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UPCOMING EVENTS |
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Once again, remember Linda Pastan is reading tonight at 7 p.m. from her new
collection of poems, TRAVELING LIGHT
(W.W. Norton, $24.95) If you want a good seat, I advise you to heed
Linda's new poem, "Early":
"I am never merely punctual, I am always
early..Think of what I could do with all the squandered minutes I spend
just standing around rereading the face of my watch, as if it has more
than time to tell."
We also want to encourage you to attend our talk on Wednesday, March 9 at 7 p.m with Jonathan Evison. Floor Manager Bill Leggett enjoyed reading Evison's new book WEST OF HERE (Algonquin, $24.95), a novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He said,
"The past and the present merge in the fictional town of Pont Bonita. The novel tells two parallel stories set about a century apart, one the formation of this town as a thriving community and the other its present day slide into irrelevance. Compelling characters from both periods must decide how their lives will develop and evolve as the place they call home changes around them. Evison has really created two narratives that feed off each other and create a wonderful whole."
Finally, we have many exciting author visiting later this month, but we are pleased to announce that we have added an additional event in March since our events calendar was printed. Please add this to your calendars!
Thursday, March 17, 7 p.m.
KAREN TEI YAMASHITA
I HOTEL (Coffee House Press, $19.95)
Dazzling and ambitious, this hip, multi-voiced fusion of prose, playwriting, graphic art, and philosophy spins an epic tale of America’s struggle for civil rights as it played out in San Francisco’s Chinatown from 1968-1977. As Yamashita’s motley cast of students, laborers, artists, revolutionaries, and provocateurs make their way through the history of the day, their stories come to define the very heart of the American experience. I Hotel was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award.
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PODCAST OF THE WEEK
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On January 7, 2011, at 7 p.m., Politics & Prose hosted Tom Rachman for the paperback release of his debut collection of short stories, which together form a very witty novel, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS (Dial Press, $15).
Turning his erstwhile journalistic career into the story of a struggling English-language newspaper in Rome, Rachman lets different reporters and editors have their say, creating a rich and funny tapestry of good intentions and mishaps. Each story relates a critical experience in the private life of one of the many characters. This multi-faceted approach reveals both the 60-year history of the paper and the secrets they keep from one another and themselves. The imperfections which - to varying degrees - they face or avoid are both their strengths and weaknesses in their professional and personal development. Worries about the paper’s future pale with comparison to the daily trials and tribulations of the journalists on the staff.
Click here to listen to the event. Or click here to browse our previous selection of event recordings. We record nearly every in-store author event. Please send us an email if you would like to request access to a particular recording.
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BOOK NOTES |
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YOU’VE HEARD THEM ON “THIS AMERICAN LIFE”
“Each week we choose a theme, and bring you a variety of different stories on that theme...”
If the radio program This American Life were a piece of literature, it
would be impossible to classify -- and that’s exactly why we love it. We are
weekly drawn in by the program’s trademark pathos and wit, served up by
contributors like David Sedaris, Adam Gopnik, David Rakoff, and Sarah
Vowell: the Major Leaguers of the comic essay.
You
can always count on Mike Birbiglia for laugh-til-you-cry driveway
moments. And if you want to introduce someone to the show (or spark a lifelong T.A.L.
addiction) Elna Baker’s hilariously shocking expose of the
doll department at F.A.O. Schwartz is a prime place to start. Darin Strauss’s Half a Life might be
the saddest story you’ve ever heard on the radio -- but it also might be among
the best.
Click here to read more about our favorites.
 MARCH IS FOR IRISH AUTHORS
These are books that we love to recommend.
