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Click www.politics-prose.com/event for our author events calendar through December.
Thursday, October 27, 10:30 a.m.
Linda Urban
Hound Dog True (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99)
Mattie, shy, fearful, and once again the new kid at school, tries to avoid her fellow fifth-graders by spending recess helping the janitor. But when things don’t go according to plan, she learns that she can trust others and make friends. Ages 8-11.
Thursday, October 27, 7 p.m.
Dava Sobel
A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (Walker, $25)
As she did in her acclaimed Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, Sobel again brings science to life with vivid depictions of its groundbreaking figures. Her portraits of Copernicus, the Polish cleric who articulated a heliocentric universe, and Georg Joachim Rheticus, a German mathematician who saw Copernicus’s writings into print, flesh out this history of astronomy from Aristotle to the 1530s.
Friday, October 28, 7 p.m.
Gilad Sharon
Sharon: The Life of a Leader (HarperCollins, $29.99)
This biography of Ariel Sharon by his youngest son, a columnist for an Israeli newspaper and an advisor to his father before and during his term as Prime Minister, draws on the elder Sharon’s diaries from all phases of his political and military career, and offers insight into Sharon’s decisions on events ranging from the Yom Kippur war to the Gaza settlements.
Saturday, October 29, 1 p.m.
Paul Starr
Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform (Yale Univ.,$28.50)
Why is America’s health-care system so difficult to reform? In his history of recent health-care battles, Starr offers both an insider’s perspective, drawing on his experience as a senior advisor on health care policy to President Clinton, as well as that of a Princeton academic, analyzing Gingrich’s response to Clinton’s proposed reforms, Mitt Romney’s overhaul of the Massachusetts health-care system, and the debates over Obama’s 2010 legislation.
Saturday, October 29, 3:30 p.m.
Christine Jahnke
The Well-Spoken Woman: Your Guide to Looking and Sounding Your Best (Prometheus Books, $19)
Jahnke profiles ten great women speakers from former Texas Governor Ann Richards and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, and tackles the things you need to know about public speaking and presentation. The book provides behind-the-scenes tips, easy-to-follow exercises with illustrations, and advice on everything from messaging to hair and hemlines -- all anyone needs to know to look and sound their best.
Saturday, October 29, 6 p.m.
Justin Frank
Obama on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (Free Press, $26)
As he did for the previous president in Bush on the Couch, Dr. Frank applies his psychoanalytic skills to Obama, offering new ways to understand the chief executive’s achievements and shortcomings. What does Obama’s turbulent childhood, for example, suggest about how he makes decisions? Are there clues in his past to his current handling of the economy or health-care reform?
Sunday, October 30, 1 p.m.
Josh Rolnick
Pulp and Paper (Univ. of Iowa, $16)
Will Boast
Power Ballads (Univ. of Iowa, $16)
Join us for a reading by two up-and-coming young writers, both winners of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Rolnick’s moving and powerful stories, set in New Jersey and New York City, explore the nexus between loss and compassion. Boast’s narrative, a sequence of ten pieces, profiles the lives of working musicians and their often fraught relationships with associates, audiences, and the music itself.
Sunday, October 30, 5 p.m.
Amos Oz
Scenes From Village Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $22)
In Tel Ilan, things may not quite be what they seem. One man hears mysterious digging sounds. Another finds a cryptic note from his wife. In his new novel of linked stories, Oz, the renowned Israeli author of A Tale of Love and Darkness, Rhyming Life and Death, and many other works of fiction and nonfiction, profiles a multi-faceted community, facet by facet.
Monday, October 31, 7 p.m.
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28)
at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, N.W.
Mitchell, Madeleine, and Leonard: a classic triangle, but in the hands of the masterful author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, the story of these three college classmates is much more. Set in the early 1980s, the novel chronicles the characters’ experiences as they finish college and face the “real” world. Given illness, unrequited love, and impossible models like Mother Teresa, of what help to them is semiotics, Jane Austen, or even Darwin?
Two free tickets will be provided with each purchase of the book from P&P. Additional tickets are $12 (or $15 the day of the event).
Tuesday, November 1, 10:30 a.m.
Adam Gidwitz
A Tale Dark and Grimm (Puffin, $6.99)
Gidwitz’s version of Hansel and Gretel is as funny as it is frightening. Returning to the roots of the genre, this first-time author embraces the darker side of human behavior, and does it with riveting storytelling. Ages 10-12.
Tuesday, November 1, 1 p.m.
Harry Belafonte
My Song: A Memoir (Knopf, $30.50) and Sing Your Song: The Music (Sony Masterworks, $12.99)
One of the great entertainers of our time, Belafonte has also been an outspoken voice for civil rights. In his powerful memoir the actor, singer, and activist recounts his early years of poverty in Harlem and Jamaica, his encounters with racism in the Navy during World War II, and his many friendships with leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedys. Sing Your Song: The Music (Sony Masterworks, $12.99)is the companion CD to his biography and to the new HBO documentary.
Book & CD Signing Only - There will be no presentation and no Q&A.
Monday, November 1, 7 p.m.
