Click here for our events calendar to preview upcoming events through the end of December.
Click here for more complete descriptions and to buy signed copies online.
Members always save 20% on event books. Click here to register!

 

 

This is the last chance for members to take advantage of the month-long October discounts on all Art and Architecture biographies, monographs, criticism, and historical accounts currently in stock. This entire section is discounted 20% to Politics & Prose members. It's a great way to save on those expensive large-format, illustrated items you have been admiring. Make an early selection of gifts you wish to give this holiday season or choose something for yourself! This sale ends on Sunday, October 31!

 

 

 

Another opportunity not to be missed! Subscriptions are still available for the Politics & Prose Signed First Editions Book Club! Sign up to receive exclusive, autographed, first-printing books by authors such as Nicole Krauss, Ian Frazier, Salman Rushdie, and more.

Click here to learn more and to register for the Politics & Prose Signed First Editions Club or our new Children's Signed First Editions Club.

All Politics & Prose Weekly Hardcover Bestsellers are 20% off for Members.
Click here to receive the benefits of Politics & Prose membership.
Click the book titles for more information about these featured books.

FICTION

1. Great House, by Nicole Krauss (W. W. Norton, $24.95)
2. How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead, $25.95)
3. To the End of the Land, by David Grossman (Knopf, $26.95)
4. Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carre (Viking, $27.95)
5. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28)
6. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris, illus. by Ian Falconer (Little, Brown, $21.99)
7. The Charming Quirks of Others: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $24.95)
8. Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, by Danielle Evans (Riverhead, $25.95)
9. The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman (Dial, $26)
10. By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25)
11. Eighteen Acres, by Nicolle Wallace (Atria, $25)
12. Nemesis, by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26)

Click here for our fiction paperback bestsellers.

NONFICTION

1. Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, by Condoleezza Rice (Crown, $27) Signed first editions are still available
2. The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, by Jane Leavy (Harper, $27.99)
3. The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, by V.S. Naipaul (Knopf, $26.95)
4. Obama's Wars, by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, $30)
5. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House, $30)
6. Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow (Penguin, $40)
7. Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, by Robert B. Reich (Knopf, $25)
8. The Essential "New York Times" Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, by Amanda Hesser (W. W. Norton, $40)
9. Madison and Jefferson, by Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein (Random House, $35)
10. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, $26)Top of Form
11. Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language, by Deborah Fallows (Walker , $22)
12. The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer, by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, $25.99)

Click here for our non-fiction paperback bestsellers.

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Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier (Plume, $15)
Love and Summer, by William Trevor (Penguin, $15)
The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914, by Philipp Blom (Basic, $18.95)

Click FICTION or NONFICTION to see and buy more recently released paperbacks.

 

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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 October 28

Brian Lies - Bats at the Ballgame (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99)
10:30 a.m. “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. 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)

Alan Riding - And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (Knopf, $28.95)
7 p.m. The arts thrived in Nazi-occupied Paris. Between June 1940 and the war’s end, some 200 French films were made; theatres, nightclubs, and opera houses stayed open; writers from Céline to Camus and Sartre continued to publish. Was this a victory for French culture, or a dangerous abdication of moral leadership by those in a position to influence the larger society? Riding’s fascinating study raises important questions. 

Friday, October 29

Lan Samantha Chang - All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost (W. W. Norton, $23.95)
7 p.m. In her third work of fiction, Chang (Inheritance, Hunger), director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, tells the life of a contemporary poet, from MFA workshops to the Pulitzer Prize. This kunstleroman also considers the relationships between academia and art and between older professors and young, eager students, and tries to find the line between dedication and cutthroat ambition. She has been awarded the Southern Review Fiction Prize, the PEN/Beyond Margins Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories.

Saturday, October 30

Karen Duncan - The Good Fun! Book (Blue Marlin, $15.95)
10:30 a.m. Duncan’s book provides guidelines for twelve months of community-service parties--projects geared to assist elementary-school children in helping animals, the environment, and the wider locale.  A former teacher, Duncan is married to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Douglas R. Egerton - Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War (Bloomsbury, $29)
1 p.m. Egerton, author of Death or Liberty, brings his skills as both historian and political journalist to this study of Lincoln’s route to the White House. A dark horse candidate who wasn’t his own party’s first choice, Lincoln won the 1860 election thanks to a combination of factors, primarily the Democratic Party’s split over slavery.

