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Week of April 5

Pitchapalooza!
Author Events with Jacqueline Winspear, Benjamin Busch, Richard Zacks,
and Norton Juster

Popular Destinations
Click a link below to skip down to the relevant section

Upcoming Events Offsite Events
Classes
Signed Book of the Week
Children and TeensMusic

 

Click here for our online calendar to preview events through May.
Members always save 20% on our author event books. Click here to join!
Click the event titles for more information about each event and to purchase the book.


7 p.m. Jacqueline Winspear - Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (HarperCollins, $25.99)

Friday, April 6 – Passover – No events

Saturday, April 7 – Passover – No events

Sunday, April 8 – Easter – No Events

Reduced hours: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Monday, April 9
7 p.m. Benjamin Busch - Dust to Dust: A Memoir (Ecco, $26.99)

Tuesday, April 10
7 p.m. Linda Greenhouse - The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Univ., $11.95)

Wednesday, April 11
4:30 p.m. Blaine Harden and Shin Donghyuk - Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West (Viking, $26.95)

7 p.m. Pitchapalooza! - Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry - The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It . . . Successfully (Workman, $15.95)

Thursday, April 12
10:30 a.m. Norton Juster - The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth and The Phantom Tollbooth 50th Anniversary Edition (Knopf, $29.99/ $24)
7 p.m. Richard Zacks - Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (Doubleday, $27.95)

Friday, April 13
10:30 a.m. Neela Vaswani - Same Sun Here (Candlewick, $15.99)
7 p.m. Dale Carpenter - Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence V. Texas (W. W. Norton, $29.95)

Saturday, April 14
1 p.m. Tim Wendel - Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--and America--Forever (Da Capo Press, $25)
3:30 p.m. David Corn - Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party (William Morrow, $26.99)
6 p.m. Simon Johnson - White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You (Pantheon, $26.95)

Sunday, April 15
12 noon Timothy Snyder – Tony Judt: Thinking the Twentieth Century (Penguin Press, $36)
5 p.m. Rachel S. Cox - Into Dust and Fire: Five Young Americans Who Went First to Fight the Nazi Army (NAL, $26.95)


The Scoop from Brad and Lissa


THE SCOOP FROM BRAD AND LISSA

April 5, 2012

PitchapaloozaOne of the greatest challenges of aspiring writers is getting an audience with an agent, let alone a publisher. At Politics & Prose, we believe in assisting first-time authors and finding ways to give their works wider notice. To that end, we recently installed Opus, a print-on-demand machine that enables writers to publish their own manuscripts without going through traditional channels. And now we’re offering another opportunity for authors in our community to get their proverbial foot in the publishing door.

On Wednesday, April 11, at 7 p.m., we’re hosting our first Pitchapalooza!Think American Idol for books, sort of. Part workshop, part contest, Pitchapalooza is designed to help writers sell their books to publishers. Participating authors will get one minute to make their pitches, then receive detailed critiques from Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, who bring to this exercise their own experience as agents and writers. They co-wrote The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, $15.95). Two other judges will join Eckstut and Sterry.

Here’s how it’ll work: Up to 20 writers will be selected at random to pitch their book ideas and, at the end, the judges will pick a winner, who will receive an introduction to an agent or a publisher. In the last month, three writers have gotten publishing deals as a result of participating in a Pitchapalooza.

To sign up to pitch, you must purchase a copy of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published from Politics & Prose. We’ll compile a list of potential pitchers on the night of the event. So please spread the word, and even if you have no proposal to pitch, come join the fun. The event is free for those who just want to watch.

  • Brad and Lissa

Booknotes


French

Books in French / Des Livres en Français

Politics & Prose Bookstore sells books in French! We already have a selection of children’s books; however, in response to requests from the francophone community, we now have a selection of adult literature in French.

Come in and peruse these titles which include classic and contemporary francophone literature such as L'Art Français de la Guerre by Jenni Alexis, Moi Tituba Sorcière by Maryse Condé, Délicatesse by David Foenkinos, Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo and L’invitée by Simone de Beauvoir.

Also, selected children's French books are 30% off this week. (Click here to read more.)

