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Click here for our online events calendar and to preview events through April.
Members always save 20% on our author event books. Click here to register!
Click the event titles for more information about each event and to purchase the book.
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Thursday, March 1
7 p.m. Raymond Bonner - Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong (Knopf, $26.95)
Friday, March 2
7 p.m. Jim Yardley - Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing (Knopf, $26.95)
Saturday, March 3
1 p.m. Anthony J. Franze - The Last Justice (Sterling & Ross, $24.95)
3:30 p.m. Sara Mansfield Taber - Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy's Daughter (Potomac Books, $29.95)
6 p.m. Thomas Mallon - Watergate (Pantheon, $26.95)
Sunday, March 4
1 p.m. Dusko Doder - The Firebird Affair ($24.99) & William Beecher - Nuclear Revenge ($15)
5 p.m. Peggielene Bartels (with Eleanor Herman) - King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village (Doubleday, $25.95)
Monday, March 5
7 p.m. Masha Gessen - The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (Riverhead, $27.95)
Tuesday, March 6
7 p.m. David Rothkopf - Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government -- and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30)
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Wednesday, March 7
7 p.m. Baseball Prospectus 2012 (John Wiley, $24.95)
Thursday, March 8
7 p.m. Peter Behrens - The O'Briens (Pantheon, $25.95)
7 p.m. Baratunde Thurston - How to Be Black (HarperCollins, $24.99)
at Sidwell Friends School
Quaker Meeting House
3825 Wisconsin Ave, NW
Friday March 9 – Sunday, March 11
Spring Storewide Member Sale
Friday, March 9
7 p.m. Noam Scheiber - The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery (Simon & Schuster, $28)
Saturday, March 10
3 p.m. Beryl A. Radin - Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions (Georgetown Univ.. $29.95)
Sunday, March 11
3 p.m. Campbell McGrath - In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys: Poems (Ecco, $14.99)
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The Scoop from Brad and Lissa
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March Highlights by International Journalists
March promises another exceptional list of new books at Politics & Prose – and events to go with them. Among upcoming non-fiction titles are works about mishandled justice, baseball, Zionism, and cognitive science. In fiction, you can look forward to novels about a pilgrimage in mid-Apocalypse, gender and romance in the professoriate, the Great Depression, and an imaginary account of the Watergate scandal.
Two upcoming events warrant special mention here because of their connection to current affairs. On March 5, the day after the Russian presidential election, we’ll be hosting author and journalist Masha Gessen to talk about her highly anticipated book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (Riverhead, $27.95). Gessen, a dual Russian and American citizen who lives in Moscow, has been an observer of and participant in the movement for democratic reforms in Russia over the past two decades. While colleagues and acquaintances have mysteriously died, been murdered, or fled into exile, Gessen has continued her unvarnished, courageous reporting about Putin and his ruthless style of governing. (In 2000, she became the first journalist blacklisted by Putin.) Her book traces the Russian leader’s evolution from his beginnings as an unremarkable KGB agent to his hidden machinations as a local bureaucrat in St. Petersburg to his sudden selection as successor to Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin.
Along the way, Gessen sheds new light on events that accompanied Putin’s political ascent, from assassinations to bombings to the sinking of the Kursk, a Russian submarine. How a “man without a face” could rise to the pinnacle of Russian power -- and what his tenure means for the Russian people and their future -- is the heart of this compelling, chilling work of journalism.
Later in the month we’ll celebrate the work of another journalist and friend, the late Anthony Shadid, who was scheduled to speak at P&P about his new book, House of Stone(Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, $26). Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner nominated again this year for his coverage of the human toll of conflict in the Middle East, died at age 43 of an apparent asthma attack while reporting for The New York Times in Syria on February 16. Brad and Anthony were colleagues at The Washington Post some years ago. As with all who crossed paths with Anthony, Brad held him in the highest regard for his insightful, courageous, and vivid reporting. Anthony had a remarkable capacity to find and focus on compelling characters wherever he went. By telling their individual stories with uncommon empathy and nuance, he also expertly and gracefully addressed the larger issues at stake. We’ve decided to turn the evening of March 30, when Anthony would have been speaking at P&P, into a public tribute to him with readings from his book. We hope you will join us.
