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Click here for our events calendar to preview upcoming events through the end of September.
Members always save 20% on author event books and titles included in other special promotions. Click here to register!
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Thursday, August 18, 7 p.m.
Willard Sterne Randall
Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (W.W.Norton, $35)
Sunday, August 21
Reduced hours — 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Monday, August 22, 7 p.m.
Sebastian Rotella
Triple Crossing: A Novel (Mulholland, $24.99)
Tuesday, August 23, 7 p.m.
Jared Ball
I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto (AK, $14.95)
Wednesday, August 24, 7 p.m.
Julie Salamon
Wendy And The Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein (Penguin, $29.95)
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Thursday, August 25, 7 p.m.
Warren Bernard
Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising (Fantagraphics, $28.99)
Monday, August 29, 7 p.m.
Stefan Fatsis
Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (10th Anniversary Edition) (Penguin, $16 )
& Scrabble Night
Tuesday, August 30, 7 p.m.
James Boice
The Good And The Ghastly: A Novel (Scribner, $25)
Wednesday, August 31, 7 p.m.
Drew Magary
The Postmortal: A Novel (Penguin. $15)
Thursday, September 1, 7 p.m.
Amy Waldman
The Submission: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)
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The Scoop from Brad & Lissa
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eBooks at P&P (cont.)
Our first training session for customers interested in downloading eBooks from the Politics & Prose website drew a large, eager, and extremely patient crowd. We want to thank those of you who devoted a chunk of a Sunday afternoon in August to attend, and who conveyed such flexibility and good cheer over several hours. Many of you came to learn about specific eReaders and quite a few of you mentioned your commitment to buying eBooks from a local, independent bookstore rather than an on-line retailer. We are truly grateful for your support.
Whatever your motivation for attending, we hope the session was as informative for you as it was for us. It certainly helped our booksellers learn more about the questions and challenges our customers face in using new technologies and how we can better serve you in the future.
Given the large response to this first session, we will be conducting another one in the weeks ahead. It will allow customers with the same eReaders to meet in small groups with a bookseller. If you have a pressing question or issue in the meantime, please feel free to bring your device to the store and one of our staff will assist you.
Buying locally is not just limited to books . . . .
The week of August 15-21 is Restaurant Week in DC, and you’ll find a display at Politics & Prose with our selection of local cookbooks and restaurant guides related to food and dining in the Washington region. One of us (Lissa) grew up in Berkeley, California during the slow food revolution led by Alice Waters and her now iconic restaurant, Chez Panisse. Given these roots, it’s perhaps not surprising that good food, cooking, and sampling restaurants are among our favorite pastimes. Restaurant Week in DC is an opportunity to support other community institutions. It is also a time to help celebrate Washington’s growing cadre of chefs who emphasize local ingredients from local purveyors and are committed to creating a healthier and more sustainable food system. Foodie or not, check out our display titles as well as our larger collection of titles about food, dining, eating, cooking, and other subjects related to the culinary arts. Buy locally. Eat locally. Yum!
Brad and Lissa
Shop local cookbooks and food guides online by clicking here.
Shop for eBooks and learn about downloads from P&P.
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Barbara's Byline
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Trip to Bali and the Ragged Edge of the World
 Escaping the Washington heat? Not me. This week I'll be going to Bali, 600 miles south of the equator, with no AC. This is a return trip because two summers ago my half-Balinese daughter and I went to Bali to visit her father, my former son-in-law, and both father and daughter are excited to see each other again.
Just by coincidence, I have been reading a new book by an environmental journalist, Eugene Linden, The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet (Viking, $26.95), which includes New Guinea but not Bali. What Margaret Mead encountered in the thirties in Bali is now rapidly vanishing under the weight of a growing consumer culture, most recently propelled along by of Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray, Love (Penguin, $15) and the movie adaptation. Yet this culture that embraces the magic of spirits and animals, most particularly monkeys, still survives on a parallel track with a growing materialism.
I found Eugene Linden’s book, a heady mix of environmentalism and anthropology consistently fascinating. A book from last year, The Tenth Parallel (Picador, $16), winner of the Anthony Lukas Book Prize and now newly released in paperback, examines the many countries of the world located between the equator and 10 degrees longitude in which more than half of the world’s Muslims and Christians coexist. (Bali is more than 90 percent Hindu.), and is equally engaging. The author, Eliza Griswold, spoke at P&P and I said in introducing her that her book should be required reading for every informed citizen, more especially in today’s world plagued by Islamophobia.