We can special order most books although it takes at least two weeks for orders to arrive. We also welcome your suggestions for good books to add to our shelves.

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Des livres en français sont en vente chez Politics & Prose Bookstore! Nous avons déjà une sélection de livres pour enfants, mais en réponse aux demandes de la communauté francophone, nous avons désormais une sélection de littératures pour adultes en français.

Venez
prendre connaissance de ces titres qui incluent la littérature francophone classique et contemporaine tels que L’Art Français de la Guerre par Jenni Alexis, Moi Tituba Sorcière par Maryse Condé, Délicatesse par David Foenkinos, Notre-Dame de Paris par Victor Hugo et L'Invitée par Simone de Beauvoir.

En outre, des sélections de livres en français pour enfants sont en réduction de 30% cette semaine. (Cliquez ici.)

Nous pouvons faire des commandes spéciales sur la plupart des livres (Notez qu’il faut allouer au moins deux semaines pour la livraison des commandes). N’hésitez pas à nous envoyer vos suggestions sur des bons livres à ajouter à nos étagères.

  • Kerri Poore

Ticketed Events On Sale Now


 

Sunday, April 29, 5 p.m.

Madeleine AlbrightPolitics & Prose hosts
Madeleine Albright
Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
(HarperCollins, $29.99)
at Sixth & I Synagogue
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.

 

Thursday, May 3, 7 p.m.

Dan RatherPolitics & Prose hosts
Dan Rather
Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News (Grand Central, $27.99)
at Sixth & I Synagogue
600 I Street NW

Anchor of the CBS Evening News for twenty-four years, Rather began reporting in 1950 with the AP. Later he was a play-by-play radio announcer for college football and minor league baseball. In 1961 he earned the moniker “Hurricane Dan’ for his innovative live reporting of Hurricane Carla, work that brought him to the attention of CBS. Rather’s memoir recounts these and other landmark events of his long and distinguished career.

Click here for more information and to purchase tickets. One general admission ticket is $12, or receive two free tickets with the purchase of the book ($27.99) from Politics & Prose.

 

Bestsellers


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.

Bestsellers

Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel, by Jacqueline Winspear (HarperCollins, $25.99)
The ninth volume in the award-winning Maisie Dobbs series is set in London in 1933. Starting with the suspicious death of a Covent Garden fruit and vegetable vendor—who once worked with Maisie’s father—the case escalates to involve figures of national and international stature such as Winston Churchill.

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power  by Rachel Maddow (Crown, $25)
The host of the Emmy Award-winning “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, argues that we’ve drifted away from America’s original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today’s war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring Reagan’s presidency, the rise of executive authority, the outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, and the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us. Ultimately, she shows just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower political discourse.

Click here for all 24 of our discounted bestsellers.

New In Paperback


Paperbacks

The Free World, by David Bezmozgis (Picador, $15)

As with his dazzling debut Natasha: and Other Stories (Picador, $14), David Bezmozgis's first novel The Free World focuses on the immigrant experience. In Natasha, it was that of the Berman family recently emigrated to Canada adjusting to their new lives. In The Free World, the Krasnansky family -- three generations of Russian Jews -- is stuck in bureaucratic limbo in Rome. Bezmozgis's strength lies in his compassion for his characters, their meditations on imperfect pasts and unsure futures told with black humor and keen insight.

-Sarah Baline

The Origins of Political Order : From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, by Francis Fukuyama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18)

The first of a projected two-volume study of state formation, the latest work from the author of the much-discussed The End of History and the Last Man takes a rich, multi-disciplinary approach, examining how politics and government are grounded in geography, biology, economics, and ideology; Fukuyama’s many examples, especially from China and India, demonstrate the evolutionary mechanisms at work in organized societies.

Click here to see more of our staff recommendations.

Click here to see more new releases.

 

Spring & Summer Classes


Classes

We have just added a new class to our spring/summer line-up.

A two-part intensive writing clinic, taught by Washington, D.C.-based author Alicia Oltuski, (Precious Objects (Scribner, $24)) will meet on two Tuesdays, June 19 and 26, from 1-3 p.m. Click here for more information about this class.