Mark your calendars! Our Spring Member Sale will take place Friday-Sunday, March 9-11!
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Politics & Prose Classes
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P&P is excited to offer two new classes taught by distinguished science writers: On four Saturday mornings, beginning April 28, author and former NPR environmental correspondent John Nielsen will teach The Thing with Feathers, a class designed for both bird enthusiasts and the merely curious, that will focus on the literature of birds. And beginning May 5, for two Saturdays at lunchtime, author and former Washington Post correspondent Marc Kaufman will teach New Worlds Unveiled, which will focus on accessible science writing and will culminate in a trip to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Also on offer this spring are:
An Egg Decorating workshop using the Ukrainian pysanky wax resist technique meets on Friday, April 6, 6-8 p.m. just in time for Easter. (Ages 10 – Adult)
And it’s not too late to register for tomorrow’s in-depth discussion of Rohinton Mistry’s classic novel of India, A Fine Balance, taught by journalist and screenwriter Alexandra Viets.
For more information, click the above hyperlinks to our website. For other classes, please visit: http://www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes.
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Bestsellers
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All Politics & Prose Weekly Hardcover Bestsellers are 20% off for Members.
Click here to see what the community is reading and the top twelve hardcover fiction and non-fiction books we are discounting this week.
These are our top two titles.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories, by Nathan Englander
(Knopf, $24.95)
These eight stories display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life. The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the dark “Camp Sundown,” vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. “Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side” is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who continually expands the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo (Random House, $27)
The first book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist looks closely at Annawadi, a makeshift community near the Mumbai airport. This is a place where dreams are local but their fulfillment depends on global events, and Boo follows various Annawadians as they work to better their lives by means ranging from trash-sifting to corruption.
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New Paperbacks
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Fiction
The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips (Random House, $15)
In his fifth novel, the author of Prague and The Song is You channels Shakespeare. Or is the newly-discovered work by the Bard in fact the latest forgery by the father of a writer named Arthur Phillips? An ingenious literary romp, the story is also an exploration of love and family ties.
The School of Night, by Louis Bayard (St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99)
Bayard’s acclaimed The Black Tower and The Pale Blue Eye were artful combinations of history and fiction; his most recent 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.
Non-Fiction
Saul Bellow: Letters, by Saul Bellow (Penguin, $20)
Saul Bellow was winner of the Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also wrote marvelously acute, unsparing, tender, ferocious, hilarious, and wise letters throughout his long life (1915-2005). Including letters to William Faulkner, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Cynthia Ozick, Martin Amis, and many others, this collection shows the influences at work in a seminal literary mind.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich, by Eric Metaxas (Thomas Nelson, $19.99)
From the author of Amazing Grace, about the British abolitionist William Wilberforce, comes a groundbreaking biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian whose moral courage led him to boldly confront the monstrous evil that was Nazism. As a double-agent, he joined the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, and was hanged in Flossenberg concentration camp at age 39. Since his death, Bonhoeffer has grown to be one of the most fascinating, complex figures of the 20th century.
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Sideline of the Week
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D.C. residents are always ready and willing to offer a complaint about city life - the bureaucracy, the traffic, how you have to wait in line to get a cupcake (when will this trend end?!). Before you start ranting about D.C. voting rights, take a minute to remember you live in the capital of the United States! Show a little pride in your city with Popco’s D.C. Map T-shirt ($20). Featuring the District of Columbia’s many neighborhoods, this sassy shirt is the perfect way to say you “heart” D.C. A cupcake fad that refuses to die is a small price to pay for free museums, beautiful parks, and a smart, savvy population.
Come on, D.C. - show some pride!