His most recent novel Brooklyn has been a huge success, and Colm Toíbín has received a starred review for his newest collection, THE EMPTY FAMILY: Stories (Scribner, $24). Kirkus declared that it is "Likely to rank with the best story collections of the year…[It] reconfirms his mastery.” And in her New York Times review of the stories, described as "affecting . . . sensitive . . . nuanced", Francine Prose wonders," Why does the short story lend itself so naturally to the muted but still shattering sentiments of yearning, nostalgia and regret?" She continues, "Retrospect is a major player in these dramas; regret makes its entrance onstage, and a character relives the sort of experience recalled for the obvious reason that it was so painful. . . For Toibin, memory seems not merely a function of the heart but proof that the heart exists." -- Andrew Getman
Seamus Heaney’s poetry is loved for many reasons. “Like a nest/of cross hatched grass blades,” it offers the textures of nature, down to the soil and roots; it explores history, with special attention to the past as encapsulated in words’ etymologies; it endows the everyday with touches of myth and magic; and it coaxes some amazing rhythms and sounds from English. HUMAN CHAIN: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $24), the Nobel laureate’s twelfth collection, features all this and more. Opening and closing with a wind blowing, the book recognizes that time passes and things change, but at its core, this work honors what lasts. Solid objects—farm machines, books, pens—abound here, and “everywhere plants/flourish among graves.” The volume’s many elegies stand less as testimonials to loss than as vivid portraits of vital individuals, each forming a link in the “human chain” of sustaining friendships that’s as solid and beautiful a handicraft as any of the material artifacts. - Laurie Greer
And for a survey of the literature you might pick up THE GRANTA BOOK OF THE IRISH SHORT STORY, edited by Anne Enright (Grove Press, $27.95) or AN ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN IRISH POETRY, edited by Wes Davis (Belknap, $35).
Click here for more suggestions of Irish literature.
BOOK GROUPS AT P&P
If you are not already a subscriber, take a look at our most recent monthly Book Group email. It always contains helpful advice and suggested reading for Book Group organizers and participants. The most recent issue features podcasts of the Book Group discussion, which we hosted in the store on January 31, and an interview with Julie Orringer about her extraordinarily popular book THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE (Vintage, $15.95). Click here to read the conversation which our Floor Supervisor and Book-a-Month Coordinator Elizabeth Sher had with Ms. Orringer.
If you would like to receive the book group e-mail, please send a message to bookgroups@politics-prose.com with "Book Group E-mail Subscribe" in the subject line. Your address will be added to our list.
Politics & Prose currently hosts sixteen different book groups in the store each month. P&P's book groups meet monthly and are free and open to the public. Click here to learn more about participating in a Politics & Prose book group and to see the entire month of upcoming meetings and book selections. Please join us!
- Lacey Dunham and Bill Leggett, Book Group Coordinators
MODERN TIMES COFFEEHOUSE TURNS FIVE!
Tuesday, March 1 was the fifth anniversary of the Modern Times Coffeehouse at Politics & Prose. According to Javier’s calculations, the café has gone through about 23,000 pounds of coffee beans in the last 5 years. Holy frijoles!
Please join us in wishing our friends and colleagues in the café a very happy anniversary!
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SIGNED BOOKS OF THE WEEK
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THE WISE MAN’S FEAR: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two
By Patrick Rothfuss
(DAW, $29.95)
March 2011 – Hardcover
First editions, first printings.
Our Science Fiction and Fantasy fans on staff have been eagerly awaiting the release of this sequel to the acclaimed debut The Name of the Wind. Signed copies just arrived from the author on Tuesday. This is the story of a powerfully skilled young musician of inauspicious origins and magical leanings. Taking advantage of an involuntary sabbatical from the University he is attending, he goes out to face a world of political rivalries, intrigue, mercenaries, and Faeries. If you cut your teeth on Harry Potter, have read Tolkien, have already discovered Brandon Sanderson and George RR Martin, and are ready for more maturity, depth, and adventure, meet Patrick Rothfuss.
WHEN THE KILLING'S DONE
By T.C. Boyle
(Viking, $26.95)
Hardcover - February 2011
First editions, first printings.
From the bestselling author of The Women, T.C. Boyle's newest book, set in the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, delves into family histories and explores questions about human dominion over the wild land. Confrontations between protectors of native species and animal rights' activists become increasingly dramatic and violent and tempt the awesome destructive power of nature itself.
Click here to browse other signed books available now, or visit our events calendar to pre-order a signed book from a future author event.
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UPCOMING TICKETED EVENTS
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In order to accommodate a larger audience, we sometimes hold our events at other locations. Please reserve your tickets early if you plan to attend.
Monday, March 14, 7 p.m.
Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
JOSHUA FOER
MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Penguin Press, $26.95)
Foer's unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion frames a revelatory exploration of the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives. This book will be released on March 3, but you can read an excerpt online with Google Preview by clicking here.
Click here for $10 tickets, or to receive two free tickets with purchase of the book from P&P.