Sign-ups are still available for a wide range of spring classes, from Faulkner to Memoir Writing to Cyborg Theory. Please visit www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes/spring and www.politics-prose.com/classes/2012-classes/summer

  • Susan Coll

eBook of the Week


Ebook

Playbook 2012: Inside the Circus--Romney, Santorum and the GOP Race, by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas (POLITICO/Random House eBook, $2.99)

Two of America’s most perceptive political reporters join forces for an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the race for the White House in POLITICO’s Playbook 2012, a series of four instant digital books on the, presidential election. The second edition, Inside the Circus, pulls back the curtain on the pursuit of the Republican nomination, as operatives jockey for position and strategists vie to fashion a message that can win over all factions of the fractious GOP. Click here for more about Inside the Circus and other eBooks from Politics & Prose.

Podcast of the Week


Podcast

On March 16, 2012, Elaine Pagels spoke at Politics & Prose about her book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (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.

Click here to listen to the podcast online or click here to download the MP3.

Click here to browse more author talks recorded at Politics & Prose.

Sideline of the Week


Passover

Looking for that perfect Passover gift this year? How about the Passover Server (Rite Lite, $6) - the perfect utensil for your Passover Seder. Made of stainless steel with “Passover” emblazoned on the head, the Passover server is a great way to add a little sass to your holiday. Pass the latkes and the gefilte fish!

  • Mark Moran

Coming Soon to Your Favorite Bookstore


 

Click here for our online events calendar and to preview events through May.
Members always save 20% on our author event books. Click here to join!

Events

Thursday, April 5, 7 p.m.

Jacqueline Winspear - Elegy for Eddie: A Maisie Dobbs Novel (HarperCollins, $25.99)
The ninth volume in the award-winning Maisie Dobbs series is set in London in 1933. Starting with the suspicious death of a Covent Garden fruit and vegetable vendor—who once worked with Maisie’s father—the case escalates to involve figures of national and international stature such as Winston Churchill.

Friday, April 6

Passover – No events

Saturday, April 7

Passover – No events

Sunday, April 8

Easter – No Events
Reduced hours: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Monday, April 9, 7 p.m.

Benjamin Busch - Dust to Dust: A Memoir (Ecco, $26.99)
Busch served two tours in Iraq as a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and his wartime experiences are at the heart of this memoir. What gives them meaning, however, are his accounts of his earlier years, from his childhood adventures in rural New York to his training in North Carolina, California, and Ukraine. Busch, son of the writer Frederick Busch, is also an actor, photographer, and film director.

Tuesday, April 10, 7 p.m.

Linda Greenhouse - The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Univ., $11.95)
Having covered the Supreme Court for some thirty years as a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, Greenhouse knows the institution inside and out. This primer covers the court’s history, outlines major decisions, describes its role in the overall workings of government, and details how cases get to the court, what the Chief Justice does, and much more.

Wednesday, April 11, 4:30 p.m.

Blaine Harden and Shin Donghyuk - Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West (Viking, $26.95)
Little news comes out of North Korea and even fewer people. Harden, an experienced foreign correspondent and author of A River Lost, tells the remarkable story of Shin Donghyuk, a man who survived not only the brutality of a political prison camp, but a daring escape from it.

Events

Wednesday, April 11, 7 p.m.

Pitchapalooza!
Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry - The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It . . . Successfully (Workman, $15.95)
Described as “American Idol for books (only without Simon),” this workshop/contest is designed to help writers sell their books to publishers. Participating authors get one minute to make their pitch, then receive a detailed critique from Eckstut and Sterry, co-founders of The Book Doctors, and guest panelists. Twenty writers will be selected at random to pitch their book. To sign up, purchase of the book is required. Judges - in addition to Arielle and David - will be announced closer to the event. Click here for more details.

Thursday, April 12, 10:30 a.m.

Norton Juster - The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth and The Phantom Tollbooth 50th Anniversary Edition (Knopf, $29.99/ $24)
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this beloved classic, two new editions have been released. The Anniversary Edition includes new essays by authors such as Suzanne Collins and Mo Willems and reprints Maurice Sendak’s 35th-anniversary tribute. The Annotated version includes notes and interviews with Juster by Leonard Marcus. Ages 8-11.