Allison Leotta - Law of Attraction (Touchstone, $25)
6 p.m. In her first novel, Leotta, a federal sex-crimes prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate, writes about what she knows. Her protagonist is Anna Curtis, a young assistant U.S. Attorney representing a victim of domestic violence. When her client recants and is later murdered, Anna find her professional and personal lives dangerously tangled.

Sunday, October 31

Halloween - No events

Monday, November 1

Alex Ross - Listen to This (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27)
7 p.m. Music critic at The New Yorker since 1996, Ross translates abstract sounds into prose rich with historical depth and artistic insight. His first book, The Rest is Noise, won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award; his new book gathers a selection of his wide-ranging essays on music from the Western classical tradition to contemporary pop, and includes concert reviews, interviews with musicians, profiles of performers, and meditations on the meanings of music.

Tuesday, November 2

Election Day - No events

Wednesday, November 3

Jonathan Stroud - The Ring of Solomon: A Bartimaeus Novel (Hyperion, $17.99)
10:30 a.m. We first met Bartimaeus in The Amulet of Samarkand when eleven year old Nathaniel conjured him in a magic spell. This djinni is street smart, funny and 5000 years old. Every time he ran into an old enemy in London, we wondered what was Bartimaeus doing in the court of King Solomon? This new installment gives the early history - from Babylon and Ancient Egypt to the modern Middle East - of this wise cracking djinni with too many enemies. (Ages 10-14)

Ian Frazier - Travels In Siberia (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30)
7 p.m. Siberia occupies one-seventh of the land on Earth; what’s there? Frazier, intrepid traveler, New Yorker contributor, and author of Great Plains and On The Rez, among others books, recounts his unforgettable meetings not just with the present inhabitants of the region, both human and animal, but also with the many ghosts of the past, from 1820s Decembrist revolutionaries to Communist-era political prisoners.

Thursday, November 4

Henry Cole - A Nest for Celeste (Katherine Tegen, $16.99)
10:30 a.m. Celeste is a mouse who lives in a New Orleans manor house. It’s 1821, and when John James Audubon and his assistant, Joseph Mason, move in, Celeste and Joseph become fast friends, and she rides around in his pocket. Cole, a former science teacher, enhances this story of adventure, history, and science with beautiful pencil drawings.  (Ages 9-12)

Simon Winchester - Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories (HarperCollins, $27.99)
7 p.m. With his gift for compulsively readable narrative nonfiction and knack for finding fascinating subjects, Winchester is the perfect biographer for the Atlantic Ocean. The author of The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa, and many others here takes a long, close look at a body of water pivotal to eras of exploration and colonization, commerce and war. Top of Form

Friday, November 5 - POSTPONED

Oliver Sacks - The Mind's Eye (Knopf, $26.95) - So that we can arrange an appropropriate venue, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL EARLY DECEMBER - Updated information will be released shortly.
.
What would it be like suddenly to be unable to read? Or not to be able to recognize your children? Or, like Dr. Sacks, to lose vision to one side? In his latest collection of essays on the frighteningly fragile, amazingly resilient human brain, the neurologist and author most recently of Musicophilia offers case studies of people who have lost certain cognitive abilities yet who nonetheless lead fairly normal lives as their brains find ways to compensate for the damage.

 

Saturday, November 6

Michael E. Parrish - Citizen Rauh: An American Liberal's Life in Law and Politics (University of Michigan Press, $45)
1 p.m. Parrish’s study of the life and work of Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., demonstrates how one man can make a difference. Rauh, a lawyer, championed New Deal liberalism, worked on behalf of labor unions, and was active in Civil Rights struggles. His many clients ranged from Arthur Miller to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. In telling Rauh’s story, Parrish, the Distinguished Professor of History at U.C. San Diego, also chronicles American history from Sacco and Vanzetti to the Reagan presidency.

Robert Dallek - The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953 (Harper, $28.99)
6 p.m. In Dallek’s analysis of mid-20th-century conflicts, the strife in China, Korea, and the Middle East was rooted in a missed opportunity at the end of World War II. When leaders including Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Stalin had the opportunity to strengthen international cooperation, they instead fell back into the old patterns of power politics that had just plunged their nations into war.

Sunday, November 7

Washington Writers' Publishing House Prize Winners

1 p.m. Washington Writers’ Publishing House is a non-profit organization that has published over 50 volumes of poetry since 1973 and nearly a dozen volumes of fiction. The press sponsors an annual competition for writers living in the Washington-Baltimore area. P&P is proud to host a reading by the 2010 winners in poetry and fiction.