Thursday, April 7, 7 p.m.
Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
HOWARD JACOBSON
THE FINKLER QUESTION (Bloomsbury, $15)
Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Jacobson’s novel was cited for being “very funny...but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be.” The eponymous Finkler is a popular Jewish philosopher, writer, and television personality, and the story focuses on his long friendship with gentile Julian Treslove, who becomes obsessed with what it means to be Jewish.
Click here for $10 tickets, or to receive two free tickets with purchase of the book ($15) from P&P.
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SPRING INTO SONNETS CLASS |
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Six Tuesdays, April 19-May 24
3-4:30 PM.
This 14-line poetic form invented in 13th Century Italy and brought to its apogee in 16th Century England is enjoying a comeback today, though really, it has never gone out of fashion. And no wonder: sonnets are not just a form; they are a way of thinking. And what a way! Endless variations within a set number of lines but with some conventions to be followed or ignored explore love, lack, loss—the gamut of human emotions.
Come spend some time roaming around in this enduring form and never look at sonnets again in the same way. We’ll begin with Petrarch and Shakespeare and move up in time to the present. Smart, sexy, sassy—sonnets are intellectual and emotional chess, endlessly reinvented. You might just get inspired to try one yourself!
Gigi Bradford & Louisa Newlin have just finished a series of lesson plans for the Folger Shakespeare Library on how to teach sonnets and have fallen in love with them all over again. No experience is necessary to join this group, just an open mind, a love of words, and pleasure in the company of others.
Cost: $80 for P & P members; $100 for non-members.
Syllabus: The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, Phillis Levin, editor (Penguin, $25)
Up to 30 participants: waiting list thereafter.
Click here to register and order your book.
This class has already begun, but there is still room for those who wish to enroll.
THE FICTION OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY: Taught by Jackson R. Bryer
The Nick Adams Stories, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms
March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 1-2:30 p.m.
(On March 9, the class will meet 3-4:30 p.m.)
This course will study the short fiction and two novels of Ernest Hemingway, whose themes and unique prose style have influenced several generations of writers around the world. The emphases of the course will be on discussion of the common themes, characters, and stylistic devices that run through his work; on Hemingway’s fiction as a reflection of the times in which he wrote; and on the development of his fictional techniques and themes.
Two 90-minute classes will be devoted to each book. The texts used will be the Scribner paperback editions.
Enrollment: $100 (P&P Members: $80).
Click here to read more about the books and to sign up.
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| NEW IN PAPERBACK |
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Click here to see more recently released paperbacks, both Fiction and Non-Fiction.
In a thoughtful and tragically beautiful expression of the impact of trauma on human lives and relationships, Chang-rae Lee's THE SURRENDERED (Riverhead, $16) is exquisite. Author of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft, Lee focuses in his fourth novel on a trio of battered survivors. June Han, age 11, is alone and starving in war-torn Korea when she's rescued by an American soldier who has recently lost his father. June recovers at an orphanage where she comforts the director's wife, whose parents were killed in Manchuria. Lee's narrative sweeps across times and places, exploring the lasting emotional consequences of trauma, loss, and violence.
In SHADES OF GREY (Penguin, $15), Jasper Fforde's latest novel and beginning of a new series, the creator of Thursday Next has imagined a color-segregated world. In Chromatacia, the elite can see the higher end of the spectrum, whereas the proletariat see nothing but grey, and the social classes are discouraged from mixing. Eddie Russet, a mid-level employee of the Color Control Agency with aspirations to improve his Red ranking, starts asking questions when he gets involved with a caustic yet compellingly enchanting woman who has been classified as a Grey.
- Andrew Getman & Laurie Greer
And if you want to explore more about the stories behind the Academy-Award-winning movies
THE KING'S SPEECH: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy By Mark Logue and Peter Conradi (Sterling, $14.95)
THE FACEBOOK EFFECT: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World By David Kirkpatrick (Simon & Schuster, $1
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COMING SOON TO YOUR FAVORITE BOOKSTORE |
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If you can't attend a talk, but would like to buy a signed copy or a recorded author presentation, click the title links to reserve your book online.
P&P members save 20% on all of these event titles.
Click www.politics-prose.com/event for our author events calendar through March.
