During this holiday season, I have been nearly overwhelmed every day in the store by the number of people who not only told me the many ways in which Carla touched their lives, but also pledged their support for all that Politics & Prose represents in our community. The Washington Literacy Council reports a generous influx of donations in memory of Carla, many of them anonymous, and we want to thank everyone who gave a donation to Carla's favorite charities.

During this holiday season, we have 300 members who have signed up for five-year memberships, a great vote of confidence in the future! We feel ever more convinced that, in 2011, P&P will continue to be the place you love to visit.

Happy holidays to all of you!

Barbara

When shopping for the holidays, think of gifts that will be appreciated all year long, and consider giving the gift of our Book-a-Month Club or our Signed First Editions Club.

Also remember that items in our Politics & Prose 2010 Holiday Newsletter are discounted 15-20% to members all month.

Here are some selections from the Newsletter that you shouldn't miss as you choose your gifts.

LIVES OF THE WRITERS

Early in STORYTELLER: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (Simon & Schuster, $30), Donald Sturrock tells of Roald Dahl’s skepticism of biography: "Why on earth would anyone read an assemblage of detail, a catalog of facts, when there was so much good fiction around as an alternative?" And so begins this engaging and masterfully researched portrait of an exceptional writer. Dahl’s life was full of adventure and excitement, from his RAF days to his work in wartime intelligence in Washington, D.C. He was a humorous, opinionated, cantankerous, and amazingly caring man. Dahl was larger than life and so much like his fictional characters that reading this biography is in some ways like stepping into a great work of fiction. Sturrock writes in such an elegant and fascinating way that even Dahl would have been pleased. - Adam Waterreus

Sarah Bakewell borrows Montaigne’s own personable, anecdotal approach for her sparkling treatise on the master essayist’s life and work. HOW TO LIVE: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Other Press, $25) is the matter under investigation and Bakewell, author of two previous biographies and former curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Library, examines it from 20 different perspectives (or 21, given the nearly 60 illustrations), each one integral to Montaigne’s thought and experience. Starting with how to survive the death of a loved one, Montaigne determined that "death is only a few bad moments at the end of life," and set about the greater challenge of living. Combining elements from the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics, Montaigne developed a free-ranging philosophy based not on abstractions and ideals but on daily life and fallible humanity. Always curious, open to any and all perspectives, affable, and eager for conversation, Montaigne in his essays conveys to the reader "the feeling of meeting a real person across the centuries"; Bakewell, in this vivid profile, does the same. - Laurie Greer

POETRY

THE POETS LAUREATE ANTHOLOGY (W.W. Norton, $39.95) is not to be missed. It collects the signature poems and seldom-read works of all 43 American Poets Laureate, with black-and-white pictures and quotations from each. The ever-endearing Billy Collins gives readers a humorous and personal look at the appointment of Poet Laureate in his Foreword, while the editor, Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, gives insightful descriptions of each poet’s ability to develop his or her unique craft, often focusing on their time spent in D.C. at the Library of Congress. While the collection begins with 2010 Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin and ends with the work of Joseph Auslander, the first to be appointed Consultant in Poetry (as the title was originally), in 1937, readers can go chronologically, tracing influences and challenges to tradition—or simply dive in at any point. This exceptional collection also features William Carlos Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Stanley Kunitz, and Robert Frost. - Wendy Brown

During her life, Emily Dickinson rightly suspected that her unconventional poems would baffle—even shock—her contemporaries. Later readers have gotten used to her dashes, hymn meters, and slant rhymes, but her tight, riddling lyrics are still a challenge. However, the rewards of reading DICKINSON: Selected Poems and Commentary (Harvard Univ., $35) are many, and there’s no better companion in this endeavor than Helen Vendler, author of studies on Yeats, Stevens, Herbert, and many modern poets. She brings to this selection of 150 Dickinson poems a lifetime of close reading and an amazing ability to empathize with the poet’s position, articulating what Dickinson tried to do, the problems she faced, and how she resolved them. Each commentary addresses formal and thematic elements of a given poem and draws on the poet’s biography and reading, including citations from the 1844 Webster’s Dickinson consulted. Vendler offers a wealth of insight and information, suggesting readings but never closing off options. In each two-to-five-page essay she says more, and says it more clearly, than many critics do in entire books. - Laurie Greer