2010 Poetry Prize
Holly Karapetkova - Words We Might One Day Say (WWPF, $15)
Widely published in literary journals, Karapetkova’s poetry concerns themes of motherhood and myth, especially those of Greek and Bulgarian folklore. She has written for children as well as adults and teaches at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.  

2010 Fiction Prize
Andrew Wingfield - Right of Way (WWPF, $16.95)
Set in the fictional Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Cleave Springs, Wingfield’s linked stories present a distinctive community by introducing a diverse cast of characters, from long-time residents to new arrivals. 

Joan Nathan - Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Knopf, $40)
5 p.m. Winner of the James Beard Award and the IACP Award for Jewish Cooking in America and The New American Cooking, Nathan, who has a master’s degree in French literature, here explores Jewish cooking in France. A rich tradition reflecting the 2,000-year presence of Jews in France, this cuisine is flavored by history as much as by spices, and Nathan tells the stories behind the recipes.

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

 

 

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Monday, November 1, 7:30 p.m.

Folger Elizabethan Theatre
201 East Capitol Street, S.E.
PEN/Faulkner Presents
LAN SAMANTHA CHANG
ALL IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS LOST (Norton, $23.95)
SAMANTHA HUNT
THE INVENTION OF EVERYTHING ELSE (Mariner, $13.95)
Admired for their ingenious prose and arresting narratives, two contemporary writers read from new work.

Lan Samantha Chang is the author of two novels, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, as well as a story collection Hunger. She has been awarded the Southern Review Fiction Prize, the PEN/Beyond Margins Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa and Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Samantha Hunt's second novel, The Invention of Everything Else, was a finalist for the Orange Prize and winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Seas, won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. Hunt's fiction has been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and other publications. She lives in Tivoli, New York and teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Click here to buy $15 tickets.

Monday, November 1, 7:30 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW
KAREN KOSTYAL
GREAT MIGRATIONS (National Geographic, $35)

This fall, National Geographic Channel's Great Migrations seven-part global television event will take viewers around the world to follow the arduous journeys millions of animals undertake to ensure survival of their species. Shot from land and air, in trees and cliff blinds, on ice floes and underwater, Great Migrations tells formidable, powerful stories of the planet's species and their movements across seven continents. To mark this historic programming series, NGC producer David Hamlin will join filmmaker Andy Casagrande and cinematographer Robert Poole to describe the challenges and technological breakthroughs involved in creating a global experience in breathtaking, high-definition clarity. Post-film discussion moderated by Karen Kostyal, author of the series companion book.

Click here for $18 tickets (NG Members: $16).

Saturday, November 6, 12 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW
TIM LAMAN
FACE TO FACE WITH ORANGUTANS (National Geographic, $16.95)

Photojournalist and scientist Tim Laman spends much of his time in the rain forests of Borneo, where he has gotten friendly with a number of amazing animal species. Among his favorites is the orangutan, a particularly intelligent primate known as the "old man of the woods." In his lively presentation, Laman will share images of orangutans and other rainforest dwellers, and take you into the treetops where he climbs to make up-high, up-close observations. Laman co-authored this book with his wife, Cheryl Knott.

Presented in conjunction with FotoWeek DC 2010.

Click here for tickets: Adults: $16 (3-Part Series: $24); Kids 12 and under: $8 (Series: $16).

Saturday, November 6, 7 p.m.

National Geographic Society
1600 M Street, NW
JOHN BREDAR
THE PRESIDENT'S PHOTOGRAPHER (National Geographic, $35)
Find out what it's like to cover the most powerful man in the world as we present a screening of the new National Geographic Television Special, The President's Photographer. The film follows chief White House photographer Pete Souza as he in turn follows President Obama from Air Force One to the heart of the West Wing. This world premiere screening will be followed by a discussion with executive producer John Bredar, author of a new NG book on the same subject, and several past White House photographers, including Eric Draper, Robert McNeely, and David Valdez.

Presented in conjunction with FotoWeek DC 2010. The event will be preceded by a reception at 6 p.m.

Click here for $20 tickets (NG Member: $18).

Monday, November 8, 7 p.m.

Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
AMY SEDARIS
SIMPLE TIMES: Crafts for Poor People (Grand Central, $27.99)
America's most delightfully unconventional hostess and the bestselling author of I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence delivers a new book that will forever change the world of crafting. Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People proves that crafting is one of life's more pleasurable leisure activities and anyone with a couple of hours to kill and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters. 