Thursday March 3
Linda Pastan - Traveling Light: Poems
7 p.m. Pastan’s poems are impeccably crafted gems that capture the rich complexity of their subjects. In her thirteenth collection, the former Poet Laureate of Maryland and two-time National Book Award nominee celebrates the daily pleasures of domesticity while also considering events “against which there is no planning” and the old stand-bys, hope and luck.
Friday March 4
Carla L. Peterson - Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City
7 p.m. Knowing only “scraps” about her ancestors, Peterson, author of Doers of the Word, has traced her family back to the 1820s. As she reconstructs the lives of her relatives, free blacks in New York, Peterson tells the cultural and social story of African-American contributions to the city.
Saturday March 5
Benjamin Wittes - Detention and Denial: The Case for Candor After Guantanamo
1 p.m. In his study of U.S. detention practices, Wittes, senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and author of Law and the Long War, finds that Guantánamo and other military-run detention centers are operated without any coherent policy. Wittes argues for a more honest, consistent, and sustainable application of preventive detention.
Charles King - Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams
6 p.m. The great port city on the Black Sea was founded in 1794. By 1940, it had survived plagues and wars to become a thriving cosmopolitan metropolis with a large Jewish population, yet in 1944 only a few dozen Jews remained there. In charting Odessa’s dramatic rise and fall, King focuses on the brilliant figures, such as Isaac Babel and Sergei Eisenstein, who made it flourish.
Sunday March 6
Tom Shroder & John Konrad - Fire on the Horizon: The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster
5 p.m. The oil rig that exploded on April 20, 2010, had been constructed in South Korea for half a billion dollars in 2000. Shroder, a longtime Washington Post journalist, and John Konrad, an experienced oil rig captain, give a detailed account of the Deepwater Horizon from its start to its disastrous finish, including a look at its engineering, crew, and owners.
Monday, March 7
Steven Goldman and Contributors - Baseball Prospectus 2011
7 p.m. Plaaay ball!! Well—almost. First, join your fellow fans and baseball’s leading analysts to discuss the upcoming season. With prescient statistical predictions and entertaining articles, Baseball Prospectus has become the ultimate guide to baseball players and teams.
Tuesday, March 8
Walter Mosley - When The Thrill Is Gone
7 p.m. The third Leonid McGill mystery opens in classic fashion: the beguiling Chrystal Tyler walks into the private-eye’s office. She suspects her billionaire husband is plotting to kill her, and she’ll pay very well if McGill can help her. He takes the case.
Wednesday March 9
Jonathan Evison - West of Here
7 p.m.This second novel by the author of All about Lulu tells the epic story of the Olympic Peninsula. A century after its landscape was defaced by a dam, people want to restore the original grandeur, and the story interweaves 21st-century thinking about nature and economics with the gung-ho attitudes of the first European settlers.
Thursday, March 10
Sara Wheeler - The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle
7 p.m. Ten years ago Wheeler’s Terra Incognita recounted her trip to the Antarctic. Her new book charts a visit to the opposite Pole. During her circuit of the Arctic, Wheeler joins the crew of a Russian icebreaker and teams up with Lapps herding reindeer. The lands she visits are not pristine wild country but are haunted by the terrors of the Gulag and rife with the effects of pollution and climate change.
Friday. March 11
Jeff Greenfield - Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate HIstories of American Politics
7 p.m. After his account of The Real Campaign Greenfield, CBS News reporter and commentator, turns to the fantasy of “what if” for this alternative take on recent American history. What if JFK had been assassinated before taking office? What if Robert Kennedy had lived and been elected president? As in the best fiction, these imagined scenarios shed new light on the actual events.
Saturday, March 12
Meryle Secrest - Modigliani: A Life
6 p.m. The veteran biographer of cultural figures including Frank Lloyd Wright, Duveen, and Stephen Sondheim, Secrest portrays Modigliani not as a dissolute Bohemian but as a serious Modern artist. Grounded in extensive research, this life shows the lengths Modigliani went to hide his tuberculosis and cements his status as a major painter.
Sunday, March 13
Rabbi Arthur Waskow & Rabbi Phyllis Berman - Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia
1 p.m. What does the Biblical story of the Exodus have to offer modern readers? Plenty. The co-authors of Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World survey past readings and find contemporary parallels for the enslavement, plagues, and, finally, liberation recounted in the archetypal Book.