Thursday, April 12, 7 p.m.

Richard Zacks - Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (Doubleday, $27.95)
Appointed police commissioner of New York City in 1895, the young Theodore Roosevelt vowed to clean up a metropolis teeming with gambling, prostitution, and police corruption. Zacks, author of The Pirate Hunter, paints vivid scenes of Gilded Age mischief and shows Roosevelt doing battle with Tammany Hall. As his mission succeeded, however, TR became less popular.

Friday, April 13, 10:30 a.m.

Neela Vaswani - Same Sun Here (Candlewick, $15.99)

Meena is an Indian immigrant living in New York City; River is from Kentucky. Yet their seemingly distinct worlds present few obstacles to their pen-pal friendship, and the two discuss everything from grandmothers to environmentalism. Vaswani and co-author Silas House interweave Meena’s and River’s voices in this tale of two children facing life’s difficulties. Ages 11-13.

Events

Friday, April 13, 7 p.m.

Dale Carpenter - Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence V. Texas (W. W. Norton, $29.95)

This narrative history of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that invalidated America’s sodomy laws, vividly brings to life the people involved in both sides of the case. A professor of civil rights and civil liberties law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Carpenter places this landmark case within the larger framework of the persecution of gays and lesbians in the U.S .Carpenter will be in conversation with Andrew Sullivan, the Dish blogger.

Saturday, April 14, 1 p.m.

Tim Wendel - Summer of '68: The Season That Changed Baseball--and America--Forever (Da Capo Press, $25)

America’s pastime was as caught up in the turmoil of 1968 as everything else in the country was. In his account of that year’s World Series, Wendel, founding editor of USA Today Baseball Weekly and author of nine books, puts the ball games into the wider social context, vividly conveying what it meant to Detroit—the scene of riots the previous year—to root for the Tigers against the defending champions, the St. Louis Cardinals.

Saturday, April 14, 3:30 p.m.

David Corn - Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party (William Morrow, $26.99)
Drawing on extensive interviews with White House and congressional insiders, the veteran political journalist and commentator details the political, economic, and foreign policy challenges Obama has faced since the 2010 midterm elections. Corn argues that Obama has proven himself a leader willing to take risks and make tough choices in order to gain long-term goals.

Saturday, April 14, 6 p.m.

Simon Johnson - White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You (Pantheon, $26.95)
As they did in 13 Bankers, Johnson, MIT professor and former IMF chief economist, and co-author James Kwak, fellow at Harvard Law School, take on thorny economic problems and offer compelling analyses. Here they trace the history of America and national debt, looking back to the Founding Fathers’ arguments about taxation, showing how the strength of the dollar has made borrowing easy, and outlining future consequences of continuing high national debt.

Events

Sunday, April 15, 12 noon

Timothy Snyder – Tony Judt: Thinking the Twentieth Century (Penguin Press, $36)
History is more than a series of events, and in his final book, the late Tony Judt discussed pivotal ideas of the twentieth century. In a series of conversations with his friend and fellow-historian Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands, Judt covered topics including the role of the intellectual in public life, the task of the historian, and the case for social democracy.

Sunday, April 15, 5 p.m.

Rachel S. Cox - Into Dust and Fire: Five Young Americans Who Went First to Fight the Nazi Army (NAL, $26.95)
Before Pearl Harbor drew the U.S. officially into World War II, a few Americans joined the conflict on their own. Cox, contributing writer for CQ Researcher, recounts the lives and experiences of five New England men who went to fight with the British in the spring of 1941.


 

P&P Customers Are Also Invited To . . .


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 [email protected] if you are planning an event and would like us to supply the books.

Monday, April 9, 7:30 p.m.

Steve Jobs

 

Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 S. Park Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD
Walter Isaacson
Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, $35)
Walter Isaacson had exclusive and unprecedented access to Mr. Jobs and conducted more than forty interviews over two years with him. He also interviewed more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues. Walter Isaacson is the former chairman and CEO of CNN and former editor of TIME magazine. In 2003, he became president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute.

Please sign up in advance for this free event by calling the Village Center at 301-656-2797.

