the minutiae of everyday life and making it hilarious. Thompson’s strip is focused on a loveable family in a suburban development, while Knight’s is told through the eyes of a city dweller.

Friday September 10

James Sturm - Market Day

8 p.m. Co-founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies, Sturm has set this beautifully crafted historical fiction in the Eastern European countryside of the 1900s. His day in the life of Mendleman, a carpet peddler, uses spare narrative and finely-honed images to achieve a powerful emotional resonance.

Friday - Sunday September 10-12

P&P Fall Member Sale
Members get 20% off almost everything in the store (15% off on nearly all DVDs and CDs).

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 09/01/2010)
A persistent little yellow bird, the “wondrous, mighty, gorgeous alphabet,” and a really good book: that's HOW ROCKET LEARNED TO READ (Schwartz & Wade, $17.99).  During his first year, Rocket learns to spell such useful words as “grrrrr” and “whoosh.”  When his teacher goes away for the winter, Rocket practices on his own, spelling all kinds of seasonal words in preparation for spring, when class would begin again.  Tad Hills’ sweetly illustrated book is a lovely companion for any child ready for the adventures of learning how to read.  Ages 3-7. Kerri Poore

 

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

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.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

MOCKINGJAY (Scholastic, $17.99), the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy by best-selling teen author Suzanne Collins has just been released. Mockingjay is discounted 20% to everyone who buys it at P&P. Read it today, because on Thursday, September 23, 3-4:30 p.m., Suzanne Collins will be at Politics & Prose.

We are excited about hosting her and look forward to having you join us. Even though Ms. Collins is not speaking, she is eager to meet her fans and very much wants to answer your questions as you go through the signing line. Please note: Due hand strain, Ms. Collins will be “signing” books with a special stamp custom created exclusively for Mockingjay events. 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 buy 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!

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

 

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NEW ORLEANS & LOUISIANA, FIVE YEARS AFTER

In the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, benefit albums appeared (the most notable was Our New Orleans, which has raised over a million dollars for New Orleans Habitat for Humanity), as well as thematic albums (Terence Blanchard’s powerful A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina) was a standout). P&P still has a Katrina display, with those two titles, as well as newer albums with New Orleans and Louisiana connections. Here are two new titles:

The Marsalis Family, MUSIC REDEEMS (Marsalis Music, $) – The entire Marsalis family (father Ellis, sons Branford, Wynton, Jason, Delfeayo, Jason), plus Harry Connick, Jr., get together to benefit the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, an education center and heart of the New Orleans Musicians’ Village community, conceived in 2005 by Branford and Harry in partnership with New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. A highlight is a version of “Donna Lee,” featuring a sizzling duel between virtuoso whistler Jason and Wynton on muted trumpet.

Note: Wynton Marsalis will lead classical pianist Cecile Licad, and a 10-piece all-star jazz ensemble in original music for Louis, a new (silent) film about the early days of Louis Armstrong, Saturday, August 28, at Strathmore Music Center.

Beausoleil, LAISSEZ LES BONS TEMPS ROULER (Great American Music Company, $12.98) – The Cajun way of life centered on the waters of Louisiana took a hard hit as a result of the Gulf oil spill. Fiddler Michael Doucet has been keeping the Cajun traditions alive, and inventively expanding on them for over thirty years leading his band, Beausoleil. He studied with the great fiddlers Dewey Balfa, Dennis McGee, among others, and is continuing to pay tribute to Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco masters. Beausoleil’s latest is a career retrospective, recorded live in Baton Rouge, and is one of their best – fiddles, accordion, triangles, percussion lay down the two-steps and waltzes with authority.

IAN NAGOSKI IN THE POST

There was a great article in last Sunday’s Post Magazine on Ian Nagoski -- vintage record collector; compiler; ethnomusicologist – and his rescue of vintage sounds from around the world ( with sound clips, here, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/13/AR2010081305087.html ). Listen to his wonderful collection from 2007, BLACK MIRROR: REFLECTIONS IN GLOBAL MUSICS, 1918-1955 (Dust to Digital, $15.98).

 

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

 

• András Goldinger

 

Charlotte Lang-Bush worked in P&P’s children’s section while in high school. She is now entering her sophomore year at the University of Virginia, concentrating on theatre, playwriting, and medieval studies.

