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Click here for our events calendar to preview upcoming events through the end of May.
Members always save 20% on author event books and titles included in other special promotions. Click here to register!
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Thursday, March 31
7 p.m. Joseph Lelyveld - Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
Friday, April 1
7 p.m. Peter Godwin - The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe
Saturday, April 2
1 p.m. Liz Lerman - Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer
3:30 p.m. CD Release Party - Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology
6 p.m. Jacqueline Winspear - A Lesson in Secrets
Sunday, April 3
1 p.m. Cokie and Steven Roberts - Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families
Monday, April 4
7 p.m. Henning Mankell - The Troubled Man
Tuesday, April 5
7 p.m. Joe Yonan - Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One
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Wednesday, April 6
7 p.m. Hampton Sides - Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
Thursday, April 7
7 p.m. Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question @ Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
Friday, April 8
7 p.m. Jennet Conant - A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS
Saturday, April 9
1 p.m. Susi Wyss - The Civilized World
6 p.m. Louis Bayard - The School of Night
Sunday, April 10
1 p.m. Alexander Yates - Moondogs
5 p.m. Diane Ackerman - One Hundred Names for Love
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LETTER FROM BARBARA |
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POLITICS & PROSE SELECTS NEW OWNERS
As most of you already know from Monday’s email and from the article in The Washington Post, David and I have committed to sell Politics & Prose to Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine. These Washington journalism and public policy veterans will become the owners later on this spring.
While we have received many notes of enthusiastic congratulations and compliments on our choice, we also have begun receiving questions. Of course, all memberships, gift cards, community partnerships, and contractual relationships will continue to be honored, and we hope that your experience with the store will be practically seamless.
Brad and Lissa will be in the store periodically and you will eventually see them on a full-time basis, but this is not yet a regular part of their schedules. Soon, once the transition is finalized, we plan to host an event to introduce them to everyone officially.
I’d like to reiterate that Lissa and Brad have the passion and wisdom to both preserve and strengthen Politics & Prose’s role as a community institution. They understand and value the store’s tradition as a public space, which disseminates ideas and promotes dialogue. We are confident that they have the wherewithal and vision to sustain Politics & Prose for many years to come.
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DAVID'S DELIBERATIONS
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Thank you all for your enthusiastic reception of our announcement that Barbara and I have selected Brad Graham and Lissa Muscatine as the new "owners-elect" (Brad's term).
During our announcement, speakers noted that Carla connected her community-organizing, urban sensibility, and passion for books and ideas when she founded and built Politics & Prose. Carla would be the first to say that no one could undertake such an effort alone. For 27 years, she and her partner, Barbara Meade, together with our excellent and literate staff, have kept P&P relevant, thriving and influential. Moreover, Barbara and the staff stepped up to provide extraordinary leadership and support when Carla was diagnosed with cancer in November 2009. None of this could have happened without the participation of our customers, loyal and articulately active in the public work of citizen engagement and democratic discourse. Lissa Muscatine and Brad Graham stressed these core ideas and ideals in their opening meeting with P&P staff members.
As I anticipate the promising future of the store, which will build on the commitment of the new owners to its legacy, I contemplate its history. My thoughts turn to lives well lived, starting with Carla and then to three authors, also recently deceased. They presented their books at Politics & Prose and exemplified the best of the democratic discourse to which we have aspired. Each led an exemplary life, and of course, we will miss them all. (Please note that unfortunately nearly all of the books to which I refer are out of print, and must be obtained from used book dealers. You may click on the authors' names to see their still-in-print books, which we can provide for you.)
Click here to read more.
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CHOOSE A HAGGADAH FOR PASSOVER
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Politics & Prose has selected Haggadot that represent major traditions in Judaism. All of them are gender-neutral ("ancestors" instead of "forefathers," "four children" instead of "four sons"). We encourage you to experiment with several Haggadot, especially if you are just starting to hold Seders. Then you will be able to make an informed choice when investing in eight, ten or twelve of the same Haggadah.
We already have a large selection in the store, which you can preview by clicking here.