Alan Cheuse - Song of Slaves in the Desert
5 p.m. From Timbuktu to South Carolina, the new historical novel from the George Mason professor and NPR book commentator dramatizes the legacy of slavery over the course of several generations. Cheuse skillfully juxtaposes the terrible brutality of plantation life with the passions of a forbidden love.
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P&P CUSTOMERS ARE ALSO INVITED TO . . .
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Thursday, March 3, 7:30 p.m.
 National Geographic Live
Grosvenor Auditorium
1600 M Street, NW
MIREYA MAYOR
PINK BOOTS AND A MACHETE (National Geographic, $26)
Mireya Mayor’s life has been a wild ride. As a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, Fulbright scholar, television correspondent—currently star of National Geographic WILD’s Wild Nights—and field biologist who discovered a new species of lemur in Madagascar, she energizes audiences everywhere. Join her for an evening of adventure.
- Wear pink boots to the event and get a special surprise!
- Read a profile of Mireya Mayor on the NG Speakers Bureau site.
Click here to buy $18 tickets (3-Part Series: $48; NG Member: $16, 3-Part Series: $42).
Wednesday, March 9, 6-8 p.m.
including a book signing and reception
House of Sweden
2900 K Street, NW
MAGGIE JACKSON
DISTRACTED: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Prometheus, $18)
Join award-winning author and columnist Maggie Jackson as she shares provocative findings from her groundbreaking book. How can we rekindle attention in an era of multi-tasking, information overload and texting? Is deep focus a skill set of the past? How can we thrive in a high-tech, global world while rediscovering our powers of connection and reflection?
Click here for more information. To attend, email: rsvp-hos@foreign.ministry.se
Saturday, March 12, 9 a.m.
Temple Sinai
3100 Military Road, NW
ANNUAL AUTHORS’ ROUNDTABLE
featuring: JOAN NATHAN, JENNIFER NATALYA FINK & RUTH FRANKLIN
Joan Nathan’s latest book, QUICHES, KUGELS, AND COUSCOUS: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France (Knopf, $39.95) explores Ms. Nathan’s decades-long fascination with France and its tumultuous Jewish history. She is also the author Jewish Cooking in America and The New American Cooking, which each won a James Beard Award and the IACP cookbook of the year Award.
Jennifer Natalya Fink, author of THE MIKVAH QUEEN (Rebel Satori, $15.95), a coming-of-age story set in Ithaca, New York, in the ‘80s. Dr. Fink is the winner of the Dana Award and her previous writing has been nominated for the Pulitzer, National Jewish Book, and National Book Awards.
Ruth Franklin is a literary critic and senior editor at The New Republic. Tablet magazine named her “one of our most important critics under 40.” Her provocative book, A THOUSAND DARKNESSES: Truth and Lies in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford Univ., $29.95), has been called a “towering work of criticism and insight” and a “superb study” of the subject.
Click here for more information and to buy your $15 ticket. Deadline for reservations is Saturday, March 5.
Wednesday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.
 National Geographic Live
Grosvenor Auditorium
1600 M Street, NW
SYLVIA EARLE
THE WORLD IS BLUE: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One (National Geographic $26/$15.95)
A former chief scientist at NOAA, Earle is founder of the Mission Blue Foundation, chair of the Advisory Council for the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Called “Her Deepness” by The New Yorker and The New York Times, and a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, Sylvia Earle has led more than 60 oceanographic expeditions and logged more than 6,000 hours underwater. Her hope is to raise awareness of the need to protect the world’s oceans, our life support system, from ourselves. The film Mission Blue highlights Earle’s life’s work, and focuses on the dangers threatening the oceans and the individuals fighting to save them.
Discussion with Sylvia Earle and filmmaker Robert Nixon follows screening.
Presented as part of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. Read a profile of Sylvia Earle on our Speakers Bureau website. Visit the Mission Blue website.
To buy $10 Tickets, please click here.
Tuesday, March 22, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
JODI PICOULT
SING YOU HOME (Atria, $28)
Of all the hot-button issues Jodi Picoult has explored in her bestselling novels, probably none is more divisive and emotional than the one at the heart of her new book, Sing You Home, about a same-sex couple and their attempts to have a child. Sing You Home includes a CD of original songs created for the novel by Ellen Wilber (lyrics by Picoult). Wilber will perform at the event. Picoult will be in conversation with Ron Charles, deputy editor and a weekly fiction critic for The Washington Post "Book World."
