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Click here for our online calendar 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 22
7 p.m. Anne Lamott & Sam Lamott- Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son (Riverhead, $26.95)
Friday, March 23
7 p.m. Jack Goldsmith - Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (W. W. Norton, $26.95)
Saturday, March 24
1 p.m. Reem Bassiouney - Professor Hanaa (Garnet, $14.95)
6 p.m. Traci Brimhall - Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems (W. W. Norton, $15.95)
Sunday, March 25
1 p.m. Lee Stout - A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women (Pennsylvania State Univ., $24.95)
5 p.m. David Dorsen - Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era (Harvard, $35)
Monday, March 26, 7 p.m.
Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac - Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds (PublicAffairs, $28.99)
Tuesday, March 27, 7 p.m.
Peter Beinart - The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, $26) |
Wednesday, March 28, 7 p.m.
Robert Shiller - Finance and the Good Society (Princeton Univ., $24.95)
Thursday, March 29, 7 p.m.
Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (Simon & Schuster, $28)
Friday, March 30, 7 p.m.
A Tribute to Anthony Shadid - House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26)
Saturday, March 31, 1 p.m.
Charles Kupchan - No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford Univ., $27.95)
Saturday, March 31, 6 p.m.
Douglas Schoen - Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond (Rowman & Littlefield, $27)
Sunday, April 1, 1 p.m.
Josh Meyer - The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Little, Brown, $27.99)
Sunday,April 1, 5 p.m.
Glen Finland - Next Stop: A Memoir (Amy Einhorn, $25.95)
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The Scoop from Brad and Lissa
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March Madness and Books about Sports
The greatest books about sports are often about much more. At their best, they give us a window on the human character, examining how competition in sports elicits the finest – or worst – in athletes expected to excel at the highest level under the greatest pressure. Good sports books also tell us something about our collective identity and cultural values. A few classics that come to mind are: David Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game (Hyperion, $16.99); Christine Brennan’s Best Seat in the House (Scribner, $53); and Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (W.W.Norton, $15.95), one of the rare sports books to be turned into a movie.
Now, with March Madness in full swing, opening day of baseball season around the corner, Peyton Manning’s future no longer in limbo, and weather good enough for a few rounds of golf, we wanted to recommend some favorite new titles from Politics & Prose’s inventory of great sports literature.
You don’t have to be a die-hard hoops fan to enjoy the recently published Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing by Jim Yardley (Knopf, $26.95). A former Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times,Yardley tells the story of a woeful professional basketball team in China that hires an American coach to turn things around. The book is a delightful, insightful, and often humorous look at Sino-American relations as seen through the prism of sports.
Baseball fans have no shortage of books to choose from as April approaches. One of the most comprehensive and thoughtful guides to the game is Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers by The Experts at Baseball Prospectus (Basic Books, $27.99). Following up on their 2006 guide, this newly-released volume explores questions ranging from how to build a decent bullpen to whether a good glove is worth as much as a good bat.
In Summer of ’68: The Season that Changed Baseball, and America, Forever (Da Capo, $25), author Tim Wendel recounts the extraordinary story of how the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers endured the political and social upheavals of 1968 to face each other in a World Series where more than baseball pride was at stake.
 A great choice for baseball sentimentalists is Driving Mr. Yogi: Yogi Berra, Ron Guidry, and Baseball’s Greatest Gift by Harvey Araton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26). The veteran sportswriter for The New York Times captures the essence of the unlikely and touching relationship that develops between two legendary players from different generations who keep each other company every year during spring training.
For those eager to get out on the links, a new book that will enhance any golfer’s understanding of the history, culture, and singular personalities of the game is American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf by James Dodson (Knopf, $28.95). Relying on a trove of primary sources, Dodson documents the lives of three of the greatest golfers in history, using their stories to explain how golf emerged from near extinction to become the popular and lucrative sport it is today.
We hope that these and many other sports titles on P&P’s shelves will provide enjoyment and entertainment, along with a greater appreciation of how sports reflect our individual fantasies, fears, and aspirations not only in athletics but in the greatest contest of all, life itself.