If you are purchasing 5 or more of the same Haggadah, you will receive a 10% discount.
A purchase of 10 or more receives a 20% discount.
Four questions to ask when choosing among Haggadot:
Is your Seder to be conducted in both Hebrew and English and does the balance between the two languages reflect the abilities of your guests?
How much commentary is included and does it reflect the issues that you wish to discuss?
Is the Haggadah attractive, and will you enjoy it over the years?
How many do you have to buy and do you expect to be using them for many years to come?
- from the archives, an annotated bibliography by Carla Cohen
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SPRING TRIP - PICASSO MASTERPIECES
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Saturday, May 14, 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
PICASSO: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris
Join us on a memorable spring trip to The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia to view the exhibition, Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris. The VMFA is the only East Coast venue for the seven-city international tour. The exhibit presents iconic works from virtually every phase of Picasso’s legendary career, documenting the full range of his unceasing inventiveness and prodigious creative process. The Musée Picasso’s holdings stand apart from any other collection of his work because they represent the artist’s personal collection.
The morning of the trip, we will meet for a light breakfast of coffee and muffins at 7:30 a.m. at the Modern Times Coffee House located at the back entrance of Politics & Prose. Promptly at 8 a.m., we will depart in a private motor coach.
When we arrive at the Museum, we will take an audio tour of the Picasso exhibit followed by a docent-led tour of the highlights of the museum. This will include a look at one of the finest Fabergé Collections in existence, Ife art from ancient Nigeria, civil war drawings, native American art objects, and a contemporary photography exhibit.
We will then enjoy a private lunch with time to peruse the gift shop before our return to Politics and Prose. We should return by 5 p.m.
All registered participants will receive 20% off books on Picasso in stock up to our departure date.
The price is $130 per person or $120 for members. Space is limited. Please reserve early to avoid disappointment.
For more information, please contact Bonnie Kogod at 202-363-7738 or bkogod@politics-prose.com. To reserve a ticket, please call the store at 202-364-1919 or click here to make a payment online.
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PODCAST OF THE WEEK
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On Monday, March 21, 2011, 7 p.m., Politics & Prose hosted Andre Dubus, III, who spoke about his memoir, Townie, published in February 2011 by W.W. Norton.
Unsparing and frank, Dubus tells the riveting story of how he went from a youth of drugs, street fighting, and bitterness to writing the bestselling House of Sand and Fog. Abandoned by his father, the writer Andre Dubus, when he was twelve, Dubus fils grew up angry and impoverished. But he was also strong and determined, and turned his life around.
Click here to download the MP3 or to listen to our podcast, which includes the talk and the question and answer session with the audience.
The audience particularly enjoyed listening to Mr. Dubus, and we are delighted to share this popular event with you. . . . and if you like this talk, we still have a limited quantity of signed first editions available for sale.
TOWNIE: A Memoir
Signed by Andre Dubus, III
(W.W. Norton, $25.95)
Hardcover - February 2011
First editions, first printings.
We record nearly every in-store author event. You can listen to our current selection of author event recordings here, or click here to browse and download more MP3s. If you would like to request a CD or MP3 recording from a past event which is not already posted, send an email to Wendy Brown.
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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.
Thursday, April 7, 7 p.m.
Politics & Prose hosts
HOWARD JACOBSON
THE FINKLER QUESTION (Blooomsbury, $15)
with Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
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 to purchase tickets ($10) to this event or to buy the book.
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SIGNED BOOK OF THE WEEK |
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UNFAMILIAR FISHES
Signed by Sarah Vowell
(Riverhead, $25.95)
Hardcover - March 2011
First editions, first printings.
The popular NPR commentator and This American Life contributor, Sarah Vowell, spoke to a packed house on Saturday, March 26. Vowell’s latest tour of American social history takes her to Hawaii. With her trademark dry wit, she retraces the steps of the 19th-century missionaries who tried to turn the islands into another New England. We still have a few signed first editions remaining so act quickly!
Click here for more signed books now available, or review our calendar of upcoming and recently past events and ask us about purchasing a signed book from any of our visiting authors.
