Politics and Prose Presents

From the most celebrated translator of our time comes a visionary exploration of how translation reshapes and enriches our understanding of the ancient world.Drawing on twenty years of scholarship and translation experience, Emily Wilson—renowned translator of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad—explores the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work. Across chapters that range from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitation of Greek models to contemporary debates over “foreignizing” and “domesticizing” translation styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor, and power complicate our readings of ancient works, and how translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world. Brilliant, erudite, and yet accessible to readers with no classics background, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is at once an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world, and an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew."An enthralling and profoundly relevant book." —Salman Rushdie"I adored reading these joyful, illuminating, and engrossing journeys through ancient literature." —Madeline MillerEmily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a MacArthur Fellow. In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.Wilson is in conversation with Claire Catenaccio, a scholar of Ancient Greek literature and its rich legacy in the modern world. She is the author of Monody in Euripides: Character and the Liberation of Form in Late Greek Tragedy (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and of numerous articles about ancient epic, drama, biography, and myth. As a dramaturg and director, she has worked extensively with contemporary productions of ancient plays. She teaches as a member of the faculty of Classics at Georgetown University.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324099406?ic_referral=SfXA6gw1K1Z660rR9kg7klSeP_fm8f4hJ0OyPP9R_iQwM6_ZZN7nyO0Xk9dFg7yNA9KlklyO5lxP9hetf-3DcWYOCRrDk_deQKOXvpFI4UFUchcCeu-t_xwGagXyuFDvL_pIw04

How Black painters use color to create meaning, provoke remembrance, stir emotion, and uplift the spiritColor does more than capture a viewer's attention. It assaults one's equilibrium physically and psychologically. In this stunning book, Richard Powell draws on the concept of "colorstruck," a twentieth-century slang term describing prejudice toward people with darker skin complexions, to provide a new history of Black American art.Powell charts the dynamics of paint and pigment in the works of artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, Raymond Saunders, Sam Gilliam, Herv T l maque, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Nina Chanel Abney, and Henry Taylor. Using blue, green, yellow, orange, black, red, brown, and their combinations, he considers the historical and cultural contexts in which these colors unleash their visual magic and shows how the artists' vibrant palettes collide with undercurrents of race in unanticipated and thought-provoking ways. Powell shares compelling insights into the powerful chromatic forces manifested through artists' actions and viewers' reactions.A landmark work by an acclaimed art historian, this richly illustrated book offers a dazzling look at the transformative use of color by some of today's most exciting painters, revealing how hue and pigmentation strike a chord for freedom and reclamation in life as well as art.Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DCRichard J. Powell is the John Spencer Bassett Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University. His many books include Going There: Black Visual Satire, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, and Homecoming: The Art and Life of William H. Johnson.Powell is in conversation with Tope Folarin, a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC, who serves as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University. He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Whiting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. Tope serves as a board member of the Avalon Theater in Washington DC, the Pen/Faulkner Foundation, and as a member of the President’s Council of Pathfinder. In addition, he will serve as the inaugural critic-at-large for The Georgia Review in 2025.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780691285160?ic_referral=Fwjj4aTQb5Zd7vWbbbLWNHhMB9gk9MYMbEqKoBLoaFcwM46F76ry-HUqYXkOR91-6cR98PKyjVhWVV-MZSb5u_RoLw1xXKwF_-gw-CMBK8-yd-LKzvooaLxX-nyxTnlEB3y3Ros

Following on the success of Tough Cases, called "A law buff's dream" by headbutler.com, Challenging Cases collects judges' firsthand stories of deciding cases when the world is watchingMost cases judges decide garner little public attention. But occasionally, a case is tried both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion. In Challenging Cases, some of the country's leading jurists talk about the most high-profile cases they've handled--ones where the eyes of the world were upon them.Whether the defendant was a beloved major league baseball player, a movie star, or a well-known sex-offender, or whether the topic addressed an especially contentious aspect of the culture wars, these cases played out before millions of on-lookers, adding a whole new dimension to what is already a Solomonic responsibility.In their previous book, Tough Cases, called "an unprecedented view from the bench" by legal commentator Greta van Susteren, and "a genuine revelation" by Justin Driver in The Washington Post, Judges Canan, Mize, and Weisberg made us privy to the thought processes of judges making some of their hardest legal decisions. In Challenging Cases, over a dozen judges from courts in California, DC, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Washington State, and even Kosovo speak to the added challenge of trials involving high-profile defendants. Cases include:The perjury trial of Roger ClemensThe sentencing of January 6th riotersThe case of Dr. Larry Nassar, accused of the sexual abuse of hundreds of female athletesThe Kosovo international war crimes trialThe Johnny Depp trialProviding the fodder for a whole new season of Law and Order, Challenging Cases is for every actual and armchair legal beagle in the country.Authors appearing in this talk include: Russell Canan, Regina Chu, Charles LaVerdiere, Reggie Walton, Dean Pineles, William Downing, Darlene Soltys, Gregory Mize, Dipti Pidikiti-Smith, Ana Reyes, and Fred Weisberg.PURCHASE BOOK:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798893850208?ic_referral=lY2m7wBaTu8YkcuqEkTaip1JBZFs7As5KJ9x2c-11R4wM3F_y_Qgq7Gu0AH__pGwdo4WTZzhBbw7A3decKliWif8Q-Mi6Qkge5zuCM6Z0qXU7agZMxqtd_MiwHL-OCYwoPXpI0k