Now . . . back to our March madness brackets!
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David’s Deliberations
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Suggested Passover Haggadahs
Passover brings a rich set of Haggadahs (Haggadot in Hebrew) to Politics & Prose on display in the front of the store. I am so pleased that Carla Cohen's bibliography, began many years ago, continues to be used and appropriately revised. Carla started the bibliography to assist families in choosing Haggadahs that would fit their Seder needs for family and friends.
In response to a New York Times article on new Haggadahs, a few days ago, a friend asked, “What's wrong with the traditional ones?” Haggadah means narrative or telling. Narratives change. As the essentials of the Exodus story are retold, different emphases are placed on the story.
The newer Haggadahs certainly make use of tradition, but they adapt it to contemporary situations so that we increase our ability to experience the Exodus ourselves. And we do this by asking ourselves questions: What plagues afflict us now? To what are we enslaved? What forms of slavery continue to exist in our country - and in other countries? What can we do about it? What can we learn from those who fought for freedom and resisted slavery?
Click here for more.
We interpret Next Year in Jerusalem (the traditional Seder closing before the songs) to mean Next Year in a City of Peace. May All Humanity Be Redeemed.
Click here for more of our suggested Haggadahs.
If you are purchasing 5 or more of the same Haggadah, you will receive a 10% discount. If you purchase 10 or more, you receive a 20% discount.
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Booknotes
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Two reviews from Barbara Meade
 While I was reading Ahmed Rashid’s new book, Pakistan on the Brink (Viking, $26.95), I recollected a novel I had read about six months ago that takes place in the Northern Tribal Area on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Never have I more fully understood the saying, “all politics is local,” than I did in reading this beautiful short novel, The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad (Riverhead, $25,95). The power of the family, the power of the tribe, and the power of religious belief and ancestral codes all pervade this entirely sad and moving story and in doing so, remarkably convey more about the barriers to peace in this region than any nonfiction history or current events titles. Publishers Weekly wrote about this novel: “A shadowy, enchanting journey...A gripping book, as important for illuminating the current state of this region as it is timeless in its beautiful imagery and rhythmic prose.”
Click here to listen to a wonderful interview with Jamil Ahmad on NPR’s "Morning Edition"
Another short but hypnotic novel, The Sickness ($14.95), has just been published by Tin House Books, a small literary press in Portland. After reading the first chapter I was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of the writing, The author, Alberto Barrera Tyszka, is a Venezuelan writer and journalist and his book is translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. It’s difficult for me to know whether the luminosity in the writing comes from the original language or its translation, but whichever it is, The Sickness was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The story revolves around a father-son relationship in which both are doctors who have been committed to being open and forthright with their patients about their diagnoses and prognoses, but when the son receives confirmation of his father’s terminal lung cancer, his filial devotion turns into an open conflict with his medical ethics. It’s the moral ambiguities that make this novel interesting but lyrical turns of the prose that make it radiant.
- Barbara Meade
Lapham’s Quarterly - Spring 2012
Edited and published by Lewis H. Lapham, a former editor of Harper’s Magazine, Lapham’s Quarterly ($15) boasts a rich and historical retinue of essays, stories and poems, some written specifically for each volume and others added from thousands of years of the literary canon. Despite its relative youth in the world of magazine literature, Lapham’s Quarterly has already established a prestigious history (4 years in, it already possesses a nomination for the National Magazine Award, alongside such fantastic names like The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Sun).
Its newest edition “Means of Communication,” does not disappoint. In Mr. Lapham’s Preamble, our editor recognizes that “new means of communication give rise to new structures of feeling and thoughts.” His inventory of contributors ranges from the Greek philosopher Lucretius to the contemporary novelist Toni Morrison.
Click here for more.
-Anders T. Rosen |
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Ticketed Event On Sale Now
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 Sunday, April 29, 5 p.m.