WRITING AND CREATIVITY

Roy Peter Clark’s THE GLAMOUR OF GRAMMAR: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English (Little, Brown, $19.99) is an indispensable book for anyone who loves the English language. It is a guide, not a manifesto and Clark is no crusading “grammazon,” but a patient and thorough teacher. Covering the basics with brio, Clark utilizes examples that range from Chaucer to Twitter, religious poetry to Rolling Stone. His explanation of the deeper elements of writing: standards, meaning, and purpose, are handled deftly with sensitivity and charm. This book will serve writers at all levels, from beginner to expert, and the section on mastering new forms in the digital age should be required reading for anyone who sets fingers to a keyboard of any type. Each chapter ends with helpful “keepsake” ideas, and the handy appendices list commonly misspelled and misused words. This is a book to turn to again and again for both reference and pleasure. - Sarah Baline

Until he was 21, Orhan Pamuk wanted to become a painter. Thereafter, he turned to the art of “painting with words”: he became a novelist. In his six Norton lectures the Nobel laureate reflects on writing and reading fiction. THE NAÏVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST (Harvard Univ., $22.95) is a distinction drawn by Schiller; some writers proceed spontaneously, seemingly without forethought, others work with self-conscious attention to craft and effect. Pamuk believes all novelists are a bit of both types, as their work also appeals to both the visual and the verbal imaginations. While the writer’s search for le mot juste is famous, Pamuk concentrates on the need for l’image juste. Novels work by accretion of details, each of which is visualized by the writer and then the reader as if seen from the characters’ points of view. Novels also have a knack for giving us a world at once unique and familiar--that’s one reason we read them. Another is to find the elusive “center” where all the details merge into a coherent meaning. We search for such a center in life; we’re more apt to find it in a literary novel, such as one of Pamuk’s, or the one he considers “the greatest novel of all time,” Anna Karenina. - Laurie Greer

“Do you wish you could draw?” This is the question artist Lynda Barry answers with an astonishing generosity of stories and exercises, brush-drawings, and bursting-at-the-seams collages in PICTURE THIS (Drawn & Quarterly, $29.95). It is the follow-up to her colorful book on writing, What It Is—a combination of memoir and how-to book. Both are extensions of Barry’s wonderful classes on creativity—she gave Politics & Prose audiences a taste in an exuberant 90-minute slide-lecture/comedic monologue when her last book came out. Picture This brings back her youthful and brash protagonist, Marlys, as tour-guide, as well as the beret-wearing Near-Sighted Monkey as instructor, and anyone wishing for some inspiration is in luck. - András Goldinger

ART

What survives from the past—what we see in textbooks and museums—are the monuments and artworks of an age. But how do we interpret these artifacts? And can we trust, say, images of battle scenes commissioned by the victors to accurately portray their subject? HOW TO READ WORLD HISTORY IN ART (Abrams, $35) explores the relationship between those who control the historical record and the masterworks used to pass down particular versions of events. The authors, Flavio Febbraro and Burkhard Schwetje, give a two-page spread to each of the scores of artworks they study; this includes a summary of the relevant historical event and close scrutiny of the piece’s significant details. The book considers the great figures of history, including Charlemagne and George Washington, and the great battles, but it also offers a look at everyday life during periods of upheaval, such as bubonic plague years, and turning points like the Industrial Revolution. From the Code of Hammurabi to the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, this volume makes a magnificent and masterful tour of unforgettable historical moments and the great works of art in their wake. - Anna Thorn

TELLING STORIES: Norman Rockwell from The Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (Abrams, $65) is the companion volume to the impressive exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Essays by Virginia Mecklenburg, with help from Todd McCarthy, outline the ways Rockwell influenced his kindred spirits, Lucas and Spielberg. All three artists produced incredible bodies of work that, taken together, document classic American images, values, history, and dreams. Rockwell used his medium to tell stories, but unlike the filmmakers, did it in only one frame. He built his pictures using an almost cinematic approach, creating a setting, rehearsing a scene, defining characters, and creating visual impact. Text and photographs demonstrate how lighting, props, and costumes maximized the sense of dramatic moment. For those who didn’t get to enjoy the collection in person, this book is a great introduction to an amazing selection of paintings. For those lucky enough to have seen the exhibit, the catalog makes a wonderful keepsake. -Tracey Filar Atwood