Barbara Meade
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Staff Recommendations of the Week
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Novels Going Places
The Borrower (Viking, $25.95), by Rebecca Makkai, is the tale of a cockamamie road trip. Librarian Lucy Hull is both kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian, precocious and stifled by his family, runs away and blackmails Lucy into driving him across the country. This charming, humorous novel weaves the timeless elements of children’s stories into a plot with a diverse cast of characters ranging from Russian mobsters to ferrets to the ghosts of the Green Mountain Boys. Makkai’s debut novel is both smartly written and wise as Lucy considers her involvement in these many moral and legal conundrums. In this, the season of road trips, The Borrower is not to be missed by anyone who has ever wished to run away with books–or maybe with a favorite librarian or bookseller in tow. Sarah Baline
In The Lovers (Ecco, $13.99) the recently widowed Yvonne flees her self-conscious grief and the doting of friends and neighbors for Datça, Turkey, where she spent her honeymoon with her husband, Peter, twenty-five years earlier. As Yvonne attempts to recapture the love she felt for Peter, she runs up against distressing memories that challenge her wish to dwell on only the happy moments of her relationship: the lack of physical intimacy in the later years of her marriage and the pair’s disagreement about how to handle their substance-abusing daughter, Aurelia. When Yvonne forms an odd friendship with a quiet, young boy selling seashells at a nearby beach, Vendela Vida’s subtle exploration of grief, love, and relationships offers both heartbreak and redemption. Lacey Dunham
REMINDER - P&P members save 20% these and other staff recommended titles from our 2011 Summer Newsletter through Labor Day.
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Two New Classes Announced
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Othello: An Introduction and Analysis
Taught by Christopher Griffin
Two Fridays, October 28 and November 4, 2011, 6-8 p.m.
This four-hour course, held on two consecutive Friday evenings, is scheduled to coincide with a production of Othello at the Folger Theatre.* The course will provide an introduction and analysis of Shakespeare's fascinating drama and text. We will read some scenes aloud for dramatic effect and will analyze the nuances of the poetic language. The drama is summed up in Othello's lines at this turning point: "Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul, / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again." Can we understand Iago's betrayal of Othello and Othello's betrayal of his wife? Why is Iago so evil? Was Coleridge correct to describe Iago as "motiveless malignancy?”
*Folger Theatre is offering a special discount for Politics & Prose customers:
Save $10 per ticket to any performance of Othello at the Folger Theatre, on stage Oct. 18 – Nov. 27, 2011. Purchase online at www.folger.edu/theatre and use coupon code TH0112PP to receive discount, or purchase by phone at 202-544-7077 and mention Politics & Prose. Offer valid through Sunday, Nov. 6. It is not necessary to take the class to benefit from the discount.
About the Instructor
Christopher Griffin has taught dozens of courses at Politics & Prose, including classes in Irish literature, Shakespeare, and film. He also teaches Humanities at Strayer University in Washington, DC, and Irish literature at the George Washington University.
Price: $45 ($40 members)
Book: Othello (Folger Shakespeare Library edition recommended) (Simon & Schuster, $5.99)
(We also have a very limited number of editions of remaindered copies of the Arden edition Othello priced at $5.98. Please call us at 202-364-1919 to buy this annotated edition.)
Both books are available at a 20% discount for registered class participants.
Click here to enroll.
The Graphic Memoir
Taught by Janice Shapiro
Monday, October 3, 7 - 9:30 p.m.
The graphic memoir is an exciting development in modern literature, filling the niche between prose and film. As exemplified by Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the combination of images and words strengthens, magnifies, and illuminates in unique ways the large and small truths of life. In this class we will look at examples of graphic memoirs and analyze and discuss the visual and storytelling techniques. Then everyone will have the opportunity to draft a one-page graphic memoir about a significant moment in his or her life. The moment does not have to be momentous: It can be funny, tragic, embarrassing, heroic or just about a surprising, cool observation, as long as the moment has resonance. This class is open to everyone and I mean, everyone! No background (or particular talent!) in art or writing is required. Just come with a desire to express yourself in a fresh, fun and exciting way.
Please bring paper and pencils; the instructor will provide additional supplies.