From the beloved creator of the wildly popular Sam O’Nella Academy YouTube channel, an irreverent and timely science fiction collection that offers a wry look at the not-so-distant futureSam A. Miller, the creator behind Sam O'Nella Academy, has spent ten years teaching his 4.8 million subscribers about the past and the present. Here, he turns towards fiction—and the future…A hyper advanced alien race seemingly solves all existential threats—no climate change, no nuclear weapons, no singularity crisis...and yet, in crisis we remain. Because humans are their own existential threat in the not dys- or u-topian, but simply “topian” world of this interconnected collection: In “Four Little Words” scientists discover the shocking truth about grass. In “Eggs For Roman,” a baboon with human intelligence gets cyberbullied. And in “Beat,” a young man must save his own life from the music that’s taken it hostage. Often funny and always profound, Still Lost bends reality just enough for it to become a mirror and takes its readers on a daring and strange ride—an ultra-timely, sardonic collection that feasts on the follies and earnest absurdities of humanity.Sam A. Miller is an educational comedic YouTuber and Shorty Awards finalist with 4.8 million subscribers, known for his sardonic, MS-paint-illustrated videos on everything from pirates to Pliny to presidential pets. A life-long reader, this is his debut publication.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780143139553?ic_referral=6BJ_4Aw7d2ICKK32lXY-YI8dLxctkmEo2Ri30JTIDt8wM50xsFT6zM0WUEsqZ2WBaTAJMmWSa_Dsthjt0RuNiQ0PpwTtT_jV_EWPE03hejT9KYMwr61LlhXyaRLgNtPa82x53o8

A gripping historical account about the harrowing struggles of Japanese immigrants in the US during the years leading to World War II.In 1872, a new Japanese government’s first diplomatic delegation to the United States was greeted with rapturous welcome in San Francisco. For over ten days of lavish parties, the city’s elite admired the emissaries’ silk robes and noble bearing and began forging what they expected would be a special relationship between ascendant Pacific nations. Three decades later, a young Japanese immigrant disembarked at the very same waterfront to a different reception. “I was baptized with horse dung,” Nisuke Mitsumori recalled. “This was my very first impression of America.” Mitsumori arrived in the first angry days of America’s war on Japanese immigrants, a populist convulsion that became one of the nation’s darkest episodes of ethnic strife. In the early 1900s, Japanese immigrants faced mob violence and property destruction. Exclusionary laws restricted Japanese immigrants’ rights to own property, vote, and marry outside their race. Tensions intensified until 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned in camps during World War II.The Distance Between Our Names is the story of the early battles over Japanese immigration—the less dramatic, more insidious chapter. Esteemed journalist Paul Richter researched hundreds of memoirs, public records, news reports, and oral histories to deliver an urgent account of immigration history. This highly relevant book is enlivened by intimate stories of the newcomers—high and humble—such as the children banned from public schools, farmers struggling in a system rigged against them, the women who were swindled into marriages resulting in lifetimes of hardship, immigrant leaders battling to forestall punitive laws. Taken together, The Distance Between Our Names is a stunning narrative of resilience and struggle, a gripping story of one community’s brave fight for dignity in the face of savage discrimination.Paul Richter has written about national affairs and foreign policy for four decades. As a journalist for the Los Angeles Times, he was based in Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC, and reported from sixty countries. During his years in Los Angeles he was principal author of California and the American Tax Revolt: Proposition 13 Five Years Later. His last book was The Ambassadors: America’s Diplomats on the Front Lines. The volume won the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Douglas Dillon Award for Books of Distinction on the Practice of American Diplomacy. He lives in the Washington, DC, area.Richter is in conversation with Kathryn Tolbert, a journalist with The Washington Post for more than 25 years, as an editor, reporter, and correspondent in Tokyo. She is the author of the oral history archive at www.warbrideproject.com and was a co-director of the documentary film Fall Seven Times Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides.  She is currently executive director of The War Bride Experience, Inc., a nonprofit organization that has partnered with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Museum of American History to create the traveling exhibition “Japanese War Brides, Across a Wide Divide.”PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668031186?ic_referral=UY__guJdERTgm6Affc8lxycuvcSMqkF4ToW6l4_q6TMwM1YoRJNXrMEhO3Fw0FIUfj2PhWLyu9gJGL_t8qPuQXroPeoO-NeIE1JwAwRNv3ge-HXDx1TKlYzYLNyLOZPdXjdmxdA