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NEW IN PAPERBACK
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I want to share my enthusiasm for a new novel called MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER by Robin Oliveira (Penguin, $15). Robin is a nurse and has written a completely convincing novel about a young Albany woman who wants to become a doctor and serve the Union during the Civil War.
Mary was rejected by medical school and rebuffed by a physician to whom she offered to apprentice. She decides to leave for Washington to work in a wartime hospital, where she observes Union forces woefully unprepared for battle carnage. Mary is proud and determined. Apprenticing herself to the hospital doctors, she becomes an accomplished field physician. But she loses some of herself as well. Devoted to her mission, she neglects her family's needs. Oliveira, herself a nurse, has convincingly recreated real events and real places, but the story is never weighed down by research. I found myself thinking about Mary long after I finished the book.
I think the book has everything: the feminist angle, a moving story about the Civil War, and love interest.
- from the archives, written by Carla Cohen for the hardcover release and author visit
PARISIANS: An Adventure History of Paris
By Graham Robb
(W. W. Norton, $17.95)
Robb follows his bicycle tour, The Discovery of France, with this series of true but little-known incidents in the lives of some of the City of Light’s best-known figures. From Marie Antoinette’s getting lost on the Left Bank through the wanderings of Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann and Proust, as well as on the era of de Gaulle, Robb presents fresh, vivid snippets of Parisian history.
Click here to see more recently released paperbacks, both Fiction and Non-Fiction.
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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
- The Complaints, by Ian Rankin (Reagan Arthur, $24.99)
- The Tiger's Wife, by Téa Obreht (Random House, $25)
- A Lesson in Secrets: A Maisie Dobbs Novel, by Jacqueline Winspear (HarperCollins, $25.99)
- Drawing Conclusions: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly, $24)
- The Trinity Six, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin's, $24.99)
- The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party: The New No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $24.95)
- Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur, $24.99)
- The Wise Man's Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day Two, by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW, $29.95)
- Montecore, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Knopf, $26.95)
- Emily, Alone, by Stewart O'Nan (Viking, $25.95)
- Pym, by Mat Johnson (Spiegel & Grau, $24)
- When the Thrill Is Gone, by Walter Mosley (Riverhead, $26.95)
Click here for our paperback fiction bestsellers.
NONFICTION
- Unfamiliar Fishes, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead, $25.95)
- The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, by David Brooks (Random House, $27)
- This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin (John Wiley, $25.95)
- To a Mountain in Tibet, by Colin Thubron (HarperCollins, $24.99)
- Townie, by Andre Dubus, III (W. W. Norton, $25.95)
- The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (HarperCollins, $24.99)
- The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick (Pantheon, $29.95)
- Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan, by Del Quentin Wilber (Henry Holt, $27)
- Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by Joshua Foer (Penguin Press, $26.95)
- The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, by Edward Dolnick (HarperCollins, $27.99)
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27)
- Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House, $26)
Click here for our paperback non-fiction bestsellers.
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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 May.
Thursday, March 31
Joseph Lelyveld - Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India
7 p.m. Lelyveld’s biography looks with the unusual perspective of Mahatma Gandhi's shortfalls and his achievements. The author of Move Your Shadow notes that during Gandhi’s two decades in South Africa, he failed to work for the rights of its black population. Back in India, Gandhi sought to end the caste system and reconcile Hindus and Muslims but wasn’t able to do so. Despite these disappointments, Lelyveld confirms Gandhi as a powerful, admirable man.
Friday, April 1
Peter Godwin - The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe
7 p.m. Godwin’s When a Crocodile Eats the Sun was a frank and powerful account of the lives of his parents in Zimbabwe. In his new book he again combines journalistic skill, extensive interviews, and an intimate knowledge of the country for a vivid look at Zimbabwe in 2008, on the eve of elections Godwin hoped would end Mugabe’s thirty-year reign.