Tuesday, April 10, 7:30 p.m.

The Writer’s Center
4508 Walsh Street
Bethesda, Maryland
Kyle Dargan, Gregory Pardlo, and A.B. Spellman
Preview reading:
Angles Of Ascent: A W.W. Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (W.W.Norton, $24.95 - due February 2013)

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.)

Wednesday, April 11, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.

FHI 360Rippling
Globe Theatre
1927 Florida Avenue, NW

Beverly Schwartz
Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World (Jossey -Bass, $27.95)

Hear about the amazing lives of social entrepreneurs and how they impact social change around the world. Schwartz presents some of today's most innovative and effective approaches to solving social and environmental challenges. In Rippling, she demonstrates that when empathy, creativity, passion, and persistence are combined, significant, life-altering progress is indeed possible. The book offers a fascinating, inside look of Ashoka, the world’s largest association of social entrepreneurs and how their vision of a world where "everyone is a changemaker" is taking place all around us. Bill Drayton, the Founder of Ashoka and Aleta Margolis, Ashoka Fellow and Founder of the Center for Inspired Teaching will join her in a lively panel discussion.

Please click here to RSVP.

Friday, April 13, 6:30 p.m.

Offsite1Korean Cultural Center, Embassy of the Republic of Korea
2450 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Kyung-sook Shin
Please Look After Mom (Vintage, $14.95)

Shin, a best-selling author in Korea, recently became the first Korean and first woman to receive the Man Asian Literary Prize for the English translation of Please Look After Mom, which is now being distributed worldwide. In this beautifully written and intensely compelling novel, Shin tells the story of one family’s search for their mother – who goes missing one afternoon on the Seoul subway – that unfolds to reveal the secret lives of mothers.

A free RSVP is required to attend this event. Visit www.Dynamic-Korea.com and click on ‘Calendar’ for more information.

This event is part of K-Literature, which aims to promote Korea-US understanding and artistic exchange by welcoming Korean literary figures to the Korean Cultural Center in Washington DC.

Tuesday, April 17, 7:30 p.m.

Offsite

National Geographic Live!
1600 M Street, NW
Ed Kashi
Three (powerHouse Books, $45.00)
Witness No. 8 (Nazraeli Press, $40.00)

For the March, issue of National Geographic, photographer Ed Kashi traveled to Marseille, France’s second largest city and a magnet for North African immigrants. Known for his insightful coverage of the Muslim world, Kashi discovered people of all backgrounds, native and newcomer, living together peacefully in this diverse Mediterranean seaport.

Click here for $20 tickets ($18, NG Members) and for more information.

Wednesday, April 18, 7 p.m.

OffisteSixth & I
600 I Street, NW
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown

A.J. Jacobs
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection (Simon & Schuster, $26)
Drop Dead Healthy catalogs how Jacobs -- the best-selling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All -- subjected himself to a grueling but entertaining regimen of exercise, diets and experiments that yielded surprising insights. He assembled a team of expert medical advisers, pledged to disentangle medical myths from reality, and broke down his quest body part by body part. The book tests our culture's assumptions and obsessions with what makes good health.

Tickets are $10, or receive two (2) FREE tickets with the purchase of the book through Sixth & I ($26). Click here to purchase. If you have questions, call 202-408-3100.

 

From the Children and Teens' Department


Childrens

Children's Book of the Week
(20% off for everyone through April 11)
In 1934, women were considered dainty and delicate. They were expected to stay at home. So when Mrs. Harkness decided to continue her husband’s China expedition, everyone thought she was crazy. William Harkness had set off to bring the first live panda to the United States from China, but he had died while on the expedition. Two months later, Mrs. Harkness boarded a steamer to China to complete her husband’s mission. Alicia Potter tells the remarkable true story of Mrs. Harkness and the Panda (Knopf, $16.99), which Melissa Sweet illustrates with period maps and postcards. An author’s note explains the differences in attitudes about animal conservation between the 1930s and today. Ages 5-10. – Heidi Powell

Children’s Blast from the Past
(20% off for Members through April 11)
There is an African legend that says the child who can ride The White Giraffe (Penguin Press, $6.99) will have power over all the animals. Martine believes that this mythical creature lives on her grandmother’s South African wildlife reserve, to which she has just moved after the death of her parents. Lauren St. John’s original story and David Dean’s black watercolor illustrations create a lush magical mystery. Ages 9-12.