Politics & Prose hosts
Madeleine Albright
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 (HarperCollins, $29.99)
at Sixth & I
600 I Street NW
Albright’s family history is inescapably a history of Europe during the Second World War. In this memoir of her early years, the former secretary of state and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations looks back to the Nazi invasion of her native Prague, then traces her family’s responses to war and the Holocaust, examining the options available at the time and reflecting on difficult decisions made.
Albright will be in-conversation with Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic.
Click here for more information and to purchase tickets. One general admission ticket is $15. One book and one ticket is $32. One book and two tickets, $40.
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Notecards of the Week
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Those who follow the Sidelines section of our weekly email will know that we are huge fans of Nikki McClure here at Politics & Prose. Spring is blossoming a bit early this year, and Nikki McClure’s Bloom Notecards (Chronicle, $14.95) are sure to foster fuzzy spring feelings. McClure’s intricate paper-cut illustrations and bold use of color capture the essence of spring: delicate yet wild. With four varieties - sunflowers, crocuses, violets, and daisies - these eco-friendly notecards are a great way to let your friends know you’re thinking of them while basking in the beauty of spring.
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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.
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, by Elaine Pagels (Viking, $27.95)
In her bestselling Reading Judas and The Gnostic Gospels, Pagels, Princeton professor of religion, made ancient texts vital by illuminating their history. Here she considers the Book of Revelation in light of events in the year 66 C.E., which included John of Patmos’s response to the Roman occupation of Jerusalem.
Carry the One, by Carol Anshaw (Simon & Schuster, $25)
Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest calamities and triumphs of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect.
Click here for all 24 of our discounted bestsellers.
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Classes
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Politics & Prose continues to add to its eclectic range of classes, from the poetry of Yeats to Noir to Cyborg Theory, from a lecture and walk about DC’s trees to a class on journal keeping:
Als
on offer this spring are classes by two acclaimed science writers
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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.
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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.
For more information, click the above hyperlinks to our website. For our full list of upcoming classes, please visit www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes/spring and www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes/summer There are many more to choose from and spaces are still available.
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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 April.
Members always save 20% on our author event books. Click here to register!
Thursday, March 22, 7 p.m.
Anne Lamott & Sam Lamott- Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son (Riverhead, $26.95)
Co-written with her son Sam, subject of Operating Instructions (Anchor, $15) and a new father at age 19, Lamott here ventures into the new ground of grandmotherhood. Based on a journal she kept during her grandson's first year, this memoir is a candid and often funny chronicle of family adjustments.
Friday, March 23, 7 p.m.
Jack Goldsmith - Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (W. W. Norton, $26.95)
While many provisions of the Patriot Act, along with detentions and military commissions, suggest that the presidency is more powerful and less subject to accountability than ever before, Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel, looks at the broader spectrum of checks and balances built into American government to argue that, in fact, the opposite is true.
Saturday, March 24, 1 p.m.
Reem Bassiouney - Professor Hanaa (Garnet, $14.95)
A successful academic but alone at age forty, Professor Hanaa wants both independence and the security of a traditional household. In her fifth novel, Bassiouney, a bestselling and award-winning Egyptian writer, explores gender and power relationships in contemporary Egypt through this portrait of a strong-minded woman professor.
Saturday, March 24, 6 p.m.
Traci Brimhall - Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems (W. W. Norton, $15.95)
After winning the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award for Rookery (Southern Illinois Univ., $14.95), Brimhall was awarded the 2011 Barnard Women Poes Prize for her second collection, described by Carolyn Forché, the contest’s judge as “poetry for the new century: awake to the world, spiritually profound, and radical with lyric intelligence.”
Sunday, March 25, 1 p.m.
Lee Stout - A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women (Pennsylvania State Univ., $24.95)
A staff assistant to President Nixon, Franklin was hired to bring more women into the federal government. Her efforts resulted in some 100 women assuming high-level executive positions, as well as increasing women’s presence on boards and commissions. Based on the “A Few Good Women” oral history project at the Penn State University Libraries, this book documents the Nixon-era push for equality of women in the workplace. Lee Stout will be joined by Barbara Hackman Franklin
Sunday March 25, 5 p.m.