Saturday, April 2
Liz Lerman - Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer
1 p.m. Choreographer, Dance Exchange founder, and MacArthur fellow, Lerman believes that “art belongs to everyone and dancing is a birthright.” Her essays are wide-ranging discussions of the interactions of dance with society, politics, and the self; her book can be read both as a meditation on art and as a practical guide to cultivating one’s own creativity.
CD Release Party - Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology
3:30 p.m. A worthy successor to the 1973 Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, this set of six CDs, with a 200-page book, charts the growth of a rich and diverse musical tradition. Join us for a panel discussion with some of the many producers, compilers, and writers involved in this project: Larry Appelbaum and Willard Jenkins, WPFW; Rob Bamberger, WAMU; John Hasse, Daniel Sheehy and Richard Burgess, Smithsonian.
Jacqueline Winspear - A Lesson in Secrets
6 p.m. Winspear’s eighth Maisie Dobbs novel finds the former World War I nurse/psychologist turned private-investigator going undercover as a philosophy instructor. It’s 1932 and the government is monitoring the activities of a possibly subversive pacifist who runs a school. Maisie joins the faculty, someone is murdered, and….
Sunday, April 3
Cokie and Steven Roberts - Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families
1 p.m. The Robertses' Haggadah has evolved over the course of their forty years together, growing and changing along with the guest list at their Passover Seders. Emphasizing values as much as religious beliefs, it’s a practical guide for interfaith couples.
Monday, April 4
Henning Mankell - The Troubled Man
7 p.m. In Mankell’s eleventh (and possibly final) Kurt Wallender novel, the 60-year-old veteran sleuth has been let go by the police force after too many senior moments. But a strange incident from the Cold War era involving a Soviet submarine and two missing people catches Wallender’s attention and he’s back in action.
Tuesday, April 5
Joe Yonan - Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One
7 p.m. Table for one? Yonan, The Washington Post food editor, has compiled a delectable set of menus for the solo diner. Drawn from around the world, these recipes are easy to prepare yet offer variety and opportunity for culinary creativity. Yonan also includes tips on shopping and storage.
Wednesday, April 6
Hampton Sides - Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
7 p.m. Sides turned history into riveting stories in Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder; here he recounts Martin Luther King’s assassination by tracing the very different lives of King and his killer, James Earl Ray. Join us for the paperback release of this critically acclaimed study of the Civil Rights era.
Thursday, April 7
Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question @ Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
7 p.m. 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 or call the store for
$10 tickets.
Friday, April 8
Jennet Conant - A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS
7 p.m. In her popular The Irregulars, Conant reported on the secret life of Roald Dahl. Her new book is a stunning account of Julia and Paul Chlid's experiences as members of the OSS in the Far East during World War II, and the tumultuous years when they were caught up in the McCarthy Red spy hunt in the 1950s.
Saturday, April 9
Susi Wyss - The Civilized World
1 p.m. Written as a sequence of linked stories following the lives of five women, Wyss’s debut novel takes place in various African countries, including Ghana, Ivory Coast, and the Central African Republic. Her characters are ambitious—sometimes impatient—migrant workers with dreams; Americans with good intentions, but too little understanding of Africa; and ordinary villagers gossiping about their neighbors.
Louis Bayard - The School of Night
6 p.m. Bayard’s acclaimed The Black Tower and The Pale Blue Eye were artful combinations of history and fiction; his new novel takes the blurring of truth and fabrication as its theme. The eponymous school, a secret debating club, may have counted Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe as members, and a pair of rival antiquities dealers race to uncover the truth.
Sunday, April 10
Alexander Yates - Moondogs
1 p.m. Yates’s first novel is a fast-paced coming-of-age story set in the Philippines. Benicio, mourning the recent death of his mother, sets out to reunite with his long-estranged father. Instead, he finds himself trying to negotiate with his father’s kidnappers, leading him into several adventures.
Diane Ackerman - One Hundred Names for Love
5 p.m. In 2005 Ackerman’s husband, the British writer Paul West, suffered a stroke that severely damaged the language centers in his brain. She encouraged him to record his experience in The Shadow Factory, and now adds her own powerful and moving memoir from the caregiver’s perspective. She is also known for The Zookeeper's Wife, An Alchemy of Mind, and A Natural History of the Senses. Co-sponsored by The National Aphasia Association
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P&P CUSTOMERS ARE ALSO INVITED TO . . .