 

Livres en Français pour les Enfants / Children’s Books in French!

LivreSelected children's French books are 30% off this week. Please come in and choose from various titles including Aboie Georges by Jules Feiffer, Le Roi Babar by Jean De Brunhoff, Oukélé la Télé by Susie Morgenstern and La Provision de Bisous de Zou by Michel Gay.

Also, we recently received a new shipment of children's books so we have plenty of new titles on hand such as Un Livre by Hervé Tullet, Le Livre de Si by Ghislaine Roman, Les Petites Filles Modeles by Comtesse de Segur and Deux Amis et Autres Contes by Guy de Maupassant.

We can special order most books although it takes at least two weeks for orders to arrive. And, as always, we welcome your suggestions for good books to add to our shelves.

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Une sélection de livres en français pour les enfants est en réduction de 30% cette semaine. Veuillez choisir parmi une sélection de titres tel que Aboie Georges par Jules Feiffer, Roi Babar par Jean de Brunhoff, Oukélé la Télé par Susie Morgenstern et La Provision de Bisous de Zou par Michel Gay.

En outre, nous avons récemment reçu une nouvelle livraison de livres avec beaucoup de nouveaux titres tel que Un Livre par Hervé Tullet, Le Livre de Si par Ghislaine Roman, Les Petites Modèles Filles par Sophie de Ségur et Deux Amis et Autres Contes de Guy de Maupassant.

Nous pouvons faire des commandes spéciales sur la plupart des livres (Notez qu’il faut allouer au moins deux semaines pour la livraison des commandes). N’hésitez pas à nous envoyer vos suggestions pour des bons livres à ajouter à nos étagères.

  • Kerri Poore


Story Hour

Each Monday at 10:30 a.m., BearSong offers storytelling and guitar music for children from birth to 5 years old.

Story Hour will not take place on Easter Monday, April 9. Please join us join us the following Monday, April 16 when BearSong returns.

Click here to sign up to receive email updates. We will inform you of special story hours, changes, or cancellations.

Markdown Books


Markdown

Bits of Shakespeare continually turn up in the works of later writers, and Eleanor Brown’s novel, The Weird Sisters, features characters named Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia. Adult daughters of a Shakespeare professor, they haven’t quite found their niches in life and have returned home. While each harbors a secret she hopes stays hidden, the truths, of course, will out. In addition to the clever fun Brown has with the Bard’s plays,her own dramatization of smart, frustrated women and of the joys and pitfalls of sisterhood are deft and illuminating. Available in hardcover, $5.98.

The Collyer brothers were hoarders before it was a trend; their bursting Fifth Avenue mansion scandalized New York when the extent of their possessions was revealed in 1947. In his recent Homer and Langley, E.L. Doctorow once again demonstrates his skill as a historical novelist, telling the brothers’ story as they might have experienced it. While the hoarding is a spectacular feature of that story, it’s only one element; Doctorow brings out the texture of the times and events the Collyers lived through (and adds some they didn’t), and makes this eccentric pair believable and sympathetic individuals. Available in hardcover, $6.98.

Helen Oyeyemi’s fourth novel, Mr. Fox, is both traditional and completely fresh. The eponymous Mr. Fox is a writer, his subjects and muses are women. Since many of his female characters meet tragic ends, Fox is also something of a literary Bluebeard. Oyeyemi’s take on all this is to let one of Fox’s characters, Mary, refuse to be done away with. She talks back, informing him that there are other plotlines; indeed, in a series of different narratives, Oyeymi proves this, putting the central figures in a range of times, places, and situations—contexts Mr. Fox is not necessarily able to control. And he gets the message. Through the warm, vibrant Mary, Oyeyemi makes her points without polemics.  

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.

  • Laurie Greer


Music News


 

CONCERTS

Music

Coming to town next week: Many artists with recently released CDs.