David Dorsen - Henry Friendly, Greatest Judge of His Era (Harvard, $35)
In this first comprehensive biography of Friendly (1903-1986), Dorsen, a Washington-based lawyer, considers the circuit judge’s stellar record at Harvard Law School, during which time he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Brandeis; his work on the Second Circuit from 1959 to 1974; and his lasting achievements, especially in securities law.
Monday, March 26, 7 p.m.
Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac - Pax Ethnica: Where and How Diversity Succeeds (PublicAffairs, $28.99)
For this look at the peaceful corners of the world, the authors of Tournament of Shadows and Kingmakers combine anthropology, political history, and solid reporting to show how populations of diverse faiths and ethnicities have built thriving cultures in the Indian state of Kerala, the Russian republic of Tatarstan, and cities including Marseille and the Borough of Queens.
Tuesday, March 27, 7 p.m.
Peter Beinart - The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books, $26)
This assessment of Israel’s future, by the senior political writer for The Daily Beast and former New Republic editor, homes in on the occupation of the West Bank as the main threat to the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland. Beinart argues that the occupation endangers Israeli democracy and discourages liberal American Jews from supporting Israel.
Wednesday, March 28, 7 p.m.
Robert Shiller - Finance and the Good Society (Princeton Univ., $24.95)
While the finance industry must shoulder its share of blame for the economic downturn, Shiller, economist and author of The Subprime Solution and Irrational Exuberance, argues that it shouldn’t be condemned outright. Rather, with innovation and redefined roles, finance can contribute to the common good.
Thursday, March 29, 7 p.m.
Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power (Simon & Schuster, $28)
For this unique portrait, Nagorski, the veteran Newsweek journalist and author of The Greatest Battle, has assembled the first-hand impressions of Americans who met Hitler during the Nazi rise to power. The accounts left by figures including Charles Lindbergh, William Randolph Hearst, and W.E.B. Dubois range from alarmed to oblivious.
Friday, March 30, 7 p.m.
A Tribute to Anthony Shadid - House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26)
Shadid told the stories of ordinary Iraqis in his acclaimed Night Draws Near. In this book, he used his own Lebanese family history, and especially his account of reconstructing his great-grandfather’s house, to recapture the vibrant past of a region now seemingly known only for conflict.
Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, nominated again this year for his coverage of the human toll of conflict in the Middle East, was scheduled to speak at P&P, but he 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 will use this evening - when Anthony would have been speaking at P&P - as a public tribute to celebrate, with readings from his book, his work as a journalist and his friendship. Featured speakers will be Steve Coll, David Hoffman, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. We hope you will join us.
Saturday, March 31, 1 p.m.
Charles Kupchan - No One's World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford Univ., $27.95)
Kupchan, a professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, challenges the prevailing view that Western order and dominance will continue to spread, arguing instead that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity.
Saturday, March 31, 6 p.m.
Douglas Schoen - Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond (Rowman & Littlefield, $27)
As a Democratic consultant, Fox News political analyst, and author of The Political Fix, Declaring Independence, and others, Schoen is well-positioned for this incisive look at the pre-election political climate. He finds that the mainstream electorate is increasingly dissatisfied with the politicians, lobbyists, and fund-raisers who seem to call the shots.
Sunday, April 1, 1 p.m.
Josh Meyer - The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Little, Brown, $27.99)
With co-author Terry McDermott, Meyer, former chief terrorism reporter for the Los Angeles Times, draws on sources ranging from former jihadis to relatives of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to recount in detail how the U.S. tracked and captured the man who planned the 9/11 attacks.
Sunday,April 1, 5 p.m.
Glen Finland - Next Stop: A Memoir (Amy Einhorn, $25.95)
A journalist, writing teacher, and former TV news reporter, Finland is also the mother of an autistic son. Her memoir is a moving account of a family caring for a child with special needs, of preparing him for the world - and then letting him go.
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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.