$35 tickets include one (1) copy of Sing You Home when you purchase tickets through Sixth & I. If you have questions, please call 202.408.3100.
Bookmark this link for future offsite events.
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P&P BESTSELLERS
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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 for our weekly discounted bestsellers.
Click here to receive the benefits of Politics & Prose membership.
FICTION
- When the Killing's Done, by T.C. Boyle (Viking, $26.95)
- Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28)
- Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell (Knopf, $24.95)
- Room, by Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, $24.99)
- The Paris Wife, by Paula Mclain (Ballantine, $25)
- Rodin's Debutante, by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26)
- Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris; illus. by Ian Falconer (Little, Brown, $21.99)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Knopf, $25.95)
- The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (Random House, $26)
- Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, by Charles Baxter (Pantheon, $27.95)
- The Help, by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn, $24.95)
- The Fates Will Find Their Way, by Hannah Pittard (Ecco, $22.99)
Click here for our paperback fiction bestsellers.
NONFICTION
- I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, by Izzeldin Abuelaish (Walker, $24)
- Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua (Penguin Press, $25.95)
- The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life, by Bettany Hughes (Knopf, $35)
- Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, by Edward Glaeser (Penguin Press, $29.95)
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27)
- Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage, by Douglas Waller (Free Press, $30)
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, $26)
- Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown, $29.99)
- And Furthermore, by Judi Dench (Macmillan, $26.99)
- Townie: A Memoir, by Andre Dubus III (W. W. Norton, $25.95)
- Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children's Lives and America's Future, by David Kirp (PublicAffairs, $24.99)
- A Widow's Story: A Memoir, by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco, $27.99)
Click here for our paperback non-fiction bestsellers.
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FROM THE CHILDREN AND TEENS' DEPARTMENT |
 CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through March 2)
If you’ve ever been moved by Seurat’s dots or Duhrer’s textures, LOOK!: Really Smart Art (Frances Lincoln, $19.95) will inspire you take a closer look. Opening this beautiful book is like stepping into an art museum with author Gillian Wolfe as your insightful guide. Wolfe illuminates the techniques and themes of great artists like Chagall, Lichtenstein, and Hockney in accessible and entertaining prose. The projects suggested on each page encourage young artists to explore their own creativity. Ages 8-11. – Elivia Shaw
If you click through to this book page on our website, you can use Google Preview to see inside! Cool!
Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children and teens by clicking here.
PREVIEW OUR EVENT WITH CAL RIPKEN, JR.
Monday, March 14, 7:30 p.m.
CAL RIPKEN, JR. - HOTHEAD (Hyperion, $16.99)
Connor is an all-star shortstop, but he can’t control his temper. Threatened by the possibility that the school paper will run a story about his behavior, Connor has to learn to control himself. This is a story told from the heart about doing your best and striving to be a credit to your team. Ages 8-12
Click here to access the teen blog.
Monday mornings at 10:30 a.m.
STORY TIME
BearSong, the Guitar Man, leads his weekly morning story time with 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.
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MARKDOWN BOOKS
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Richard Ford’s THE SPORTSWRITER surely counts as a modern classic. Ford’s breakout novel, it introduced Frank Bascombe, the protagonist also of Ford’s Pulitzer and Pen Faulkner Award-winning Independence Day and the recent The Lay of the Land. As much a fixture of late 20th-century American literature as Updike’s Rabbit or Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, Bascombe faces love and divorce, unexpected career changes, and the vicissitudes of his own thoughts and feelings. Available in paperback, $4.98.
A new writer on the scene, Wells Tower earned critical acclaim with his first book of short stories, EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED. Tower’s prose is polished yet alive, lyrical and realistic at once. His characters range from a boatload of Vikings to today’s reckless teenagers. Tower focuses on men, dramatizing the many roles of husband, father, stepfather, son. With ambitions, failures, anger, and joy, this collection covers a wide range of experience, often in unexpectedly humorous ways. Available in paperback, $5.98.
Famous as the novelist of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, among others, Kazuo Ishiguro is also an accomplished short story writer. NOCTURNES: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall focuses on musicians, exploring the fine line between the art and the business, the dream and the reality. Ranging from gentle evocations of nostalgia or hope to the whacky adventurousness of slapstick, the stories dramatize the pressures of performance and fame on both the artists and their families.