About the Instructor
Janice Shapiro is a writer, graphic memoirist and screenwriter. She is the author of Bummer and Other Stories (Soft Skull Press, $14.95). Her stories and comics have been published in The North American Review, The Santa Monica Review, Fifty-Two Stories, Storyville, Devil’s Lake, The Seattle Review, and Mixer Publications.
Price: $40 ($35 members)
Suggested book: An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, edited by Ivan Brunetti (Yale Univ., $28)
Other recommended books:
One! Hundred! Demons!, by Lynda Barry
Paying for It, by Chester Brown
Stitches, by David Small
These four books will be discounted 20% for class participants.
*This class will meet in a private room at Jake’s American Grille, 5018 Connecticut Avenue NW, across the street from Politics & Prose. Participants may gather in the fiction room at P&P at 6:45 and then walk to Jake’s with the instructor. Light appetizers will be provided, other food and beverages are available for purchase, including beer and wine.
Click here to enroll.
See our other class offerings by clicking here.
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Signed Book of the Week
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Jane Fonda's Prime Time: Love, health, sex, fitness, friendship, spirit--making the most of all of your life (Random House, $27) gives us a blueprint for living well and for making the most of life, especially the second half of it. Covering sex, love, food, fitness, self-understanding, spiritual and social growth, and your brain. In Prime Time, she offers a vision for successful living and maturing, A to Z.
Highlighting new research and stories from her own life and from the lives of others, Jane Fonda explores how the critical years from 45 and 50, and especially from 60 and beyond, can be times when we truly become the energetic, loving, fulfilled people we were meant to be. Covering the 11 key ingredients for vital living, Fonda invites you to consider with her how to live a more insightful, healthy, and fully integrated life, a life lived more profoundly in touch with ourselves, our bodies, minds, and spirits, and with our talents, friends, and communities.
We have a limited number of signed first edition, first-printings!
Click here for a copy and for other signed books.
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eBook of the Week
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20 Harper Perennial eBooks for $20
Do you enjoy offbeat humor, sharp dialogue and well-crafted prose? These 20 contemporary, young novelists and memoirists are adept at exposing the tragic, the comic, and the darkly poignant underside of life. Other authors love to recommend these authors, and Harper Perennial makes it easy to try eBooks! Here's a sample:
It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me, by Ariel Leve (Harper Perennial/ Google eBook, $.99)
Meet Ariel. Her glass is half empty . . . and leaking. In these witty and entertaining tales from the front lines of woe, Ariel highlights the humor in our everyday anxieties and delivers insight that will ring hilariously true if you are inclined to view the world through gray-tinted glasses.
So whether you've been dumped by the love of your life, lost your job to the guy in the cubicle next to you, said the wrong thing at the party, or weren't invited to the party at all, Ariel is here to remind you that it could be worse, you could be her.
Praise for It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me…
“Ariel Leve is the love child of David Sedaris and Fran Leibowitz. An original and funny voice…The flip side of Sex and the City. Insightful and sharp—this is a very funny book written by a woman who knows how to laugh at herself and her insecurities.” - Joan Rivers
Click here to browse more books featured in this limited-time offer from Harper Perennial.
Click here for more recommended eBooks. (Note that all of these eBooks are also available as print books. Amazing!)
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Podcast of the Week
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On Saturday, July 23, award-winning poet Sandra Beasley presented her memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, $23), in which she chronicles her life-long allergies to—just about everything. A partial list of what she must avoid includes dairy, soy, beef, shrimp, cucumbers, and mustard. Thriving despite the constant threats, Beasley tells her story with wit and humor, examines the science of allergies, and offers advice to fellow sufferers.
Click here to listen to the author's talk and buy the book.
Click here to listen to download more event recordings available from the Politics & Prose archive.
During the month of an author's appearance, an event title is discounted 20% to Politics & Prose members. By registering their commitment to the store, members support us in bringing these fantastic authors to your community.
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Coming Soon to Your Favorite Bookstore
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Click www.politics-prose.com/event for our author events calendar through September.
Thursday, August 18, 7 p.m.
Willard Sterne Randall
Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (W.W.Norton, $35)
Randall’s life of the Green Mountain Boy cuts through the myths to reveal this American revolutionary as a deeply rebellious, but also self-aggrandizing figure. Born poor, then largely self-educated, Allen embellished his autobiography but was a truly inspirational figure to his peers and a strong advocate of the separation of church and state.
Sunday, August 21
Reduced hours — 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Politics & Prose will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to accommodate a staff event.