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David's Deliberations
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On February 26, Ira Shapiro celebrated his publication of The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (PublicAffairs, $34.99). A standing room audience – which included former Senate staff members who helped produce important policy in the 1960s and 1970s, leading journalists, and people who care about the state of our governing institutions - participated in a lively discussion.
While I participated in many of the issues about which Ira Shapiro wrote - Senate ethics rules, the Ethics in Government Act, SALT II, the dismissal of Bert Lance as President Carter's Budget Director, approval of the Panama Canal Treaty, filibuster reform, and energy legislation - this informative book, filled with memorable stories, taught me how much I did not know. Details matter, and they are an essential part of Shapiro’s graceful and clear writing that captures emotion in his discussions of individual senators.
Click here to keep reading.
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Coming Soon to Your Favorite Bookstore
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Click here for our online events calendar and to preview events through March.
Members always save 20% on our author event books. Click here to register!
Thursday, March 1, 7 p.m.
Raymond Bonner - Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong (Knopf, $26.95)
Bonner applies his skills as a lawyer and a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter to recount the harrowing story of Edward Lee Elmore, wrongfully convicted of murder in 1982. As he follows a young defense attorney working to free Elmore from death row, Bonner’s exposure of mishandled evidence, an incompetent defense team, and other iniquities constitutes a powerful indictment of the American criminal justice system.
Friday, March 2, 7 p.m.
Jim Yardley - Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing (Knopf, $26.95)
Taking over the Shanxi Brave Dragons, China’s lowest-ranked professional basketball team, former NBA coach Bob Weiss found that he had to adapt his techniques as much as the players had to change theirs. In this entertaining account of a season with the Brave Dragons, Yardley, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief, profiles players, owners, and fans.
Saturday, March 3, 1 p.m.
Anthony J. Franze - The Last Justice (Sterling & Ross, $24.95)
Franze’s debut thriller is a tale of murder, corruption, and unbridled ambition set in the marble halls and secluded corridors of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Saturday, March 3, 3:30 p.m.
Sara Mansfield Taber - Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy's Daughter (Potomac Books, $29.95)
Being repeatedly uprooted makes childhood difficult; the challenges are compounded when your father is a covert CIA operative. In her memoir of life abroad during the Cold War, Taber, a literary journalist and author of Bread of Three Rivers, recounts the dual stories of her own efforts to establish an identity and her father’s struggle to come to terms with an America he grew increasingly disenchanted with.
Saturday, March 3, 6 p.m.
Thomas Mallon - Watergate (Pantheon, $26.95)
With Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, and others, Mallon has proven himself an adept novelist of recent history. His ninth work of fiction revisits the Nixon years and, from several carefully selected perspectives, Mallon lets the scandal’s participants tell us what happened, including the fate of those erased 18 -1/2 minutes of tape.
Sunday, March 4, 1 p.m.
Dusko Doder - The Firebird Affair ($24.99) & William Beecher - Nuclear Revenge ($15)
Doder uses his experience as the former Washington Post Moscow correspondent for this gripping thriller involving a journalist, the mysterious death of his wife, and KGB infiltration of the CIA in the last days of the Soviet Union.
In Beecher’s latest novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former official at the Department of Defense and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has concocted a pulse-racing story involving academics overseas who stumble onto an al-Qaeda plot to smuggle dirty bombs into the U.S.
Sunday, March 4, 5 p.m.
Peggielene Bartels (with Eleanor Herman) - King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village (Doubleday, $25.95)
When Bartels’s uncle died in 2008, she inherited his position as king of Otuam, a village of 7,000 on Ghana’s central coast. Making this more than a ceremonial role, Bartels, born in Ghana but a naturalized American citizen since 1997, addressed the community’s lack of health care, running water, and educational facilities. This account of her first two years as king stems from Herman’s Washington Post Magazine cover story.
Monday, March 5, 7 p.m.