The XX , XX (XL Records, $14.98)

Imagine scenes of a Rear Window voyeur in a cold, Blade Runner future. The soundtrack to that deceptively quiet movie would undoubtedly be made by British trio, The XX, whose debut album is as cold and sharp as a chrome blade. Its two core members, twenty-somethings Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, write lyrics late at night, over iChat, never discussing their meanings. This purposeful opacity is the reason why some lines (“better to resume, I’ll see you August, see you June”) are like intercepted correspondence between two spies. Their youth is also reflected in the angst and sexual awkwardness (“I’m burning to impress/it’s in the middle of me/I can be fantasy”), sung on the eerily reverb-heavy “Fantasy.” The way the two sing, trading off lines, gives a listener the feeling of observing an intimate conversation, set to the sparsest guitar, synth, and drum machine beats.

 

Sleigh Bells, TREATS (Mom & Pop Records, $12.98)

Meant to be played loudly or not at all, the spiky, noise loving sounds of Treats are not for the faint of heart. It may take a few listens for their powerful marriage of noise-pop and electronica to fully cohere, but when it does...wow!  The confrontational basslines and ethereal vocals are the perfect antidote for the twee direction of recent indie efforts.

A Brooklyn twosome, Sleigh Bells, may share roots in rap, pop, and pure noise with indie troublemakers like M.I.A., but musically, they far outstrip her. With oblique lyrics (“click click saddle up, see you on the moon then”) sung over fuzzed out guitars, synth noise, and drum machines, a listener can hear the aimlessly confrontational nature of both rap and the more circumspect subgenres of indie pop, like shoegaze.  “Kids,” with its stomping beat and confrontational delivery, is just asking to be sampled by the likes of eclectic rappers like Wale and Li’l Wayne. Tracks like “Rill Rill” counterbalance the more noisy tracks on the album, sounding like low-fi, loose-limbed reincarnations of indie darlings, Beach House, but with Sleigh Bells’ trademark electronic fierceness. 

 

Robyn, BODY TALK, PART 1 (Island, $12.98)

Robyn, the Swedish songstress turned electro-balladeer, has been recording for a decade and a half, undergoing constant reinvention. In her current incarnation, Robyn has never been catchier. Like Lady GaGa (with her futuristic sparkle), Robyn is the voice of club kids. On “Cry When You Get Older,” a rousing club anthem, Robyn sings that “back in suburbia, kids get high and make out on the train/then endless incomprehensible boredom takes a hold again....”  “Fembot” has a bouncy backbeat that manages to improve on the jazzercized bassline favored by modern FM pop, and her conceit -- that she’s a robot looking for love -- is delivered with all the commitment of a dramatic monologue. “Dancing on my Own” shows Robyn’s gift for making poignant songs that still get people to shake their butts. It’s clear that she’s captured the sense of neurosis on the dance floor that seems to characterize this generation. Body Talk, Part 2 comes out in September.

 

Janelle Monae, THE ARCHANDROID (Atlantic, $13.99) The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monae is anything but easy to classify. She, like Lily Allen, the Pipettes, and Kate Nash, is a pop-star whose sensibilities are delightfully anachronistic, but unlike Allen and Nash, Monae’s throwback-ing interests lie not with girl groups like the Shirelles and the Shangri-Las, but, more interestingly, with big-bands and old-time soul vocalists. There are notes of funk and hip hop, and on songs like “BaBopByeYa” there’s a subtle hint of Afrobeat that would make both Erykah Badu and Vampire Weekend jealous. Monae throws lyrical nods in every possible musical direction -- on “Tightrope,” she coos, “now this is what we call some classy brass” after a particularly sweet interjection from the horn section, balancing out the rapper-like delivery. On “BaBopByeYa,” Monae shows off her a soaring set of pipes that even Irma Thomas would be proud of. On “Faster,” listen to her lyrics in the bouncy vintage-soaked beat: she drops a Phillip K. Dick reference as she “dreams of electric sheep.” Monae doesn’t try to play the musical ingénue or the femme fatale; by bringing modern-day rap and funk sensibilities to soul, Monae creates a blissfully eclectic hybridized form of pop that’s a joy to listen to in any era.