How the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire exposed New York City elites and laid the foundations for modern charityFire in the Heart of the City details the riveting story of what happened when a tragic fire in Greenwich Village threw Adolph Ochs, the ambitious new publisher of the New York Times, and Rose Schneiderman, a defiant young labor organizer, against each other in a momentous conflict. Following the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire--the worst disaster New York City had ever experienced--a significant feud emerged between New York's wealthy elite and labor rights' activists over who should organize the city's response: a nascent charity sector led by the city's wealthiest bankers or the reform-focused unions of Lower Manhattan.This revelatory account captures the rapid ascent of modern charity in America. David Conrad-Pérez details more than the disaster. He recreates what happened next, a watershed moment when a handful of charities on the brink of irrelevance were suddenly recast as New York's best answer to addressing the social and economic conditions responsible for the fire, a story long buried by destroyed files and hidden partnerships. Drawing on newly released archival documents, previously confidential reports, private diaries, and interviews, Conrad-Pérez uncovers the unprecedented campaign that advanced a small group of bankers and social elites and their idea for a new type of charity. The very people blamed for creating the problem became experts on the issues, saving the reputations of everyone involved--until now.Fire in the Heart of the City is an absorbing portrait of an extraordinary moment in the formation of modern American charity, casting new light on its profoundly dangerous and misunderstood legacy.David Conrad-Pérez is a media historian and the research director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University.Conrad-Peréz is in conversation with Heather Boushey, a professor of practice at the Kleinman Center where she runs the EconClimate Lab. Boushey is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781479837700?ic_referral=gc3lNo_QaWiezB5-fDiIzYfkMZLtKVk9SBwo7YVPl18wM72WE1Mvt1QD9VqBxDE7V7quAYYWuvpeLpgzPoMyxr1WSh8rqpcv8ISmQZRK2qD1t10OqYmU6fJaMWpp6p5DnFdny3g

The history and meaning of one of the most controversial words in American English.Few words in English are as charged as "nigga" and "n*gger." While the slur "n*gger" is universally recognized as offensive, fierce debates continue over the use of "nigga"--who can say it, what it means, and whether it has been reclaimed as a term of endearment among Black people. Are these two words or one word with two pronunciations, and do they have different meanings?Wassup, My Nigga is the first book written by an African American linguist to explore the word's origin, history, and usage. Drawing on sources across time, from nineteenth-century slave narratives and ex-slave recordings to contemporary conversations on social media, the book reveals how the word's meanings vary according to context and across racial groups. It challenges myths about reclamation, explains why multiple pronunciations exist, and examines what the evidence really shows about how--and whether--meanings have changed over time.By presenting the discussion within the context of African American English, Wassup, My Nigga sheds new light on one of the most controversial words in American English and what it reveals about language, race, and identity.Hiram L. Smith is the Ruth Everett Sierzega Chair in Linguistics at Bucknell University. He published the first historical study of "nigga" and is the first African American linguist to write a book on the word. His research interests span African American English, Afro-Hispanic creole languages, Spanish, and Pennsylvania Dutch.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781647127398?ic_referral=YE8L0OY8ge-ixBdhFAC92vF7r_ciYBhAqa3ur99L6EQwM7x2K3KPtfqBQ6CA7a57fUfzVymvsRmeAm1QVRKiAIQTvgbIQdHEpif-yVZ3sqXlf-pHYo4Zgj1U4pF34iOPG67PTC8