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Thursday, March 31, 8-10 a.m.
 Greater Washington Board of Trade Business Leadership Series
Capital Hilton
1001 16th St, NW
HOWARD SCHULTZ
ONWARD: HOW STARBUCKS FOUGHT FOR ITS LIFE WITHOUT LOSING ITS SOUL (Rodale, $25.99)
In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decision to return as the CEO eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul. In Onward, he shares the remarkable story of his return and the company's ongoing transformation under his leadership, revealing how Starbucks again achieved profitability and sustainability without sacrificing humanity.
Click here for more information and to purchase $75/$100 tickets.
Friday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.
 PEN/Faulkner Reading Series
Folger Elizabethan Theatre
201 East Capitol Street, SE
DOROTHY ALLISON
BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA (Plume, $15)
RON RASH
BURNING BRIGHT (Ecco, $12.99)
Widely honored for their searing realism and explosively imaginative prose, Allison and Rash read from new fiction.
Dorothy Allison is the author of Bastard Out of Carolina, a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award, and Cavedweller, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has also written a memoir Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, a book of poetry, and Trash, a collection of short fiction. Her work has been included in The Best American Short Stories 2003 and New Stories from the South 2003. Allison has taught creative writing in numerous universities. A novel, She Who, is forthcoming from Penguin.
Ron Rash is the author of four novels, four collections of short stories, and three books of poems. He has been awarded NEA Fellowships in fiction and poetry. A short story collection, Chemistry, and novel, Serena, were both PEN/Faulkner Award Finalists. His most recent book, Burning Bright, was a 2010 finalist for the Frank O’Connor Short Fiction Award. He teaches at Western Carolina University.
Click here for more information and to buy $15 tickets.
Saturday, April 2, 12 - 3 p.m.
 2011 Children’s Book Guild
Nonfiction Award Event
Pier 7 Restaurant at Channel Inn
650 Water Street SW
KATHLEEN KRULL
Since 1977, The Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C. has honored an author or author-illustrator whose body of work has made a significant contribution to the quality of nonfiction for children. Past winners have included Milton Meltzer, Russell Freedman, Seymour Simon, and Jean Craighead George. This year The Children’s Book Guild will honor Kathleen Krull as the winner of the 2011 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award at a luncheon which will include a lively presentation by the author.
Kathleen Krull is the author of over 60 innovative, award-winning nonfiction books for young readers. Some of her outstanding titles include Lincoln Tells A Joke: How Laughter Saved the President (and the Country), an unusual picture book revealing Lincoln's life story through his love of humor. It was named to Smithsonian’s list of 2010 Notable Books for Children. Kubla Khan: Emperor of Everything was named to Kirkus Reviews' 2010 Best Children's Books, School Library Journal's Best Books 2010, and NYPL's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing. Charles Darwin, released in October 2010, is the latest in Ms. Krull’s Giants of Science series. Lives of the Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware! is another store favorite. She brilliantly meets the Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award criteria for providing documentable facts and ideas in a lively, appealing manner sure to stimulate the imagination.
Click here to see more of Ms. Krull's books. Click here for more information and to purchase $35 tickets. Tickets include an elegant buffet lunch with meat, fish, and vegetarian choices.
Monday, April 4, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
JAMES CARROLL
JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28)
James Carroll uncovers how Jerusalem became, unlike any other city in the world, an incendiary fantasy of a city. Central to the religious imagination, it has been the holy of holies, but it has also been a cockpit of violence. Tracing Jewish, Christian, and Muslim history, Carroll illuminates the mounting European fixation on Jerusalem as spark of both anti-Semitism and racist colonial contempt. Such deep history has relevance for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today. No accident that this conflict is centered on Jerusalem—which is both the problem and the solution.
Click here to purchase tickets and for more informatin. Tickets are $8 in advance, $10 the day of the event, or receive 2 FREE tickets with the purchase of the book ($28) through Sixth & I. If you have questions, please call 202.408.3100.