FICTION

In her third novel, GREAT HOUSE (W.W. Norton, $24.95), Nicole Krauss weaves together four narrative threads, all of which revolve around a large and impressive writing desk. The novel opens with a young writer, Nadia, recounting how she came to own the desk. Gradually, more narrators pick up the story: an Israeli father struggling with his relationship to his son, a husband trying to understand the secrets of his late wife, a young American woman involved with a complicated man and his strange family, and an antiques dealer who specializes in recovering items pillaged by the Nazis. With beautiful writing and heartbreaking details, Kraus unfolds each character’s losses, despair, and disappointment, leaving it to the reader to puzzle the whole picture together. - Jennifer Close

ALL IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS LOST (W.W. Norton, $23.95) is a small book with a lot of power. Lan Samantha Chang follows Roman from his time as a desperate, aspiring poetry student to his later success as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writing professor. His life takes a turn when he begins an affair with Miranda, his mysterious, confident poetry professor. In the years ahead he struggles to come to terms with what the affair meant to his career, his art, and his heart. With delicate, beautiful prose, and a unique yet oddly familiar story, Chang pierces the depths of friendship, love, art, nostalgia, and regret with breathtaking precision. This is the kind of novel you can’t leave without knowing a little more about yourself. - Sam Ramos

HUMOR

Mouse dotes on her adorable baby corn snake—until, that is, her baby corn snake grows up and craves the taste of mouse flesh. She is but one of the ill-fated characters in SQUIRREL SEEKS CHIPMUNK (Little, Brown, $21.99) by David Sedaris. In this collection of tales, Sedaris maintains his wit and insight, though his tone is darker and more poignant than the light-hearted personal essays that Sedaris fans are used to. The stories are delightfully absurd: the incarcerated cat attending AA meetings, the baboon barber trying to make small talk with his cat client. Sedaris’s furry and feathered characters are a fascinating blend of the ultra-human and the utterly animal. Sedaris uses them to satirize the all-too-human subjects of adultery, hypocrisy, parochialism, and self-absorption. The quirky, yet sinister, drawings of Ian Falconer (who illustrated the children’s series about Olivia the pig) provide a perfect complement to the text. - Anna Thorn

I FOUND THIS FUNNY (McSweeney’s, $25) is an anthology of stories, skits, essays, poetry, and cartoons that manages to be laugh-out-loud hilarious, depressing, and enlightening all at the same time. Writer/director Judd Apatow, of Freaks and Geeks and Knocked Up fame, does a fantastic job as the editor of a collection that includes Raymond Carver, Conan O’Brien, David Sedaris, Flannery O’Connor, Adam Sandler, Jon Stewart, and many more. Apatow doesn’t feel the need to stick to stories that are obviously funny. He also chooses writing that is strange or heartbreaking, non-fiction and fiction. The variety of this collection makes it a constantly surprising reading experience. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Apatow’s work, but also to anyone who likes well-told strories, sharp insight, and a good laugh. - Sam Ramos

COOKING

Jamie Oliver does America in JAMIE’S AMERICA (Hyperion $37.50). Traveling the beautiful expanses of our great country, Oliver discovered many things about the people and places. He also learned a lot about the regional dishes that Americans love. Now he tells stories from these travels, introducing the many people he met along the way, and reinterpreting the dishes he found. The book contains lovely photographs of those people and places. It also features more than 100 recipes that provide the amateur and professional chef an opportunity to re-experience American cuisine.

Diana Kennedy is to Mexican food what Julia Child was to French cooking. For over 50 years, she has championed this cuisine through her many cookbooks, especially The Art of Mexican Cooking. In her exquisite new OAXACA AL GUSTO (Univ. of Texas, $50), she focuses on Oaxaca, learning recipes from local home cooks, then teaching you how dishes are prepared on the coast, as opposed to those in the La Esperanza area. Kennedy credits the cooks who supplied the recipes, and includes her observations about the region, the local ingredients, and the recipes. The book is full of beautiful photographs of the food and the landscape. This is a perfect gift for lovers of cooking and readers wanting to know more about this wonderful cuisine.