Steve Lehman Trio, Dialect Fluorescent (Pi Recordings, $15.98) – Alto saxophonist Steve Lehman is a leading composer who’s able to bridge jazz traditions with new composition techniques such as spectralism in his writing for his octet. He’s also had a long-standing group with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid to work out in the time-honored trio format. On their new album, they take standards by John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Duke Pearson, as well as some Lehman originals.

The Trio will be at the Atlas Arts Center on H Street, N.E. on Wednesday, April 11, playing a very rare Washington date.

Listen to a short concert and interview with the Steve Lehman Trio on NPR:(http://www.npr.org/2012/03/26/149410996/steve-lehman-trio-operating-inside-the-matrix ).

There was a long profile of soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci in the New York Times last Sunday (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/arts/music/anna-caterina-antonacci-italian-soprano.html?_r=1&ref=music ).

Ms Antonacc will give a recital for the Vocal Society at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, April 11.

Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré and Israeli keyboardist Idan Raichel bring their Touré-Raichel Collective to the Hamilton on Thursday, April 12. Listen to their CD, The Tel Aviv Sessions (Cumbancha, $14.98).

Anoushka Shankar and her Traveller Project, combining Indian and flamenco music, come to Lisner Auditorium on Friday, April 13. The program coincides with her CD, Traveller (Deutsche Grammophon, $18.98).

Singer Catherine Russell swings the traditional side of jazz in her concert at the Kennedy Center’s KC Jazz Club for two shows on Friday, April 13.

NEW

Music

Dr. John, Locked Down (Nonesuch, $17.98) – Mac Rebennack created his musical alter ego, Dr. John, in the 1960s, and his inventive fusion of New Orleans R & B, blues, boogie, and psychedelic swamp rock. On Locked Down, Dr. John got together with guitarist Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys) to fashion a groove-laden album that is one of this year’s best.

David Russell, The Grandeur of the Baroque (Telarc, $18.98) – Guitarist David Russell’s recital features music by Bach, Handel, and Couperin, among others.

The title is WETA-FM’s CD of the Week.

  • András Goldinger

Book Groups


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, April 5, 7:30 p.m.

Capital James Joyce Book Group
Ulysses Chapter 3 by James Joyce
May 3 selection:
Ulysses Chapter 4 by James Joyce

Monday, April 9, 7:30 p.m.

Women's Biography Book Group
Must You Go? by Antonia Fraser
May 14 selection: A Covert Affair by Jennet Conant

Tuesday, April 10, 7:30 p.m.

Evening Fiction Book Group
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
May 8 selection: Straight Man, by Richard Russo

Wednesday, April 11, 7:30 p.m.

Lez Read
Taking My Life, by Jane Rule
May 9 selection: TBA

Thursday, April 12, 7:30 p.m.

Science Fiction Book Group
Everything Matters!, by Ron Currie
May 10 selection:
Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
Thursday, April 26, 6:30 p.m. the Fantasy Book Group meets to discuss
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

Sunday, April 15, 6 p.m.

Spirituality Book Group
Sunflower: On the Possibilities of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal
Sunday, May 20 selection: TBA


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!


News from the Coffeehouse


Free Film Screening / Panel Discussion : Water Issues in Africa & Bangladesh

Join us Wednesday, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. for a free film screening and discussion in the coffeehouse. Seating is open but limited to 25.

Meridian Hill Pictures and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting present a selection of new short documentaries on the topic of water and sanitation in Nigeria, Ghana and Bangladesh produced through an innovative collaborative reporting project.

Join two Pulitzer Center grantees -- Nigerian journalist Ameto Akpe and award-winning news documentary producer Stephen Sapienza -- as they present their short pieces and lead a discussion on their coverage in West Africa. The segments look at issues of inadequate access to safe drinking water in the region and harmful effects resulting in waterborne illness and death.

The Pulitizer Center initiative matched two international journalists with four local journalists to produce the series of reports to be published and broadcast in West African as well as international media outlets. Following the screening, Peter Sawyer of the Pulitzer Center will moderate a discussion with the journalists about their work.

Click here for more information.

  • Anna Petrillo & Lance Kramer

Click here for more news from the Modern Times blog or to follow them on Twitter.



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