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Click here for our online events calendar and to preview events through February.
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Thursday, January 19, 5 p.m.
Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler - The Future of Us (Razorbill, $18.99)
at the Bethesda Library
7400 Arlington Rd.
Bethesda, MD
Two acclaimed authors have joined forces to tell a compelling mystery of the future. It starts back in 1996, when Emma gets her first computer. Her neighbor, Josh, brings over a CD-ROM, and when Emma downloads the software, her Facebook page for 2011 appears on the screen—though Facebook did not yet exist. Another miracle of technology, or…… Ages 12 and up.
Thursday, January 19, 7 p.m.
Shalom Auslander - Hope: A Tragedy (Riverhead, $26.95)
In his first novel, the author of the irreverent and very funny memoir, Foreskin’s Lament, turns his sharp wit to questions of history and how to live. Solomon Kugel relocates his family to rural Stockton, New York, a blank slate of a town where he hopes to start afresh, but instead stumbles into a living relic in his attic.
Friday, January 20, 7 p.m.
Thomas Caplan - The Spy Who Jumped off the Screen (Viking, $26.95)
Ty Hunter trades the secret life of a spy for the very visible one of a movie star—only to find he needs both identities to keep nuclear warheads from falling into the wrong hands. This riveting thriller by the author of Line of Chance, Parallelogram, and Grace and Favor offers fast-paced and glitzy suspense.
Saturday, January 21, 1 p.m.
Linda Killian - The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents (St. Martin's, $25.99)
Belying the right-left polarity of bipartisan politics, forty percent of Americans describe themselves as independents. These independents are the country’s largest voting bloc and have determined most elections since World War II. In conversations with independents across the country, Killian, a journalist and senior scholar at the Wilson Center, shows how the two-party system is failing these citizens, and outlines solutions.
Saturday, January 21, 6 p.m.
Stephanie Deutsch - You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South (Northwestern Univ., $24.95)
In 1911 Booker T. Washington met Julius Rosenwald at a Chicago luncheon. The president of Sears, Roebuck, Rosenwald had a fortune and wanted to help educate poor children. Together, he and Washington built some 5,000 schoolhouses in rural African-American communities. Deutsch, a D.C.-based writer and critic, tells the story of this remarkable collaboration and profiles the lives of the two men both before and after their meeting.
Sunday, January 22, 2 p.m.
Lori Stewart - If I Had as Many Grandchildren as you . . . (Palmar, $19.95)
In rollicking rhymes and colorful photographs, Stewart’s Grand Paws, a lion, tells a stumped grandparent all the wonderful ways to spend time with grandchildren. From making sand castles on a beach to singing at the top of their lungs, children and grandparents can discover the world, enjoy each others’ company, and make lasting memories. Ages 3 to 103.
Sunday, January 22, 5 p.m.
Patricia Schultz - 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, the Second Edition: Completely Revised and Updated with Over 200 New Entries (Workman, $19.95)
The long-time travel writer and executive producer of the Travel Channel’s 1000 Places reality show, Schultz has compiled a book of dream trips complete with practical, how-to information. From the Great Wall of China to the Lewis and Clark trail, from Robert Stevenson’s home to a special hotel in Venice, this guide tells you what to see and why.
Monday, January 23, 7 p.m.
Cullen Murphy - God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27)
In his comprehensive history of the Inquisition, Murphy, editor-at-large for Vanity Fair and the author of Are We Rome?, chronicles an institution with a longer lifespan and a wider reach than most people suspect. Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition lasted into the 20th century. Charged with rooting out heretics, it developed techniques of surveillance, censorship, and interrogation that have since been adopted by other organizations.
Tuesday, January 24, 7 p.m.
Walter Mosley - All I Did Was Shoot My Man (Riverhead, $26.95)
In Mosley’s latest Leonid McGill novel, McGill is trying to prove that Zella Grisham didn’t shoot her boyfriend when she found him in flagrante delicto with her friend, but various developments in the detective’s own family keep distracting him. His wife is drinking, his son has dropped out of school, and his late father isn’t dead after all.
Wednesday, January 25, 7 p.m.
Leigh Stein - The Fallback Plan (Melville House, $14.95)
Stein’s funny and affecting first novel follows Esther Kohler as she graduates from college and moves back in with her parents. Under their roof she has to follow their rules, and she takes a babysitting job they’ve arranged—only to be caught up in the dramas and ambiguities of another family.
Thursday, January 26, 7 p.m.
Marcela Valdes - National Books Critics Circle: Poetry
Join us for a discussion about poetry and the National Book Critics Circle with Marcela Valdes. An NBCC board member since 2006, Valdes is a freelance writer, the books editor at The Washington Examiner, and a contributing editor at Publishers Weekly. She specializes in writing about Latin American culture and literary fiction; her essay on Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 appeared in The Nation and was reprinted as the introduction to Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations (Melville House, $15.95).
Friday, January 27, 7 p.m.
Deborah Scroggins - Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui (HarperCollins, $27.99)
The author of the acclaimed Emma's War, Scroggins offers a fresh perspective on political Islam and the war on terror by profiling two very different women. Ayaan Nirsi Ali, author of The Caged Virgin and Infidel, is an outspoken critic of Islam, while the Pakistani-born neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, founder of the Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching, is currently serving a prison sentence for assaulting U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan.
Saturday, January 28, 1 p.m.
Thomas Byrne Edsall - The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics (Doubleday, $23.95)
In his astute analysis of the causes of and solutions for the stagnating economy, the veteran Washington Post and New York Times journalist places the struggle over resources in its political context. With the pitched battles of bipartisan politics making every budget decision a zero-sum act, Edsall warns of a “brutish future” of greater divisions between haves and have-nots unless politicians work together for renewed growth.
Saturday, January 28, 6 p.m.
David Satter - It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale Univ, $29.95)
One of the issues raised by the fall of Communist governments concerns the clash between individual rights and the objectives of the state. In his third book on Russia and the Soviet Union, Satter, former Moscow correspondent for The Financial Times and special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal, examines the end of the USSR from a humanist perspective.
Sunday, January 29, 3 p.m.
Zbigniew Brzezinski (in conversation with Mika Brzezinski) - Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power (Basic Books, $26) at Sixth & I Synagogue, 600 I Street NW
In his latest book, the former National Security Advisor looks back to the optimism following the fall of the Communist bloc and outlines a strategy by which the United States can reassert that position of strength. His analysis focuses on the changing distribution of global power and America’s place in that new arrangement, especially in relation to China.
This event will take place at Sixth & I Synagogue and is ticketed. Two tickets come free with each purchase of the book ($26) or tickets can be purchased separately for $10 each in advance of the event ($12 on the day of). Click here to purchase books and tickets.
Sunday, January 29, 5 p.m.
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor - A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (Palgrave Macmillan, $28)
The first White House memoir was written by Paul Jennings, who was part of the Madisons’ household staff. Jennings was a slave—freed only much later by Senator Daniel Webster—and was sold by Dolley Madison after her husband’s death. Taylor, former director of education at James Madison’s Montpelier, chronicles Jennings’s long life (he lived to see his sons fight in the Union army) and the racial attitudes he encountered.
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P&P is organizing a trip to the Philadelphia International Flower Show on Sunday, March 4. This year's theme is "Hawaii: Islands of Aloha". 
New Paperback Original - an Author Event
Hay-Adams
Friendship Heights Visitor Center
Sixth & I 