Masha Gessen - The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (Riverhead, $27.95)
Vladimir Putin was a KGB operative when he was hand-picked by Yeltsin’s circle to succeed the increasingly unpopular leader. Gessen, a Moscow-based journalist and editor of the Russian-language magazine Snob, has drawn on diverse and previously untapped sources to recount Putin’s steadily more repressive measures.
Tuesday, March 6, 7 p.m.
David Rothkopf - Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government -- and the Reckoning That Lies Ahead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30)
In his thought-provoking look at globalism, the author of Superclass starts from the observation that the world’s largest corporations have revenues higher than the GDP of many nations. Rothkopf, with a background in government and business, grounds his view of the future in a history of markets and the balance of public and private interests.
Wednesday, March 7, 7 p.m.
Baseball Prospectus 2012 (John Wiley, $24.95)
With prescient statistical predictions and entertaining articles, Baseball Prospectus has become the ultimate guide to baseball players and teams. Join your fellow fans and baseball’s leading analysts in P&P’s annual pre-season warm-up.
Wednesday, March 8, 7 p.m.
Peter Behrens - The O'Briens (Pantheon, $25.95)
In his second novel Behrens resumes the saga of the family he introduced in The Law of Dreams. Spanning half a century, this lyrical and evocative fiction from the Stegner Fellow follows Joe O’Brien from his backwoods Canadian youth through his move to California, his courtship of Iseult, and his rise to railroad magnate.
Thursday, March 8, 7 p.m.
Baratunde Thurston - How to Be Black (HarperCollins, $24.99)
at Sidwell Friends School
Quaker Meeting House
3825 Wisconsin Ave, NW
The social critic, comedian, and digital director at The Onion grew up in Washington, DC, graduated from Sidwell Friends School, and went on to earn a philosophy degree from Harvard. His funny, poignant insights into race, politics, technology, and modern culture have provoked, inspired, and entertained audiences around the world. How to Be Black - part memoir and part satirical guide to racial issues - has been called “humorous, intelligent, and audacious.”
This event is free and open to the public. RSVP requested, but not required. Please email events@politics-prose.com. For more information, click here.
Friday March 9, 9 a.m. – Sunday, March 11, 8 p.m.
Spring Storewide Member Sale
All weekend long, Politics & Prose members receive 20% off almost all of our current in-store book inventory and 15% off our DVDs and CDs. Members' online and phone purchases will also receive the same discounts as long as the items selected are on our shelves and payment is provided at the time of the order. Discounts do not apply to specially ordered items.
If you are not yet a member, it's a great time to sign up and take advantage of our discount opportunities. Members always receive:
• 20% off all titles in our monthly events calendars
• 20% off our weekly hardcover fiction and nonfiction bestsellers
• Store-wide discounts during four annual members sales
• Other periodic section discounts and promotions
Friday, March 9, 7 p.m.
Noam Scheiber - The Escape Artists: How Obama's Team Fumbled the Recovery (Simon & Schuster, $28)
In his analysis of the Obama administration’s team of economic policy-makers, the New Republic senior editor profiles key figures, including Geithner, Summers, and Obama himself, looking at how these people work as a team, and considering their particular visions and blind spots regarding the American economy.
Saturday, March 10, 3 p.m.
Beryl A. Radin - Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions (Georgetown Univ.. $29.95)
Radin, a Georgetown Public Policy Institute faculty member, cites three basic areas of incompatibility between the U.S. federal system and many of the proposals for reform offered in recent decades. In considering diverse aspects of the government’s shared-powers structure, values, and politics and administration, she makes a thorough analysis of how techniques suited to the private sector or borrowed from parliamentary systems are often a poor fit for federal management.
Sunday, March 11, 3 p.m.
Campbell McGrath - In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys: Poems (Ecco, $14.99)
In his eighth collection of poems, the Guggenheim and MacArthur “genius” grantee applies Walt Whitman’s capaciousness to contemporary culture. While noting the banalities of everyday life, McGrath wields an ironic romanticism to winnow enduring meaning from the ephemeral.