Tuesday, April 5, 7 p.m.
 The Ivymount School
11614 Seven Locks Road
Rockville, MD
JOHN ELDER ROBISON
BE DIFFERENT (Crown Archetype, $24)
Robison, who lives with Asperger’s Syndrome, has spent his fully realized and successful adult life involved in education and research into the autism spectrum. This is an essential guidebook for and about anyone who has difficulty fitting in. Please contact www.ivymount.org/asperger to attend.
Tuesday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.
 National Geographic Live
Grosvenor Auditorium
1600 M Street, NW
MICHAEL MELFORD
HIDDEN ALASKA: Bristol Bay and Beyond (National Geographic, $24)
A veteran photographer with 12 stories in National Geographic, Michael Melford has documented some of the world’s most pristine places. For a magazine story and new National Geographic book, Hidden Alaska, he traveled to Bristol Bay, Alaska—both an important salmon breeding ground and location of enormous copper and gold deposits—where residents are being forced to choose between incompatible futures.
Co-sponsored by Renewal Resources Foundation.View a photo gallery of Michael Melford’s images from Bristol Bay. Read a biography of Michael Melford on the Nat Geo photography website.
Click here to buy $18 tickets (Masters of Photography 3-Part Series: $48); $16, NG Member (3-Part Series: $42)
Wednesday, April 6, 7 p.m.
 National Geographic Live
Grosvenor Auditorium
1600 M Street, NW
BARTON SEAVER
FOR COD AND COUNTRY: Simple, Delicious, Sustainable Cooking (Sterling Epicure, $24.95)
Barton Seaver, Esquire magazine’s 2009 Chef of the Year and Nat Geo Oceans Fellow, offers a first-class tasting experience of sustainable seafood enhanced with wine pairings. Enjoy tantalizing recipes from Seaver’s new book, For Cod and Country (available for sale and signing after the presentation), as sumptuously delicious as they are good for the planet.
Must be 21 or older to attend; ID required. Read an interview with Barton Seaver on Nat Geo’s The Ocean website.
Click here to buy $85 tickets (NG Member, $75) and for more information.
Monday, April 11 at 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
ASHLEY JUDD
ALL THAT IS BITTER AND SWEET (Ballantine, $25)
Actor and activist Ashley Judd has kept poignant journals of her travels into the world's human-rights hot spots, where, as a global ambassador for PSI/Youth AIDS, she waded into slums, brothels, and war-torn villages on four continents, advocating programs to improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable people. As part of her journey to help these victims, Judd was forced to take a deep look at her own life, and at the damaging issues she had been wrestling with for years.
Click here to purchase $14 tickets or receive 1 FREE ticket with the purchase of the book ($28) through Sixth & I. If you have questions, please call 202.408.3100.
Tuesday, April 12, 6:30 p.m.
Embassy of Sweden
2900 K Street NW
JONAS HASSEN KHEMIRI
MONTECORE (Knopf, $25.95)
Acclaimed international author, Khemiri , has written an inventive and illuminating novel about a Tunisian orphan’s immigration to Sweden, his rise to great fame as a photojournalist and the surprising journey that led him there. To attend, please contact, rsvp-hos@foreign.ministry.se
Thursday, April 14, 7:30 p.m.
 Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 S. Park Avenue, Chevy Chase
COKIE and STEVE ROBERTS
OUR HAGGADAH: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families (HarperCollins, $19.99)
When Cokie and Steve Roberts met in college, they found common ground in their shared values, despite their different religious beliefs – she is Catholic, he is Jewish. After they married, they began hosting a Passover Seder that has evolved, over forty-five years, from a small family gathering into a Washington tradition. Based on the time-honored Haggadah—the text read throughout the evening that gives order to the ritual meal— the Robertses' book is a practical guide for interfaith families.
Please sign up in advance for this FREE event by calling the Village Center at 301-656-2797.
Bookmark this link for future offsite events.