Enter to Win Tickets to Signature Theatre’s Brother Russia
March 6-April 15
 Signature Theatre
4200 Campbell Ave.
Arlington, Virginia
703 820 9771
Brother Russia: A world premiere rock musical from the award-winning creators of The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick
Book & Lyrics by John Dempsey
Music by Dana Rowe
Directed by Eric Schaeffer
In a desolate potato field north of Omsk, a comically fourth-rate Russian theatre troupe sets up its tents and wows the local farmers with rock-fueled adaptations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Tonight, however, the company will toss classic literature aside to showcase the life story of their impresario and star, the seemingly immortal Brother Russia – more commonly known as Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Yes, that Rasputin: the hypnotic mystic who seduced and ruled the Tsar and Tsarina in the waning days of Imperial Russia.
“Dempsey’s lyrics are exceptionally witty, and Rowe’s music jaunty and tuneful, yet with the sophisticated sweep of a Sondheim.” — TIME Magazine
Use discount code ROCK45 when purchasing to receive $45 tickets for select performances.
We are offering free tickets to the Signature Theatre’s Brother Russia on Tuesday, April 10. To enter the drawing, please send an email with your name and phone number to Rose Levine at rlevine@politics-prose.com
Friday, March 30, 8 - 10 a.m.
 Greater Washington Board of Trade
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center -- Rotunda
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Liza Mundy
The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family (Simon & Schuster, $27)
Join the Board of Trade and TD Bank for a lively conversation with award-winning journalist, Liza Mundy. Examining an important cultural shift and fundamental new American reality, her new book, The Richer Sex explores ways in which women will surpass men as primary breadwinners in the coming decades to become the most financially powerful generation of women in history. Ms. Mundy will speak to how this revolution will transform lives and business - for the better.
Click here for more information and $100 tickets ($75, BOT Members). First 100 attendees receive a copy of The Richer Sex.
Saturday, March 31, 8 pm.
 Sixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
Giada De Laurentiis
Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner (Clarkson Potter, $35)
The bestselling author and Food Network star comes to DC in celebration of the release of her latest cookbook. Providing a sneak peek into Giada’s day-to-day life, the book -- full of go-to recipes to get a delicious meal on the table in a flash -- is, as Giada says, “for everyone who comes home after a long day and wonders what to cook for dinner.” Giada will be interviewed by Bonnie Benwick, interim Food Editor of The Washington Post.
Click here to purchase tickets (1 book + 1 ticket=$35 or 1 book + 2 tickets= $45). Questions? Call 202-408-3100
Thursday April 5, 8:30 - 10:30 a.m.
 The Greater Washington Board of Trade
The Hamilton
600 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC
Charlotte Beers
I'd Rather Be in Charge: A Legendary Business Leader's Roadmap for Achieving Pride, Power, and Joy at Work (Vanguard Press, $25.99)
Join Charlotte Beers, former Chairman and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather for a conversational interview on her exceptional career and new book. In the highly competitive and often cutthroat world of advertising, Charlotte Beers became the first female ever to head two giant multinational advertising agencies. She helped build many of the most important brands around the world, revolutionizing major ad campaigns and bringing unprecedented success to her clients and the advertising agencies she managed. In 1997, Fortune magazine placed her on their cover and proclaimed her to be one of the most powerful women in America.
Beers describes her pioneering experiences, lessons from her peers, such as Martha Stewart and Suze Orman, and stories of her students’ transformations. The book offers a unique blueprint for women who strive to achieve positions of leadership and influence.
Click here for more information and $100 tickets ($75, BOT Members). First 75 attendees receive a copy of I'd Rather Be in Charge.
Tuesday, April 10, 7:30 p.m.
 The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh Street
Bethesda, Maryland
Kyle Dargan, Gregory Pardlo, and A.B. Spellman
Angles Of Ascent: A W.W. Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (W.W.Norton, $24.95)
The Bethesda Writer’s Center and Politics & Prose join forces and are pleased to announce the inaugural reading of the Politics & Prose at The Writer’s Center Poetry Series.