Peter Sís
The Conference of the Birds (Penguin Press, $27.95)
In this 12th-century Sufi epic, a diverse flock of birds embarks on a quest for their true king, passing through the valleys of love, understanding, unity, amazement, and death. This timeless allegory of human aspiration finds a perfect partner in Sís, renowned and award-winning illustrator, author, and filmmaker.
Tuesday, November 2, 7 p.m.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Jerusalem: The Biography (Knopf, $35)
A sacred and contested place from time immemorial, Jerusalem is believed to be the center of the world, the setting for the Apocalypse, and the only city with a dual existence on Earth and in heaven. Montefiore, biographer of the mature and the young Stalin, tells the life story of this city through its myriad faiths and wars, its conquerors and leaders, and through the experiences of ordinary people who have made it home.
Wednesday, November 3, 10:30 a.m.
Louise Borden
Big Brothers Don't Take Naps (Margaret K. McElderry, $16.99)
Nicholas admires his older brother James, who rides the school bus, writes his name, and teaches Nicholas how to count. One thing James doesn’t do is take naps. When the brothers share a secret, it looks like Nicholas, too, will soon put naps behind him. Ages 4-8.
Wednesday, November 3, 7 p.m.
Tom Brokaw - The Time of Our Lives: A Conversation About America (Random House, $26)
Is the American Dream still viable in the 21st century? The award-winning NBC journalist and spokesman for The Greatest Generation profiles some of the country’s most innovative community leaders to assess how the nation has changed in recent decades and where we may be headed now.
Thursday, November 4, 7 p.m.
Steven Naifeh & Gregory White Smith
Van Gogh: The Life (Random House, $40)
The authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jackson Pollock: An American Saga are the first in some seventy years to write a full biography of the Dutch modernist master. With the support of the Van Gogh Museum, Naifeh and Smith draw on van Gogh’s letters as well as on unpublished correspondence from his family and associates.
Saturday, November 5, 1 p.m.
Colson Whitehead
Zone One (Doubleday, $25.95)
From The Intuitionist to Apex Hides the Hurt to Sag Harbor, Whitehead’s fiction has been fresh, smart, and funny. In his new novel, this dexterous writer paints a picture of post-apocalyptic America. Still reeling from plague, with a provisional government set up in Buffalo, survivors work to clear out the last of the catatonic “stragglers” who stand in the way of a new civilization.
Colson wrote us a nice note in anticipation of this event. We presume that he's quoting Carla Cohen when he's speaking about the advice he received. It certainly sounds like her words!
When you’ve published as many books as I have, you visit a lot of bookstores. Big ones, small ones. Indies, chains. Bookstores made out of hay, and bookstores sculpted entirely out of frozen baby tears. But I have to say there’s no bookstore like Politics & Prose. Because Politics & Prose taught me to love again. “Don’t be afraid to let people in, Colson. There’s a real person inside you, and he’s worth knowing!” Best advice I ever got. Plus, they have great coffee.
Saturday, November 5, 6 p.m.
Charles Flood
Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year (Da Capo Press, $27.50)
Grant’s Memoirs were an instant bestseller in 1885, and are still valued for their literary and historic merit. Gravely ill when he wrote, Grant died just four days after completing the manuscript. Flood’s moving account of Grant’s last years is as illuminating about the man and his era as were his previous studies of Lee and Grant and Sherman.
Sunday, November 6, 1 p.m.
Washington Writers' Publishing House Prize Winners
Melanie S. Hatter
The Color of My Soul (Washington Writers' Publishing House, $16.95)
& Dan Gutstein
Bloodcoal & Honey (Washington Writers' Publishing House, $16)
Washington Writers’ Publishing House is a non-profit organization that has published over 50 volumes of poetry since 1973 and nearly a dozen volumes of fiction. The press sponsors an annual competition for writers living in the Washington-Baltimore area. P&P is proud to host a reading by the winners in fiction and poetry.
A journalist and graduate of the Johns Hopkins MFA program, Melanie Hatter explores the elusiveness of the past in a novel that juxtaposes an Indian tribe’s efforts to reclaim ancestral lands with a young woman’s startling discovery about her own family history. Dan Gutstein, who teaches in George Washington University’s writing program, focuses on themes of murder, love, and illness; his poems have a noirish aura and often employ startling language.
Sunday, November 6, 5 p.m.
 DC Reads Discussion with Kurt Schmoke and special guests
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (Spiegel & Grau, $15)
Politics & Prose is proud to sponsor DC Reads, a DC Public Library literacy program that promotes reading for pleasure by facilitating city-wide celebrations focusing on one book. The goal is to appeal to a wide audience--high school students and adults of all ages--to generate in-depth questions, provoke conversation, and celebrate the joy of reading. Our event is just one in coordination with other events taking place throughout the city.
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates tells the real-life story of two kids with the same name living in the same decaying city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison for felony murder. This is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.
Kurt Schmoke, Dean of the Howard University Law School and former Mayor of Baltimore, will moderate the discussion. We are especially pleased to be joined by two special guests -- the mother of the author Wes Moore and the sister of the "other" Wes Moore.
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Sixth & I Synagogue
PEN/Faulkner Reading Series
Arts Club of Washington
Chevy Chase DC Neighborhood Library
Blast from the Past!
Sunday, November 13