Modern Times Coffeehouse will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Monday, August 22, 7 p.m.
Sebastian Rotella
Triple Crossing: A Novel (Mulholland, $24.99)
Rotella covered the U.S.-Mexican border for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 to 1996, experience that resulted in his critically acclaimed study of the region’s nexus of violence and politics, Twilight on the Line. In his first novel Rotella returns to the issues and places he knows so well, telling the story of a rookie Border Patrol agent who infiltrates a powerful Mexican crime family.
Tuesday, August 23, 7 p.m.
Jared Ball
I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto (AK, $14.95)
Is it possible to induce revolution through mix tapes? Dr. Ball, professor of communication studies at Morgan State, illustrates hip hop’s origins and confluences to argue that a liberatory hip hop mix tape concept is not just necessary but essential in a society saturated with the music and its cultural influences.
Wednesday, August 24, 7 p.m.
Julie Salamon
Wendy And The Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein (Penguin, $29.95)
Salamon, a versatile author of fiction, memoir, and true crime, here turns to biography, recounting the life of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein. The youngest of five children of ambitious Polish-Jewish immigrants, Wasserstein was a Broadway powerhouse and had a wide circle of friends, yet as Salamon shows, this very public figure was also a deeply private person.
Thursday, August 25, 7 p.m.
Warren Bernard
Drawing Power: A Compendium of Cartoon Advertising (Fantagraphics, $28.99)
The comic strip has its roots in advertising as well as in art. In the first book-length study of these dual sources, Rick Marschall, founder of Nemo: The Classic Comics Library, and Warren Bernard, a prolific commentator on and extensive collector of cartoons as well as the Executive Director of Small Press Expo, look at work from the 1870s to 1940, documenting how popular cartoon characters like the Yellow Kid, Little Orphan Annie, and Popeye have figured in advertising campaigns, and how their creators were highly sought-after pitchmen, selling products alongside the best movie stars in Hollywood. As part of his presentation, Bernard will have on-hand select original ads and other advertising items from the era.
In anticipation of Small Press Expo (SPX) 2011 - being held September 10-11 in Bethesda, MD - a complimentary one-day pass to the show will be available at Politics & Prose with the purchase of Drawing Power on the night of the event. More information about SPX 2011 at www.spxpo.com.
View a slideshow of the contents. http://www.flickr.com//photos/fantagraphics/sets/72157627082562418/show/
Monday, August 29, 7 p.m.
Stefan Fatsis
Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (10th Anniversary Edition) (Penguin, $16 )
& Scrabble Night
Yes, it’s been ten years since Fatsis wrote about the amazing world of competitive scrabble. His book has become a classic and to mark the occasion, Politics and Prose is hosting the second of our occasional Scrabble Nights. Come ready to play!
Tuesday, August 30, 7 p.m.
James Boice
The Good And The Ghastly: A Novel (Scribner, $25)
Junior Alvaraz has risen from street thug to crime-lord, but the mother of one of his victims is determined to bring him down. Boice’s third novel is a classic noir set-up—but with a twist: it’s set in the 34th century, after civilization has come and gone and come again.
Wednesday, August 31, 7 p.m.
Drew Magary
The Postmortal: A Novel (Penguin. $15)
Always wanted to live forever? Magary’s eerily plausible first novel depicts a world in which no one dies from old age. But along with the cure for mortality come myriad social and political problems, from new cults to government euthanasia programs.
Thursday, September 1, 7 p.m.
Amy Waldman
The Submission: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Waldman's first novel examines questions of memory and healing. A stricken city holds a contest to decide on a memorial to its victims. But when the winning design is found to have been submitted by an Islamic American, the community is torn apart once more.
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Ticketed Event
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Thursday, September 8, 7 p.m.
Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/ Chinatown
Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)
Citing globalization, the revolution in information technology, chronic deficits, and America’s pattern of energy consumption as the main threats to the country’s power and prosperity, the authors look to American history for guidance. Friedman, columnist and author of The World is Flat, and Mandelbaum, professor and director of the American Foreign Policy Program at SAIS, examine key turning points in the nation’s past and focus on the values that have seen us through.
One free ticket will be provided with each purchase of this book. Additional tickets are $12 (or $15 the day of the event). Prepayment is required to secure reservations. Books and tickets cannot be held without a confirmed payment. Pre-ordered books and tickets will be available for pickup at P&P on September 5, 6, or 7 or at the event at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue on September 8.