For fans of Starling House and A Discovery of Witches with a Thomas Crown Affair twist: a contemporary New England coven hides the mysteries that lurk in the marshes north of Boston—and how they are connected to the largest unsolved art heist in modern history.Once, Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation. But Maeve messed up a spell to contact the Lady of the Fens, an eerie Revenant who lures the unwary to their deaths in the brackish marshlands of the North Shore. Maeve destroyed her reputation, hurt her best friend Ash, and tainted herself with unbound, wild magic that transforms witches into insane Revenants.With unbound power eating away at Maeve’s mind, all she wants is to get rid of her magic. Forever. But Ash’s research into how the spell went awry leads in an unexpected direction: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a link between the Lady and a decades-old art theft worth $500 million. When Ash disappears through a stolen painting’s empty frame, Maeve has to follow.Inside is the Other Marsh, a haunting, deadly realm where only the Lady’s rules apply. Within this half-world lie secrets about North Shore’s history, Maeve’s failure, and the fate of the masterpieces that disappeared over three decades ago. But as Maeve fights toward the truth, she risks her friendship, her coven, and her life against enemies hiding in plain sight.K.S. Shay grew up in the part of northeastern Massachusetts where half the streets are named after people who were accused of witchcraft. She loves live music, local gossip, and getting outside. You can find her across social media @ksshaywrites and at ksshaywrites.com.Shay is in conversation with Ioanna Papari Kosiori, a bookseller at Politics & Prose. She has received a master’s degree in Publishing from George Washington University. She’s worked as a Subsidiary Rights intern at Crown Publishing Group, and she is the recipient of a 2025 We Need Diverse Books Grant for young queer professionals in publishing. She publishes her own Substack articles and co-hosts the Novel Idea Book Club at P&P Union Market. PURCHASE BOOK:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781645662273?ic_referral=PsZspOfPL8pAbEFNPeqqCuU1UHjLBmWspmYgTnS4faAwM1uMUGpm_EYaJyN4b969k9dDk9PUZCFST5kLVpy4mKri7HhJsiq2HnKvv4y87MyHBEQCqTDplp4YpJBB1X8fIZRfxAA

Now with a substantive afterword covering the start of the second Trump administration A riveting retelling of diplomatic history with praise from Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bertie Ahern (Ireland), Tony Blair (UK), Ehud Olmert (Israel), and more.Inside the greatest diplomatic negotiations of the past 50 yearsIn one readable volume, diplomat and negotiator Stuart E. Eizenstat covers every major contemporary international agreement, from the treaty to end the Vietnam War to the Kyoto Protocols and the Iranian Nuclear Accord. Written from the perspective that only a participant in top level negotiations can bring, Eizenstat recounts the events that led up to the negotiation, the drama that took place around the table, and draws lessons from successful and unsuccessful strategies and tactics. Based on interviews with over 60 key figures in American diplomacy, including former presidents and secretaries of state, and major political figures abroad, Eizenstat provides an intimate view of diplomacy as today's history. The Art of Diplomacy will be an indispensable volume to understand American foreign policy and provide invaluable insights on the art of negotiation for anyone involved in government or business negotiations. The paperback edition adds a substantive afterword that presents the challenges and opportunities for the second Trump administration.Stuart E. Eizenstat has served as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and Deputy Secretary of both Treasury and State. He is also the author of President Carter: The White House Years (2018), The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel, and Its Relationship with the United States (2012), and Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (2003). He is an international lawyer in Washington, DC.Eizenstat is in conversation with Ambassador Carla A. Hills. Amb. Hills served as United States Trade Representative from 1989 to 1993.  As a member of President George H.W. Bush’s Cabinet, Carla was the President’s principal advisor on international trade policy and as the nation’s chief trade negotiator, representing American interests in multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations worldwide.  She negotiated and concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement, led the U.S. negotiations on the Uruguay Round of the World Trade Organization, and concluded a large number of trade and investment agreements with countries around the world.Earlier, Amb. Hills served as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (the third woman to hold a Cabinet position).  She also served as the Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, of the U.S. Department of Justice.Before entering government, Amb. Hills co-founded and was partner in what is now the Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP law firm.  She also served as an adjunct professor at the University of California at Los Angeles Law School teaching antitrust law, and co-authored the Antitrust Adviser, which was published by McGraw-Hill. Over the years, she has served on the boards of a number of Fortune 500 companies.  She also serves in leadership positions with several not-for-profit organizations, including as Chair Emeritus of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and of the Inter-American Dialogue; member of the  Board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Honorary Director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics; member of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission;  and Co-Chair Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798216277651?ic_referral=XtfNkuYodsXULairg8LOCQrLJ2ZR4kiIdmAtyah1FP0wM-dZDswvsJsNXmMXqbC1bKqK4RGtCHUM0AiCiSGiGNYZFnolpOoggIdAezrDcOa9LMmYAL5FJLJpO6Uu491QZ8t9oqU