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Special Offer for Politics & Prose customers
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 2003 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Anna in the Tropics Continues at GALA Theatre!
$5 Off Regular Tickets for Politics & Prose Customers
Now - Sunday, March 4
GALA Theatre
3333 14th St. NW
Anna in the Tropics, by Nilo Cruz (Theatre Communications Group, $14.95)
Ana en el Trópico, by Nilo Cruz, translation by Nacho Artime (Theatre Communications Group, $12.95)
“…exudes lyricism…graceful and affecting production…” – The Washington Post
"Go and experience it to the fullest. Don’t let this masterpiece disappear like a puff of smoke. " - DC Theatre Scene
GALA presents the DC Premiere of Nilo Cruz’s acclaimed play Ana en el trópico/Anna in the Tropics in Spanish. Set in a 1920s Cuban cigar factory located in Ybor City, Florida, the arrival of a new lector becomes a catalyst amongst the workers. As he reads from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the workers’ lives begin to reflect the plot - unleashing secrets and forbidden passions.
The production is presented in Spanish with English surtitles through March 4, Thursdays to Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm.
Regular tickets are $34-$38. Reserve by calling 202-234-7174 or click here to purchase online!
For this offer, enter code tropics12 or mention discount at purchase.
GALA Theatre 3333 14th St. NW WDC 20010 | www.galatheatre.org | info@galatheatre.org
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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.
Thursday, March 1, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Doron Petersan
Sticky Fingers’ Sweets! 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes (Avery, $27.50)
Since opening the DC-based Sticky Fingers Bakery in 2002, Doron has been on a mission to dispel the myths that anything without butter or eggs can’t taste good, and that your palette will suffer for trying to make the world, your body, and your kitchen a better place. In Sticky Fingers’ Sweets! 100 Super-Secret Vegan Recipes, Doron shares the recipes and techniques behind her bakery’s most popular desserts and breakfast items.
Click here to buy $8 tickets in advance ($10 the day of the event), or purchase the book ($27.50) through Sixth & I and receive two free tickets. If you have questions, call 202.408.3100.
Thursday, March 8, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Michael Ian Black
You’re Not Doing It Right: Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations (Gallery, $23.99)
“You’re not doing it right.” Michael Ian Black has been hearing these five words all his life. And now—on the eve of his 40th birthday—the comedian, actor, and bestselling author who brought you Stella and The State is finally beginning to wonder why.
As a husband and father living in the suburbs, Michael asks: How did I end up here? Michael’s debut memoir takes on his childhood, his children, and his career.
Click here to purchase $12 tickets or to buy 1 book + 2 tickets for $28. Questions? Call 202.408.3100.
Thursday, March 15, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Jodi Picoult
Lone Wolf (Atria/ Emily Bestler, $28)
A father is injured in a car accident and is on lifesupport. He is divorced and his son is estranged from him. He has remained close to his daughter. Who decides his fate? What are their motives for keeping him alive - or letting him go? This is the medical and moral dilemma at the heart of Picoult’s gripping new novel.
Picoult will be in conversation with Ron Charles, deputy editor and a weekly fiction critic for The Washington Post Book World. Book signing to follow.
Click here to purchase 1 book + 1 ticket for $28 OR 1 book + 2 tickets for $38. If you have questions, call 202.408.3100.
Monday, March 19, 7 p.m.
 Sixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander
New American Haggadah (Little, Brown, $29.99)
Read each year around the seder table, the Haggadah recounts through prayer, song, and ritual the story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land.
Now, Foer has orchestrated a new way of experiencing and understanding one of our oldest and sacred stories, with a new translation of the traditional text by Nathan Englander and commentary by major Jewish writers and thinkers Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch.