Kyle Dargan is author of two collections of poems, Bouquet of Hungers (Univ. of Georgia, $18.95) and The Listening (Univ. of Georgia, $18.95), winner of the Cave Canem Prize. His poems have also appeared in Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Denver Quarterly, Poet Lore, Callaloo, and other journals. He is an assistant professor of literature at American University and editor of Post No Ills Magazine, which he founded in 2008. In 2008, he won the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and he was selected as the 2007 Drew Darrow Memorial Reader at Bucknell University.
Gregory Pardlo is an associate editor of Callaloo, graduated from Rutgers University and received the MFA in poetry from New York University in 2001. He is author of Totem (Copper Canyon, $14), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize; and translator of Pencil of Rays and Spiked Mace: Selected Poems of Niels Lyngsoe (Toronto: BookThug, 2005). Pardllo is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
A. B. Spellman is author of The Beautiful Days (Poets Press, $6), Things I Must Have Known (Coffee House, $16), Four Lives in the Bebop Business (Pantheon, 1966, $13.99), later reissued in 2004 in an updated edition under the title of Four Jazz Lives (Univ. of Michigan, $19) and Art Tatum: A Critical Biography (a chapbook). He has taught at Rutgers University, Morehouse College, Harvard University, and other institutions. He also worked for several years for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he served in various positions such as director of the Arts in Education Study Project, director of the Arts Endowment Expansion Program, and deputy chairman for the Office of Guidelines, Panel, and Council Operations.
This reading will be followed by a reception and book signing. We will announce additional readings as they are scheduled. For more information call The Writer’s Center at 301-654-8664 or Politics & Prose at 202-364-1919. General admission is $5.00 (free to members and full-time students.)
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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 28)
Have you ever wondered why birds can be such talented musicians or perform elaborate, sometimes comical, mating dances? Why do some birds have brightly colored feathers while others are masters of camouflage? How do penguin parents find their chicks among thousands of others that look exactly the same? In Bird Talk (Flash Point, $17.99), Lita Judge answers these complex questions. Judge's skilful illustrations make each bird fly off the page with life and personality, giving readers a true sense of what it must be like to see these stunning creatures in the natural world. Ages 5-9. –Deysha Rivera
 Children’s Blast from the Past
(20% off for Members through March 28)
How much do you know about eggs? Sea turtles lay up to 200 eggs in the sand. The dogfish shark begins life in a leathery egg case with tendrils. An ostrich egg can weigh as much as 8 pounds. But regardless of its size, weight, color, or texture, An Egg is Quiet (Chronicle, $16.99). Award-winning artist Sylvia Long and author Dianna Aston’s book is brimming with interesting facts about the incredible variety of eggs, while its poetic language and elegant illustrations celebrate their beauty and wonder. Try to match the colorful eggs at the beginning of the book with the young who’ve hatched at the end! Ages 4-8.
We still have copies of Super Sized Slugger (Hyperion, $16.99), signed by Cal Ripken, Jr. Click to order or call us at the store.
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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Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight was an immediate hit and its popularity has never flagged. Alexandra Fuller’s most recent family memoir, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, has so far been charting a similar course. Fuller’s vivid, beautiful prose conveys the allure of Africa’s diverse landscapes as well as the emotional terrain she grew up with. She recounts her irrepressible mother’s trajectory from the Isle of Skye to Kenya and finally to Zambia, and her father’s early wanderings until he found Africa and his wife. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
A lifelong fisherman, New York Times seafood writer Paul Greenberg thinks of fish as creatures of the wild. But with many natural fisheries depleted or close to it, the answer seems to be aquaculture. In Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Greenberg considers the history and the prospects of the four most popular food fish--bass, tuna, cod, and salmon. He looks at how the oceans have bred these creatures, what humans prize in them, and how fish-farming will alter their behavior and taste. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
If Saint Patrick’s Day whets your appetite for more Irish culture, take a look at the funny, deft, entirely brilliant stories of Roddy Doyle. His recent collection, Bullfighting, catches up on some of the characters he introduced in earlier fiction like The Van and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. These people are older now, a little stiffer in the joints, unemployed, regretful, but still full of the gift of the gab and a lively set of opinions on life today, whether it’s Ireland’s recent boom-and-bust or their own fortunes. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
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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CROSSING MUSICAL BOUNDARIES
 Esperanza Spalding, Radio Music Society (Telarc, $13.98) – Bassist, singer, and composer Esperanza Spalding’s follow-up to Chamber Music Society is a pop, jazz, and soul-fest of catchy tunes, snappy arrangements, featuring guests from all over the musical map. Catch the Esperanza spirit; read the profile in last Sunday’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/arts/music/esperanza-spalding-on-a-year-in-the-spotlight.html?_r=1&ref=music ).