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FROM THE CHILDREN AND TEENS' DEPARTMENT |
Children and Teens’ Department Announces Its Second Bookmark Contest
The Children and Teens’ Department is holding its second bookmark contest for 5-18 year olds. The theme is: Your favorite place to visit, real or imaginary, in a book.
Pick up an entry blank in the Children and Teens’ Department or click here to download it.
Submit one paper entry per person to the Children and Teens’ Department; electronic entries will not be accepted.
The winner and runners-up will be featured on our web site and will receive $25 Politics & Prose gift cards.
The winning design will be printed on Politics & Prose bookmarks.
Contest ends April 4, 2011. Politics & Prose will keep all original artwork.
CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through April 6)
The PERFECT SQUARE (Greenwillow, $16.99) starts its week “perfectly happy,” with four equal sides and four equal angles. Every day the square is snipped and torn into a new shape – a flowing river, a flowering garden, a bubbling fountain – and every day the pieces come back together again to make a perfect square. Michael Hall’s beautifully realized study in shapes and colors will inspire children to discover what they can create out a plain square sheet of paper. Ages 5-8. –Dana Chidiac
Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children and teens by clicking here.
Friday, April 15, 7 p.m.
 ANTHONY HOROWITZ - SCORPIA RISING
(Philomel, $17.99)
In his latest–and final—mission, Alex battles Scorpia, the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, in one of the most treacherous regions on Earth, the Middle East. Scorpia was behind the deaths of Alex’s parents, and they’ll stop at nothing to get him, too. Ages 10 and up
When customers come into the store to pick up their copies of Scorpia Rising, they will also receive one numbered signing-line ticket per copy. The number on each ticket corresponds to a spot in line, and tickets are distributed in the order that books are picked up. Customers must come into the store to get their tickets. No tickets will be held, mailed, or given out separately.
If you cannot attend this event, we can also accept orders for signed books without personalization.
Brush up on your Alex Rider facts--we’ll have a trivia contest with prizes. And hold on to your line signing ticket: we’ll have a drawing with one lucky winner!
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TEENAGERS
Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press, $16.95)
After witnessing a fake kidnapping, Blink travels throughout Canada with a girl named Caution to uncover the truth behind what happened.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys (Penguin, $17.99)
Lina and her family are forced by Stalin’s troops to leave their home Lithuania and work in Russian and Siberian labor camps.
To Timbuktu by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg (Roaring Brook Press, $19.99)
After meeting in Morocco on their semester abroad, Casey and Steven spend time in various places around the globe in this true story.
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi (Little, Brown, $17.99)
In a dystopian future, Nailer escapes his life of scavenging on ships to try to help a rich girl who’s from what used to be New Orleans.
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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Birdsong is all over the place right now, making everyone an aural birder. If you’re inspired to know more, take a look and a listen to BIRDSONG BY THE SEASONS: A Year of Listening to Birds. This large-trim book of stories, travels, and scientific inquiry by Donald Kroodsma, author of the award-winning The Singing Life of Birds, recounts his experiences in 24 episodes as he follows the sun south from New England in January. New Year’s Day is celebrated with the song of a pileated woodpecker; by March, Kroodsma is greeting the sandhill cranes on the Platte River, and summer brings him to myriad songbird choirs. The book comes with two CDs of birdsongs—and instructions for making your own avian recordings. Available in hardcover, $7.98.
There are few better times than spring for taking walks, and while you’re resting in the park, you can read up on the famous and infamous walkers profiled in Geoff Nicholson’s THE LOST ART OF WALKING: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Literature of Pedestrianism. Be assured that any book by Nicholson—known for his dark humor and quirky characters—will not be pedestrian in style or content. For this venture he has sought out the eccentric and the obsessive, looking at how walking can be everything from competitive to subversive. Available in hardcover, $5.98.