Tickets are $12 or receive 2 FREE tickets with the purchase of the book through Sixth & I ($30). Purchase here. If you have questions, call 202.408.3100. |
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From the Children and Teens' Department
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Children's Book of the Week
(20% off for everyone through March 7th)
Books bring the world to life for a little girl at the library who picks up a book about Coral Reefs (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter, $16.99). As she learns the facts about coral reefs, the young girl finds herself immersed in the subject matter – literally! She is soon floating inside one of these aquatic cities alongside its many occupants - such as parrot fish, sharks, and moray eels. Author and illustrator Jason Chin explores the topic of underwater ecosystems in this captivating adventure of a picture book. Ages 6-10 – Kerri Poore
 Children’s Blast from the Past
(20% off for Members through March 7)
When hundreds of sneakers washed ashore near Seattle in 1990, Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer enlisted beachcombers and fellow oceanographers to track their origin. Ebbesmeyer has been tracking trash along ocean currents ever since. Tracking Trash: Flotasam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion (Sandpiper, $8.99) by Loree Griffin Burns is a welcome addition to the superb Scientists in the Field series, which highlights the importance of studying and understanding the environment in order to protect it. The chapter on the Garbage Patch, a floating garbage dump as big as the state of Alaska, describes the damage of plastic pollution to sea life and to the environment. Ages 10 and up.
Click here to see the Children and Teens' Department 2011 Favorites.
Monday, March 12, 3:30 p.m.
Cal Ripken, Jr. - Super-Sized Slugger (Hyperion, $16.99)
Cody Parker may be an incredible third-baseman, but he’s overweight and an easy target for bullies like Dante Rizzo. Competing with Dante for a chance to play ball and dealing with thefts at school threaten to sideline Cody, but he’s determined to show his true colors. Ages 8 and up.
This is a signing only. Purchase of book at P&P is required for signing. Please call the store for details.
Story Hour
Each Monday at 10:30 a.m., BearSong offers storytelling and guitar music for children from birth to 5 years old.
Click here to sign up to receive email updates. We will inform you of special story hours, changes, or cancellations.
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Markdown Books
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Where can you find great writing on music topics as diverse as the Blues and Bjork, Marian Anderson and Shubert, recording technology and late Brahms, Radiohead and music education? Alex Ross, The New Yorker music critic, has collected his essays on all of the above and more in Listen to This. Use it as a reference and general music primer, or read it straight through as a narrative on sound -- each piece is eloquent, informative, and enthusiastic. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
A woman going mad in an attic, an adopted orphan of unknown parentage, a childhood friendship growing into passion -- these sound like the makings of a classic gothic tale, but in the hands of the talented Indian writer, Anuradha Roy, these conventions come together in new ways. An Atlas of Impossible Longing is set on a large family estate outside of Bengal, and as Roy traces events through three generations, she vividly evokes the sights and sounds of India throughout the twentieth century. The true pulse of the novel, however, is the tension between a patriarchal society bound by class and convention, and an individual’s unruly emotions that follow their own dictates. Available in paperback, $5.98.
In many essays and stories during her long career Cynthia Ozick has paid tribute to Henry James. Her recent novel Foreign Bodies has been compared to James’s The Ambassadors, but while some facets of the plot recall the Master’s fiction, this narrative is stamped with Ozick’s own wit and polish. Bea Nightingale is in her mid-fifties and doing nicely on her own when her brother, after driving his wife out of her mind and his children out of the country, sends Bea to Europe to bring back his son and daughter. She accomplishes the mission--but does so on her terms, not his. Ozick’s is a deftly crafted look at family and independence. Available in hardcover, $5.98.
Please call us at 202-364-1919 or stop by the store to shop for these and other discounted titles.
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Music News
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NEW & HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
 Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden(Nonesuch, $15.98) – The young members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops have long championed the African American string music tradition, and have studied with masters like Joe Thompson. Their second album is an adventurous journey from their traditional roots to a genuinely new string band sound, and is one of this year’s best releases. The Drops take inspiration from 19th-century banjo books, singers and players like Hazel Dickens, Cousin Emmy, Etta Baker and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, but also write new songs that sound modern and traditional at once. Enjoy!