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P&P Customers Are Also Invited To . . .
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Politics & Prose sells books at many book signing parties and events. The events below are open to the public; however, reservations and tickets should be acquired from the hosting organization. Please contact offsite@politics-prose.com if you are planning an event and would like us to supply the books.
Monday, September 12, 9 a.m. - 11 a.m.
 Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center Amphitheater
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Metro Accessible: Metro Center and Federal Triangle
Dr. Paul Farmer
Haiti after the Earthquake (PublicAffairs, $27.99)
On January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake laid waste to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands of people. In this vivid narrative, Farmer describes the incredible suffering--and resilience--that he encountered in Haiti. Having worked in the country for nearly thirty years, he skillfully explores the profound economic and social injustices that made Haiti so vulnerable to the earthquake--the very issues that make it an "unnatural disaster".
Co-founder of Partners In Health, Dr. Farmer, with his colleagues, has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings. He has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality.
Click here to listen to Partners In Health Summer Reading Series focused on Haiti after the Earthquake.
Click here for tickets ($50/$30/$22.50) and more information.
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From the Children and Teens' Department
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Wednesday, September 21, 4 - 6 p.m.
 Join the Politics & Prose Children and Teens’ Department for an Educators’ Open House for Teachers and Librarians.
- Learn about new titles and get thoughtful recommendations
- Find out about author events
- Sign up for educator email updates
- Get 20% off all books during the open house (with a 2011/12 school ID)
- Enter a tote-bag raffle
- Enjoy light refreshments
- Receive coupons for special deals at neighboring restaurants.
Summer Reading Discounts
Through Labor Day, Politics & Prose offers a 10% discount on books purchased from school summer reading lists. If your school does not provide a summer reading list, check with your public library. All public libraries provide suggested reading lists and we will also honor them with a 10% discount. Just bring your list; we will be glad to help you make selections for an enjoyable summer of reading.
Share the Favorites
Share your favorite books with us and each other. Keep track of your reading on our Summer Book Log and submit reviews of your favorites to the Children and Teens’ Department. If your review is posted on our website, you may come in to select a free paperback book! You may submit more than one review; however, we will post no more than one review per person.
Children's Book of the Week
 (20% off through August 24)
What could be better than having an enthusiastic puppy in your elementary school class? Having Bailey (Scholastic, $16.99) around makes learning more fun for everyone. Not only is he a dog that literally eats his own homework, but he also fills his water dish at the fountain, howls through music class, and is great at digging holes for plants in the school garden. Harry Bliss renders this day in Bailey’s life with cheerful illustrations and clever dialogue. This imaginative tale is a perfect read-aloud for the first day of school. Ages 4-6. Amy Kane
For more recommendations, you can browse our catalog of Children's Department Summer Favorites in .pdf format by clicking here. The printed catalogs are available in the store.
Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children and teens by clicking here.
To receive periodic updates about events and news for children and teens at Politics & Prose, click here to add "Children & Teens' News and Events" or "Teen Events and News" to your mailing lists!
Story Hour
Story hour will resume in the Children and Teens' Department on Monday, September 12 at 10:30 a.m., with BearSong and his guitar. Please join us each week for storytelling and music for children from birth to 5 years old.
We will also host some special guests for story hour.
On September 19, performers from Isabella and Ferdinand Spanish Language Adventures will perform music from their new CD, Olé and Play ($19.99). This event will be held in Spanish.
On October 3, Grammy Award winning artists Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer will entertain us with a variety of musical instruments as they share their new book, Sing to Your Baby (Community Music, $19.95).
Sign up here to receive email updates about the Politics & Prose story hour. We will inform you of special story hours, changes or cancellations.
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Markdown Books
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A power outage will give you new appreciation for electric light, and so will Jane Brox’s fascinating Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. That switch on the wall means more than just instant illumination—it gives us power over the darkness that once had us at its mercy, and has changed the way we organize time, the way we work, sleep, and play. In what amounts to a history of human civilization, Brox surveys the various means of lighting from the dawn of time to today. As with most technological progress, however, artificial light has its drawbacks—light pollution interferes with animal and bird migration and with astronomers’ study of the stars. Brox has a great story and she tells it with flair. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
It’s hard to beat a deal like two books for the price of one, especially when the books are by writers of the caliber of George Orwell and Virginia Woolf. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt recently put together a series of twofers, one of which pairs Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London. The first, originally published in 1938, is a nonfiction account of Orwell’s experiences in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He went there as a journalist, then volunteered as a soldier and fought against Franco. It remains a riveting report of violence, idealism, and all manner of political machinations. In the 1933 Down and Out, his first book, Orwell presents a fictionalized version of his close investigation of the lives of the poorest of the poor. Not just a witness to grinding poverty, Orwell attempted to live and work as the most disenfranchised had to in Paris and London. Available in hardcover, $7.98.
