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Click www.politics-prose.com/event for our author events calendar through December.
Thursday, 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.
Thursday, 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.
Friday, 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 With the support of the Van Gogh Museum, Naifeh and Smith draw on van Gogh’s letters as well as on unpublished correspondence from his family and associates.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 Bracelen Flood
Grant's Final Victory: Ulysses S. Grant's Heroic Last Year (Da Capo, $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, by Wes Moore (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.
In The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, Wes Moore 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. While the author will not be present, 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.
Monday, November 7, 7 p.m
Erin Morgenstern
The Night Circus (Doubleday, $26.95)
In her debut novel, this multimedia artist uses her love of fairy tales to create a magical world. Celia and Marco, both performers, have been cast into a life-long contest that only one of them will survive. Their arena is Le Cirque de Rêves, and as they get older their conjuring becomes ever more sophisticated and dazzling—as does the prose of this transporting fiction.
Monday, November 7, 7 p.m.
The Honorable John Paul Stevens
Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (Little, Brown, $24.99)
at Sixth and I Synagogue, 600 I Street, NW
THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT. We are no longer taking orders for tickets, books that include tickets, or signed books to be shipped or picked up after the event.
John Paul Stevens knew the Supreme Court under five Chief Justices: He clerked for Vinson; practiced before Warren; was a circuit judge and junior justice for Berger; and was a colleague of Rehnquist and current Chief Justice Roberts. His tenure on the High Court from 1975 to 2010 was the third longest in history. That unparalleled experience informs his remarkable memoir. Justice Stevens will be in-conversation with Judge David S. Tatel, who was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1994.
Tuesday, November 8, 7 p.m.
Chad Harbach
The Art of Fielding (Little, Brown , $25.99)
This first fiction by the n+1 editor is the most talked-about novel of the fall season. Big, intelligent, and warm-hearted, the story centers on the members of the Westish College baseball squad, a Division 3 team emanating from the “crook of the thumb of the baseball glove that is Wisconsin.” Funny and true, Harbach’s work shows he knows relationships as well as he knows baseball, and that’s plenty.
Wednesday, November 9, 7 p.m.
Print-On-Demand Book Machine Demonstration
Politics & Prose has acquired one of the newest innovations in the publishing world, a print-on-demand machine. With the push of a button, the machine prints, binds, and trims a quality paperback book, in any language, with a full-color cover, in minutes. The machine, nicknamed "Opus," makes several million out-of-print or hard to find titles available to anyone; Politics & Prose is also pleased to offer self-publishing services to would-be writers working on anything from a dissertation to a novel to a family history.
Please join us at this free event, open to the public, to watch a test printing, meet one of the machine's creators, and to talk with store owners and staff about Opus's capabilities. Learn how you can access 7 million titles not on store shelves, including rare and out-of-print books, or how to use Opus to create your own self-published book.
Wednesday, November 9, 7 p.m.
Umberto Eco
The Prague Cemetery (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27)
at Sixth & I Synagogue, 600 I Street, NW
Eco’s historical novel dramatizes some of the most shocking ideas and events of nineteenth-century Europe. Eco set himself the challenge of inventing “the most cynical and disagreeable [character] in all the history of literature.” His protagonist, a montage of actual figures, is the man behind The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and numerous similar conspiracies. Umberto Eco will be in conversation with novelist Keith Donohue (Centuries of June, Crown, $24, May 2011).
Two free tickets will be provided with each purchase of the book ($27) from P&P. Additional tickets are $12 (or $15 the day of the event).
Thursday, November 10, 8 p.m.
Joan Didion
Blue Nights (Knopf, $25)
at The Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW
Didion’s spare yet richly stylized prose made The Year of Magical Thinking a haunting chronicle of grief and love. Her new memoir returns to these themes, this time to chronicle the loss of her daughter. As Didion remembers the young woman’s life, she also looks back on her own, meditating on parenthood, aging, and identity. Joan Didion will be in conversation with NPR's Susan Stamberg.