The book explains how to make popular crafts, such as crab-claw roach clips and crepe-paper moccasins, and how to avoid common crafting accidents (feather asphyxia, pine cone lodged in throat).

Sedaris is an actress and comedienne best known for portraying Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central series Strangers with Candy, and for her roles on Exit 57, Just Shoot Me, Sex & the City, Monk, and Cracking Up.

Click here for $30 tickets (includes one copy of the book). Questions? Please call 202.408.3100.

Thursday, November 11, 7 p.m.

Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
STACY SCHIFF
CLEOPATRA: A Life (Little, Brown, $29.99)

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff (Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov); A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America) separates fact from fiction to illuminate Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt and one of the most intriguing women of all time. History remembers Cleopatra as an irresistible seductress, but she was also a canny political strategist, a brilliant manager, and a tough negotiator. We have not seen a more influential woman since—much less one who happened to be the single mother of four children, and by a wide margin the wealthiest person in her world.

Click here to purchase $8 tickets in advance or receive 2 FREE tickets with the purchase of the book ($30) through Sixth & I. Tickets will be $10 the day of the event. If you have questions, please call 202.408.3100.

Sunday, November 14, 2 p.m.

Music Center at Strathmore
5301 Tuckerman Lane
North Bethesda, MD

Sunday at Strathmore with
STEVEN SONDHEIM

FINISHING THE HAT: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes (Knopf, $39.95)

The Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks hosts and celebrates the great American songwriter, who penned some of the most memorable Broadway classics of the last 50 years, from West Side Story to Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd and more. Winner of eight Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, Grammy Awards and many other honors, this witty, literary lion of American theater has stories to tell.

Click here to buy your tickets online or call 301-581-5100. Politics & Prose customers are invited to use discount code 1754 to get 10% off! Please note: this event does not include musical performances.

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CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through 11/3/2010)

If ever there were a poetic form that captured the joys of boyhood, haiku would be it. Using the seasons as a guide, Bob Raczka celebrates the wonder, whimsy, and mischief of childhood in GUYKU: A Year of Haiku for Boys (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $14.99). One boy wants to know who turned off the crickets at the end of summer. Another muses on how many flakes it would take to make a snow day. Peter H. Reynolds’ delightful drawings complement the haiku perfectly. While each poem is told from a boy’s point of view, this collection will charm readers of all ages. Click here to visit the Guyku website for a preview of how to write your own guyku – or galku! Ages 5-10 - Angela Williams

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

Please join us for Storytime on Mondays at 10:30 a.m., BearSong, the Guitar Man, is back after several years' hiatus, leading stories, songs, finger plays, and more for children from birth to 4 years old and their caregivers.

For upcoming events and more from the Children and Teens' Department, click here.
Click here to access the teen blog.

SIGNED FIRST EDITION CHILDREN’S BOOK CLUB

Did you miss out on buying a first edition Harry Potter book when J.K. Rowling was at Politics and Prose in 1999? Would you want a signed first edition, first printing of a new book by Chris Van Allsburg, Peter Sis, or David Wiesner? Now you can sign up to have a first edition, first printing of a newly released children’s or young adult book delivered each month directly to your - or another collector’s – doorstep. You can also save on shipping and pick your book up at the store.

There is no enrollment fee. The cost of each book ($30 or less, when including shipping) is the only charge, which will be processed every month when the books arrive at Politics & Prose. 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.

Our first three selections are:

October: IT’S A BOOK by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook, $12.99)
November: ZEN GHOSTS by Jon Muth (Scholastic, $17.99)
December: ART AND MAX by David Wiesner (Clarion, $17.99)

You may enroll in the program for six or twelve months at a time. And into the coming year, you can be sure that we will continue to select books to cherish for years to come! To this end, for an extra $1.50, you can choose to have us protect your book in an acid-free archival book cover.

Call 202-363-1919 or email Amy Kane at the store for more information, or click here to sign up online for the Politics & Prose Children's Signed First Edition Club.

AND TO GO WITH A SIGNED BOOK GIFT SUBSCRIPTION

Our irresistible children’s bookends ($20, $28, $38) are handmade by a small locally owned business in Hagerstown, Maryland.  They are made of multi-ply birch and painted with nontoxic acrylic paint.  They come in three sizes, many styles and colors. Click here to see a larger selection and to order online.

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