Don Byron New Gospel Quintet, Love, Peace, and Soul (Savoy, $15.98) – The roots of jazz and gospel go way back together, and have been melding or “feuding” ever since. Clarinetist and saxophonist Don Byron’s new group reaches back to two blues and gospel giants—Thomas A. Dorsey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe—for modern inspiration. Byron and his New Gospel Quintet (D.K. Dyson on vocals, pianist Xavier Davis, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer Pheeroan akLaff) bring out the joy and fervor on these classics, such as “Highway to Heaven” and “Didn’t It Rain?”
Listen to the Tom Moon’s review from All Things Considered (http://www.npr.org/2012/03/12/147519743/gospel-meets-jazz-with-unpredictable-results ).
Anoushka Shankar, Traveller (Deutsche Grammophon, $18.98) – Flamenco has Roma/Gypsy roots which can be traced back to migrations from the Punjab and Rajasthan. On her Traveller project, sitarist Anoushka Shankar brings musicians from Indian classical and flamenco traditions together. The informative notes cite similarities in the percussive handclaps (palmas), the raw vocals, even the “rhythmic bond” between dancers and percussionists in the two traditions. This is a fascinating fusion that works.
Theo Bleckmann, Hello Earth!: The Music of Kate Bush (Winter & Winter, $17.98) – Vocalist Theo Bleckmann is one of my favorites: his projects have ranged from Berlin cabaret songs and American Songbook standards, to the songs of Charles Ives and Meredith Monk. His latest is an homage to the British singer Kate Bush, whose songs from the 1980s to today (as well as her dramatic voice and appearance) are still very much resonant. Bleckmann is joined by a quartet well versed in jazz and contemporary chamber music for a startling new look at these classic songs.
NPR’s jazz and pop bloggers (Patrick Jarenwattananon and Ann Power, a huge Kate Bush fan) had a good e-mail conversation about this project, with some song highlights (http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2012/03/13/148531597/kate-bush-as-heard-by-this-dude-who-sings-jazz-a-conversation ).
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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 22, 7:30 p.m.
Fascinating History Book Group
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford
April 26 selection: Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
Sunday, March 25, 3:30 p.m.
Teen Book Group
Double, by Jenny Valentine
April 22 selection: TBA
Monday, March 26, 7:30 p.m.
Public Affairs Book Group
Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
April 23 selection: The Healing of America, by T.R. Reid
Tuesday, March 27, 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Book GroupCarl Sandburg: Selected Poems; Edited by Paul Berman
April 24 selection:The Dance Most of All, by Jack Gilbert
Wednesday, March 28, 7:30 p.m.
Graphic Novel Book Group
Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Thursday, April 26 selection: Jerusalem, by Guy Delisle
(Note: The Graphic Novel Book Group will meet on the fourth Thursday of April.)
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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News from the Coffeehouse
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Here are Alexander and Yoko braving a windy day and a demanding photographer. Don't they look great sporting our new tee-shirts? You would too, I bet. You would have to explain the "treacherous imagery" of the design (drafted beautifully by our friend, Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn) to your jealous friends, but you can figure it out. You are customers of Modern Times Coffeehouse after all.
Available in Gold and Sea Foam Green. X-small to X-large sizes available. Ask your friendly barista.
Click here for more news from the Modern Times blog or to follow them on Twitter.
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