Ina Garten’s popular Barefoot Contessa series has been a Food Network staple. To keep the show fresh, Garten has recently produced cookbooks for those interested in learning the basics of cooking and in preparing her favorite recipes at home. If you watch her show, you’ll recognize her mantra in the title of her new BAREFOOT CONTESSA: HOW EASY IS THAT? (Clarkson Potter $35). When Garten uses this phrase, she’s pointing out that with a few ingredients and some planning you can make the perfect French toast, host the perfect dinner party, plan the perfect beach picnic. For this book she’s selected recipes that are simple and delicious and has provided tips for making readers better cooks. Section by Deb Morris

HISTORY

My experience with history is one of units divided neatly and chronologically, with key figures guiding the helm of change. In CHILDREN OF FIRE: A History of African Americans (Hill and Wang, $30), Thomas C. Holt, a prominent historian at the University of Chicago, creates an intimate portrait of history as a lived moment, experienced by individuals. He opens his history of African-Americans when the first Africans were sold from a Dutch man-of-war in 1619 and continues through the twenty-first century and the historic election of the first African-American U.S. president. Although decisive figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama populate Holt’s narrative, so, too, do little known men and women, caught in the shifts of culture, policy, and social norms that have defined race relations and institutions of oppression in the U.S. Holt’s generational portrait is a nuanced look at lives mired in history, lives more complex and dynamic than the flattened accounts of history textbooks. - Lacey Dunham

Barnet Schecter, a historian and author of the Battle for New York, has mined Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library collection of George Washington’s maps for this unique and beautiful profile of the first president and his place in the New World. GEORGE WASHINGTON’S AMERICA: A Biography Through His Maps (Walker, $67.50) is as close a glimpse of the landscape Washington knew as we are likely to get. The volume reproduces scores of the maps, charts, and atlas pages Washington drew, collected, and relied on throughout his life; he owned more than 90 different maps and atlases by the time he died, including a 1762 overview of North America by John Rocque and his own cartographic account of his 1753 Ohio River journey to strengthen colonial defenses against hostile French forces. - Laurie Greer

As a kid, I loved to take the bus down Georgia Avenue and then walk. There was a tiny used-book store where I could look at books by black authors. I could see what photographs were in the windows of Scurlock Studios. It was considered a dangerous area, but during the day it was full of life. I rode through there after the riots in 1968 and saw smoke still smoldering in many of the shop fronts. U Street was the cultural heart of the city. For blacks the restaurants and theaters served up the cream of black entertainers and sports figures: Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, the great jazz and blues stars. Ball players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson could leave nearby Griffith Stadium and head out to U Street to celebrate. In WASHINGTON’S U STREET (Johns Hopkins Univ., $29.95), Blair A. Ruble takes us back to the days before Jim Crow, when U street was a mixed community, then looks at the post-Jim Crow era, when it was central to black cultural and social life, and moves on to today, and its spectacular revitalization. - Deb Morris

The first book in Richard Rhodes’s nuclear trilogy, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was an early favorite at Politics and Prose, and it was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in nonfiction. When the Cold War ended, nine nations together possessed a staggering 60,000 nuclear weapons. And today? THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (Knopf, $27.95), the final book in the series, states that since the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the arsenals of the superpowers have diminished. Although the current threat of nuclear war lies with the smaller and less stable nations like India and Pakistan, Rhodes believes that the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons is now within our reach. But how that is going to be accomplished is what Rhodes wants to explore, and he does so by reviewing the past 65 years of successes and failures, both political and diplomatic, in nuclear-arms negotiations. - Barbara Meade

All of these titles are 20% off for members.
Click here to download a copy of the newsletter and see more reviews by our booksellers.
See below for some of our suggestions for children and teens. You can also read more recommendations in the Children and Teens' Department 2010 Book Favorites!

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Click here to see more of our Signed Event Books.

WASHINGTON: A Life
Signed by Ron Chernow
(Penguin, $40)
Hardcover - October 2010
First editions, first printings.

Before Ron Chernow’s new multi-dimensional portrait of WASHINGTON (Penguin Press, $40), the first president’s character, as portrayed in the standard accounts, was as lifeless as that of a waxworks figure. Chernow’s wide-ranging research, including newly found diaries and letters, rescues Washington from the mausoleum where historians have heretofore placed him, and establishes his rightful place in American history as a complex man of deep emotions and strong opinions. In the French and Indian War he was an insecure young colonel, but as General Washington he went on to lead the Continental Army to victory; in his first inaugural address his voice and hand trembled, but his mastery of political skills and his growing self-assurance and self-control elevated him to a status that earned the admiration and trust of the new American nation. To Chernow, he was the greatest president in our history.