Available in paperback, $5.98.
Click here to shop for more recently acquired remainders.
• Laurie Greer
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MUSIC NEWS
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 LOU HARRISON
Lou Harrison (1917-2003) was a composer who brought the East and West together in his groundbreaking compositions. He studied Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Javanese music, but came up with his own very melodic, very percussive language, often using unusual tunings and timbres. His champions include conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, dancer Mark Morris, and pianist Keith Jarrett. Anne Midgette wrote a nice overview of Harrison’s career in the Washington Post.
There will a rare opportunity to hear some of this sublime music on Saturday, March 5, at Lisner Auditorium, when the Post-Classical Ensemble presents an entire program of Harrison’s music, including his Piano Concerto, the Concerto for Piano & Javanese Gamelan (with the Wesleyan University Gamelan), and Four Strict Songs for orchestra and chorus, among other works.
The Piano Concerto (1985) was commissioned for jazz giant Keith Jarrett, and he recorded the work the following year. Hear the CD, HARRISON: PIANO CONCERTO & SUITE FOR VIOLIN, PIANO & SMALL ORCHESTRA (New World Records, $17.98). There is also a great budget 4-CD, HARRISON: MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA, ENSEMBLE & GAMELAN (Nimbus Records, 4 CDs, $30.98).
 NEW & RECENT CDS
Lucinda Williams, BLESSED (Lost Highway, $13.98) -- Lucinda Williams has released some classic albums, such as Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Sweet Old World. Her new CD joins them as being among her very best. Her plaintive, weathered voice brings out all the joys and sorrows of her lyrics.
Buddy Miller, THE MAJESTIC SILVER STRINGS (New West, CD & DVD, $19.98) – Singer and guitarist (now touring with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy) brings together three other monster players (Bill Frisell and Marc Ribot on electric guitars, and on pedal-steel, Greg Leisz) with guest vocalists Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, Lee Ann Womack, Chocolate Genius, and Julie Miller.
VIVALDI: ERCOLE (Virgin Classics, $23.98) – What a vocal lineup! Fabio Biondi conducts Europa Galante in a reconstructed version of Vivaldi’s Ercole sul’Termodonte with an all-star cast: Rolando Villazon, Patrizia Ciofi, Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, Vivica Genaux, Philippe Jaroussky, Topi Lehtipuu.
Yasmin Levy, SENTIR (4 Quarters, $16.98) – Beautiful Ladino songs.
René Marie, VOICE OF MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY (Motema, $15.98) -- René Marie is a great jazz singer, and programs her concerts and CDs with intriguing songs combinations; she’s sung medleys of “Suzanne” and “Bolero,” or juxtaposed “Dixie” with “Strange Fruit.” On her new album, she sings “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” plus very striking versions of “John Henry” and “Just My Imagination.” Listen to a very original singer.
Eva Cassidy, SIMPLY EVA (Blix Street, $16.98) – Just Eva and her guitar on never-released material.
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BOOK GROUPS |
Politics & Prose currently hosts sixteen different book groups in the store each month.
P&P's book groups meet monthly and are free and open to the public.
These are the selections for the next week. Click the titles to read more about these books.
Click here to learn more about participating in a Politics & Prose book group
and to see the entire month of upcoming meetings.
Book-group titles are discounted 20% to participants. Please join us!
Thursday, March 3, 7:30 p.m.
Capital James Joyce Book Group
The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (Trans. Mark Musa) beginning at Canto 11
April 7 selection: TBA
Monday, March 7, 2011
Classics Book Group
The Kalevala (Translated by Elias Lonnrot), continued
April 4 selection: Gods and Fighting Men (Translated by Lady Gregory)
Tuesday, March 8, 7:30 p.m.
Evening Fiction Bookgroup
Orlando, by Virginia Woolf
April 12 selection: Purge, by Sofi Oksanen
Thursday, March 10, 7:30 p.m.
Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Group
Palimpsest, by Catherynne Valent
April 14 selection: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
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NEWS FROM THE COFFEEHOUSE |
Ring in another year for us! Many thanks and much love!
I'm so proud of our little shop and so thankful that you've been here to experience our evolution. What's next? New coffees, great new art and events and the best staff, always!
What do you wish to see happen in Modern Times in the upcoming years?
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