The Argentine fiction writer César Aira has written some 70 books, and now, thanks to New Directions, English-language readers are discovering him. His recent short novel GHOSTS is set in the indeterminate realm of a half-constructed building inhabited by a migrant family and a colony of ghosts. Aira’s allegorical fiction uses dreams, fantasy, and an essay on architecture to depict and critique contemporary urban culture, even as he creates characters with believable emotions and dilemmas. Discover one of Latin America’s most popular writers. 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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NEW
Willie Nelson, Wynton Marsalis & Norah Jones, HERE WE GO AGAIN: CELEBRATING THE GENIUS OF RAY CHARLES (Blue Note, $17.98) – One of the best albums from the last couple of years was the collaboration between Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis’s band on Two Men with the Blues (Blue Note), with some great arrangements of blues, country, and American Songbook classics. Here We Go Again, filled with songs written by and associated with Ray Charles, is a natural follow-up, and expands the lineup with Norah Jones. The set was recorded live at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theatre, and there are many highlights: Willie on “Hallelujah I Love Her So,” and “Losing Hand,” and Norah on “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and “Makin’ Whoopee.” The band cooks on epic versions of “Hit the Road Jack” and “What’d I Say.”
PLAY BALL!: THE BASEBALL PROJECT
Baseball season starts this week, and given baseball’s great history, fans, and folklore, songwriters have a great wealth of material to choose from. The Baseball Project is made up of some rock and pop veterans (Scott McCaughey, Steve Wynn, Linda Pitmon, Peter Buck) who got together and wrote some baseball-themed songs. The first CD from 2008, VOLUME 1: HIGH & INSIDE (Yep Roc Records, $15.99) includes songs about Satchel Paige, Ted Williams, Fernando Valenzuela, and songs such as “The Closer” and “Gratitude (for Curt Flood).
VOLUME 2: FROZEN ROPES & DYING QUAILS (Yep Roc Records, $15.99) has just come out, and includes tributes to Mark Fidrych, Ichiro, Tony Conigliaro, and Bill Buckner. Other songs address “Fair Weather Fans” and “Chin Music.”
On last Sunday’s Morning Edition, a couple of the instigators were interviewed.
DUB MUSIC FOR PASSOVER
Dub music—the reverb-heavy, echo-ey, stripped-down offshoot of reggae—might not be the first genre that pops into your head for Seder music, but bassist and producer Bill Lasswell makes a very compelling case on DUB OF THE PASSOVER (Tzadik, $15.98). He reworks David Solid Gould’s 2008 album, Feast of the Passover, into a set of moody, spacey sonic landscapes. From “Divine Dub” to “Next Dub in Jerusalem,” it’s all there: “Dub of Affliction,” “Dub Questions,” “Dub Plagues.” This is one to enjoy.
Click here for news and reviews. Please call us at 202-364-1919 or email me at agoldinger@politics-prose.com to order these CDs.
• András Goldinger
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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.
Monday, April 4, 7:30 p.m.
Classics Book Group
Gods and Fighting Men (Translated by Lady Gregory)
May 2 selection: The Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8 and 9 "Friendship" by Aristotle
Tuesday, April 5, 7 p.m.
Travel Book Group
Country Driving by Peter Hessler
May 3 selection: The Discovery of France by Graham Robb
Wednesday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.
Futurist Book Group
Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, by Ted Fishman
May 4 selection: Crisis Economics, by Nouriel Roubini
Thursday, April 7, 7:30 p.m.
Capital James Joyce Book Group
The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno by Dante, beginning with Canto 23
May 5: TBA
Book-group titles are discounted 20% to participants. Please join us!
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NEWS FROM THE COFFEEHOUSE |
Pickpockets have returned to the coffeehouse and bookstore, taking items from purses and from tables/chairs. NEVER leave your belongings unattended, even if it's just to walk to the counter to return a dish or grab a napkin, etc. These thefts happened in a matter of seconds in the presence of many other people and seem to be perpetrated by bold and professional thieves. In several instances, they only took credit cards, leaving the wallet or purse behind, and the theft was not discovered until large purchases had been made in local electronic or chain retailers. Please protect yourself, help us deny these thieves an easy target, and report any suspicious activity to the managers of the coffeehouse or the bookstore. Thank you.
Click here for more news from the Modern Times blog.
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