Please note: There will not be a book signing following the talk/conversation and audience Q&A. Instead, Didion will pre-sign books.
Two free tickets will be provided with each purchase of the book ($25) from P&P. Additional tickets are $12 (or $15 the day of the event).
Friday, November 11, 7 p.m.
Jim Newton
Eisenhower: The White House Years (Doubleday, $29.95)
Newton’s account of Eisenhower’s administration debunks the notion that the 34th president presided genially over bland times. Drawing on recently discovered and newly declassified documents, the long-time journalist and biographer of Earl Warren shows that Eisenhower took aggressive action on many fronts, from overseeing the new national highway system to putting the economy into the black to turning McCarthyism into “McCarthywasm.”
Saturday, November 12, 1 p.m.
Nada Prouty
Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA (Palgrave Macmillan, $26)
Before being accused of passing secrets to Hezbollah (and being dubbed “Jihad Jane” by the New York Post), Prouty, a Lebanese-born naturalized American, had a sterling record as an undercover agent with the CIA. Then, as she recounts in her memoir, 9/11 led to anti-Arab sentiment. Eventually exonerated, Prouty nonetheless lost her job and her citizenship.
Saturday, November 12, 3:30 p.m.
William S. Cohen
Blink of an Eye (Forge, $24.99)
In the second thriller by the former Secretary of Defense and author of Dragon Fire, an atomic bomb has just destroyed a major American city. The national security advisor is charged with identifying the attackers, but although evidence seems to point in one direction, a surprise discovery changes the whole situation…
Saturday, November 12, 6 p.m.
Michael Dirda
On Conan Doyle: Or the Whole Art of Storytelling (Princeton Univ., $19.95)
With the heartfelt erudition familiar to readers of his blog and his Washington Post columns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic offers a spirited account of Doyle’s life and work. Best known now as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was also a master of the supernatural story and a pioneer of science fiction. He wrote historical novels, essays, and memoirs; dabbled in tracts on spiritualism; and spoke out on social causes from imperialism and racism to more liberal divorce laws.
Sunday, November 13, 1 p.m.
Faye Moskowitz
And the Bridge Is Love (The Feminist Press at CUNY, $12.95)
Originally published in 1991 and now back in print, Moskowitz’s collection of personal essays is as fresh as ever. The author of A Leak in the Heart, Her Face in the Mirror, and other works of both fiction and nonfiction, Moskowitz teaches creative writing and Jewish American literature at George Washington University.
Sunday, November 13, 4:30-6 p.m.
Father -Son Tailgate Party with Katy Kelly and Fred Bowen
Authors Fred Bowen and Katy Kelly will be talking about their newest books. See the children's section for more details.
Bottom of FormTickets are $5 for members and $7 for non-members, and can be ordered by calling or visiting the store; please call the Children's Department at 202-364-1919 for information.
Sunday, November 13, 5 p.m.
Gershom Gorenberg
The Unmaking Of Israel (HarperCollins, $25.99)
In his assessment of contemporary Israel, Gorenberg, senior correspondent for The American Prospect and author of The Accidental Empire, argues that the country is undermining its own ideals. To return to the potential which the nation had in the beginning, he urges that Israel end the occupation, separate state from religion, and create a new civil Israeli identity for both Jews and Arabs.
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One of the many ways that Politics & Prose tries to build community is by providing a forum for public discussion of books and ideas. We are especially proud to serve again this year as a host of DC Reads, a program sponsored by the DC Public Library that brings citizens of all ages together in different venues across the city to discuss a single book.
PEN/Faulkner Reading Series
Arts Club of Washington
Chevy Chase DC Neighborhood Library
Sixth & I 
Friendship Heights Village Center 
(20% off for everyone through November 9)
Father - Son Tailgate Party
Jeff Kinney
Jeremy Denk Plays Ives at Strathmore
New
Waits on Fresh Air