Bruce Dickey, La Bella Minuta: Florid Songs for Coronetto around 1600 (Passacaille, $17.98) – BBC Radio Three’s weekly CD Review is a show I never miss, and that’s where I first heard cornetto master Bruce Dickey’s beautiful new album. The cornetto was made of horn or wood with a mouthpiece (not to be confused with a modern cornet), and Dickey’s selection of mostly Italian pieces from around 1600 enables him to show this instrument at its virtuosic peak. The cornetto is accompanied by viola da gambas, organ, and harp. This is gorgeous music.
NEW
 Lyle Lovett, Release Me (Lost Highway, $13.98) – This is a perfect sampler of what Lyle is great at: fresh arrangements of classic country, standards and pop classics (“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”), covers of great contemporary songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt and Jesse Winchester, and, of course, Lyle’s originals.
The Robert Glasper Experiment, Black Radio (Blue Note, $17.98) – Pianist Robert Glasper, his versatile quartet, and the many guest singers and rappers—Erykah Badu, Lalah Hathaway, Ledisi, Chrisette Michele, Musiq Soulchild, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Bilal, Meshell Ndegeocello—take jazz, soul and hip-hop for a ride.
Read last Sunday’s New York Times feature on the CD.
GRAMOPHONE’S RECORDINGS OF THE MONTH
Every month, the British classical magazine, Gramophone, selects a recording of the month, and devotes a two-page spread to the review.
Here are their last two selections.
For March: Isabelle Faust & Orchestra Mozart, Claudio Abbado, conductor, Berg & Beethoven Violin Concertos (Harmonia Mundi, $18.98)
For February: Paul Lewis, Schubert: Piano Sonatas, Impromptus (Harmonia Mundi, 2 CDs, $23.98)
NEXT WEEK
Next Tuesday, March 6: the official arrival of Bruce Springsteen’s new CD, Wrecking Ball(Columbia, $13.98).
CDs are now searchable on our website, but stock status is not currently visible as we are in a Beta-testing phase. Please click the title links to place orders online - or call the store at 202-364-1919 with questions. You may also continue to email me at agoldinger@politics-prose.com to order.
Click here for more news and reviews.
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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.
Click here to see all of our upcoming in-store book groups.
Thursday, March 1, 7:30 p.m.
Capital James Joyce Book Group
Paradiso by Dante Alghieri and Ulysses by James Joyce
Read the last 3 cantos of Paradiso and resume chapter 1 of Ulysses on p. 15.
April 5 selections: TBA
Monday, March 5, 7:30 p.m.
Classics Book Group
Prometheus Bound and The Suppliants, by Aeschylus
April 2 selection: The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika
Tuesday, March 6, 7 p.m.
Travel Book Group
The Masque of Africa, by V.S. Naipaul
April 3 selection: Last Places: A Journey in the North, by Lawrence Millman
Wednesday, March 7, 7:30 p.m.
Futurist Book Group
The Next Wave: On the Hunt for Al Qaeda's American Recruits, by Catherine Herridge
April 4 selection: Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future, by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, and Meera Balarajan
Thursday, March 8
6:30 - Fantasy Book Group
Mythago Wood by Holdstock
April 12 selection: The Magicians, Grossman
7:30 - Science Fiction Book Group
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
April 12 selection: Everything Matters, by Ron Currie
Sunday, March 11, 4 p.m.
Swarthmore / Memoirs of Africa
Extra meeting at Arlington Central Library Auditorium
1015 N. Quincy St., Arlington, VA
Country of My Skull, by Antjie Krog
Regular meeting: Monday, March 19, 7:30 p.m. The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka
April 16 selection: Country of My Skull, by Antjie Krog
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News from the Coffeehouse
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Today is the 6th anniversary of Modern Times Coffeehouse. The Coffeehouse will be closing at 9 p.m. More celebratory plans will be announced. Plan to visit on Thursday for specials and surprises!
Click here for more news from the Modern Times blog or to follow them on Twitter.
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