Also pairing fiction and nonfiction, the Virginia Woolf volume contains Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf’s experiment in interiority that follows the eponymous character through a day of preparations for a dinner party. Clarissa Dalloway is a sharp observer, and through her Woolf paints a panorama of 1920s London, from its upper-class families to its servants to the shell-shocked veterans of the Great War. There’s also a glimpse of women’s suffrage activists, and Woolf’s A Room of One's Own is a classic text of feminism, a kind of declaration of independence for women artists. Available in hardcover, $7.98.
Click here to shop for more recently acquired remainders.
Laurie Greer
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Music News
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New: The Magic Flute; Jeff Bridges
Pi Recordings & Newport Jazz
New
Mozart: The Magic Flute (Sony Masterworks, DVD, $18.98) – Julie Taymor’s English-language production of The Magic Flute for the Metropolitan Opera is truly enchanting: sets, puppets, and costumes capture the mystery and humor of Mozart’s music (conducted by James Levine), and instill a state of wonder. Poet J.D. McClatchy’s translation is a marvel, and there are captivating performances by Nathan Gunn as Papageno, Ying Huang as Pamina, and Rene Pape as Sarastro.
This production of The Magic Flute, recorded live in performance, is perfect for family viewing, or as a youngster’s introduction to opera. Highly recommended.
Jeff Bridges, Jeff Bridges (Blue Note, $17.98) – If you enjoyed Jeff Bridges singing and acting up a storm as Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, you’ll enjoy Bridges’s reunion with producer T Bone Burnett, and many of the musical crew from the movie.
Pi Recordings & Newport Jazz
The New York Times had an article on Pi Recordings, one of my favorite jazz labels, this Wednesday.
The two newest CDs on Pi are The Mancy of Sound by Steve Coleman & Five Elements (which I wrote about a few weeks ago), and Synastry by vocalist Jen Shyu (who’s a member of Five Elements) and bassist Mark Dresser. Another recent release is Apex, a spirited alto saxophone “duel” between Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green, backed by Jason Moran and Jack DeJohnette. Some of the best CDs of the past few years have also been on Pi, including Marc Ribot’s Silent Movies, Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Kinsmen, and Steve Lehman’s Travail, Transformation and Flow (all Pi Recordings are $15.98).
You can hear the set from Steve Coleman and Jen Shyu at this year’s Newport Jazz Festival on NPR, as well as Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green.
There are other great concerts there from this year’s performers, including Charles Lloyd, Regina Carter, Randy Weston, Miguel Zenón, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, the Mingus Big Band.
Click here for more 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
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P&P's book groups meet monthly and are free and open to the public.
Thursday, August 18, 7:30 p.m.
Veterans Book Group
With the Old Breed, by E.B. Sledge
September 15 selection: Dispatches, by Michael Herr
Sunday, August 21, 6 p.m.
Spirituality Book Group
Graceful Exits, by Shushila Blackman
September 18 selection: TBA
Monday, August 22, 7:30 p.m.
Public Affairs Book Group
|A Problem From Hell, by Samantha Power
September 26 selection: Murder City, by Charles Bowden
Tuesday, August 23, 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Book Group
Harmless, by Myra Sklarew
September 27 selection: Selected Poetry, by Lord Byron
Wednesday, August 24, 7:30 p.m.
Graphic Novel Book Group
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi
September 28 selection: Radioactive, by Lauren Redniss
Thursday, August 25, 7:30 p.m.
Fascinating History Book Group
Paradise of Cities: Venice in the Nineteenth Century, by John Julius Norwich
September 22 selection: The First Tycoon, by T.J. Stiles
Click here to learn more about participating in these or other Politics & Prose book groups.
To receive monthly updates about suggestions for private book groups as well as book groups at Politics & Prose, click here to add "Monthly Book Group Recommendations and News" to your mailing lists!
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