 

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

Bookmark www.politics-prose.com/bestsellers/hardcover-fiction and www.politics-prose.com/bestsellers/hardcover-nonfiction to find out which bestsellers we are discounting each week. The list is updated every Monday.

Click here to receive the benefits of Politics & Prose membership.

FICTION

1. Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carre (Viking, $27.95)
2. Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon (McPherson, $25)
3. A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Knopf, $25.95)
4. The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer (Knopf, $26.95)
5. The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman (Dial, $25)
6. The Confession, by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95)
7. By Nightfall, by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25)
8. The 100 Best African American Poems, by Nikki Giovanni (Sourcebooks, $22.99)
9. Ann Beattie:The New Yorker Stories, by Ann Beattie (Scribner, $30)
10. Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard (William Morrow, $26.99)
11. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95)
12. Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak; trans. By Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Pantheon, $30)

Click here for our fiction paperback bestsellers.

NONFICTION

1. Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown, $29.99)
2. Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1, by Mark Twain; edited by Harriet E. Smith (Univ. of California, $34.95)
3. White House Diary, by Jimmy Carter (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30)
4. Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (Random House, $35)
5. Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris (Random House, $35)
6. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton, $27.95)
7. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race, by Jon Stewart (Grand Central, $27.99)
8. Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices, by Noah Feldman (Twelve, $30)
9. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera (Portfolio, $32.95)
10. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder (Basic, $29.95)
11. Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams, by John Updike (Library of America, $15)
12. Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, by Michael Korda (Harper, $36)

Click here for our non-fiction paperback bestsellers.

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Take a break this Friday and come and meet Dr. Seuss's Grinch as he prepares to visit Whoville on Christmas Eve! Bring your camera and take a picture with him outside the front of the store from 1-2 p.m. If the weather is not too cold, he will also read How the Grinch Stole Christmas at 2 p.m.

SUGGESTIONS FROM OUR HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER
(20% off to Members through December 31, 2010)

From the author/illustrator of the much-loved Gossie & Friends series, Olivier Dunrea, comes the story of OLD BEAR AND HIS CUB (Philomel, $16.99). In an age-old power struggle, Little Cub resists Old Bear’s attempts to keep him safe and healthy. Ultimately, he agrees to eat all his porridge, take a nap, and wear his scarf. However, the tables are turned when Old Bear catches a cold and must follow Little Cub’s instructions in order to get better. Dunrea’s beautiful, wintry illustrations enhance this sweet story. Ages 3-6 - Kerri Poore

Hayaat’s grandmother, Sitti Zeynab, longs to return from the West Bank to Jerusalem, WHERE THE STREETS HAD A NAME (Scholastic, $17.99). Because Sitti Zeynab can’t travel, thirteen-year-old Hayaat journeys to Jerusalem to bring back soil from her grandmother’s home. On the way to Jerusalem, Hayaat and her friend Samy cross through checkpoints, face detention by Israeli officials, and find themselves trapped in the middle of a political protest. Throughout the journey, Randa Abdel-Fattah reveals Hayaat’s family and personal history, adding complexity to this story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the importance of home. Ages 11-14 - Amy Kane

Raphael spends his days digging through the TRASH (David Fickling, $16.99), scavenging the city dump for things to sell or use. His life is turned upside-down when he finds one interesting prize that leads him to something even more valuable. After deciding to conceal their findings from the police, Raphael and two friends begin to trace the origins of their discoveries. What follows is a fast-paced and complex story of government corruption. Andy Mulligan has created an eye-opening book about poverty, repression, and third-world lives. Ages 14-18. Amy Kane

From the humor of Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” to the horror of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” THE CREATIVE COLLECTION OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (Creative Editions, $28.95) is an excellent introduction to American short stories. Editor Ray Bradbury included works from across centuries and genres that are written by some of the most respected and influential voices in America. Yan Nascimbene’s beautiful paintings, thorough notes, and author biographies accompany each. Dana Chidiac

 

Story time takes a hiatus during the winter holiday season.
BearSong, the Guitar Man, will resume his Monday morning story time on January 10, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. with stories, songs, finger plays, and more for children from birth to 4 years old and their caregivers.

Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children and teens by clicking here. 
For upcoming events and more from the Children and Teens' Department, click here.

Click here to access the teen blog.

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