This event will be in partnership with Byrdland Records, the sister record store to Songbyrd Music House.POW is the fascinating memoir of a precocious English teen in the early 1980s who published a music magazine, interviewed many of the era's top artists, befriended rock stars, ran a record label, appeared on television, played in a band and found first love -- all at the same timeIn this sequel to his Boy About Town (2013), Tony Fletcher's incredible adventures in the world of British post-punk make for a compelling adventure of highs (an exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, friendship with Paul Weller of the hugely successful Jam, playing to huge audiences, discovering love and sex) and lows (heartbreak, learning the financial challenges of running a label the hard way, the collapse of his band). Despite the passage of time, he summons up all the enthusiasm he felt for the music and women he loved and marvels at the incredible experiences he had as a hard-working young striver.The generation raised on MTV, the New Musical Express and bands like Madness, Wham , the Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, Dexy's Midnight Runners and Killing Joke will love reading this inside view of a knowledgeable fan who got to know them all.Tony Fletcher is the author of eleven books, including best-selling biographies of Keith Moon, the Smiths and R.E.M., a memoir, a novel and more. As a London teenager, he started a fanzine called Jamming! in 1977 followed by a record label of the same name. He moved to New York in the late 1980s. Fletcher has played in bands, promoted concerts, DJed, written for numerous publications, hosted podcasts and appeared on and/or produced TV and radio shows. His hobbies include running mountains, from the Catskills to the Himalayas and any points in-between. He writes twice weekly at tonyfletcher.substack.com. Fletcher is in conversation with Seth Lorinczi, who writes on culture and music. His work appears in such publications as The Guardian, Narratively, Maggot Brain, Fretboard Journal and Sunday Long Read (upcoming) as well as numerous print and digital anthologies; he’s also the author of Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir (Spiral Path Collective, 2024). As a speaker and lecturer on music (and DC punk in particular), he’s presented extensively on both coasts at such cultural and academic institutions as Yale, Berkeley, Washington DC's MLK Library and numerous other venues that clearly didn’t vet him thoroughly enough.Byrdland is located in the Union Market District of Washington D.C. and carries over 5000 new and used vinyl records, curated to the tastes of DC music lovers. They carry the newest and best vinyl records in indie rock, pop, soul, R&B, hip hop, and jazz in addition to their robust used music section. Byrdland was named Washington D.C.’s Best Record Store by Washington City Paper in 2021.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798999048776?ic_referral=MeWI4zzRDyQxFDY7OSz9NcqOj-hhHadDMNH0OBqRFlkwM1gjEEt8BPm4HYdrGooMXh4PpNlITYSQDIZe3HgOYpsrLmeMEEPftynAOzFPManBOdawjTRetrEjzQzjlXcjfvpAl7E

From bestselling novelist Nadia Hashimi—a gripping, occasionally terrifying, yet ultimately hopeful novel focusing on the women of Afghanistan in the years since the Taliban regained power.In February 2020 the US began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly twenty years of occupation. A whole generation of Afghan women had been born during that time—women who had grown up in relative peace, gone to school, entered the professions, even served in the army and Parliament. The women of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban filled the streets again. They knew everything was about to change.In the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Kabul, women are TV newscasters, shop owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, even soldiers. They include Marjan, who fought with the Afghan army, and will risk everything to keep her daughter Hawa safe. In her earlier days Marjan was called Rahima and had lived the life of a bacha posh—a girl raised as a boy until she came of age. Forced into an early marriage, Rahima took the name Marjan when she fled her warlord husband. She’s created a whole new life for herself, one she will not give up easily.So has Soraya, who defiantly wore red lipstick as she led the army’s all-female combat force over the objections of her upper-class family. Soraya’s now a wanted woman whose brother may choose not to shelter her from the Taliban. What will become of her? Or Mina, a journalist and broadcaster whose beautiful face is known to everyone in Kabul—including the new regime?Fight or flight? Or find a third way? One thing is for certain: none of these women will meekly accept her fate.An epic saga of fear, resistance, change, and reinvention, City of Widows gives voices to the unforgettable Afghan women at a crossroads of history.Nadia Hashimi is a pediatrician turned international bestselling novelist and daughter of Afghan immigrants. She is the author of four books for adults: The Pearl that Broke Its Shell, A House Without Windows, When the Moon Is Low, and Sparks Like Stars, as well as the middle grade novels One Half from the East and The Sky at Our Feet. She lives with her family in the Washington, DC, suburbs.Hashimi is in conversation with Liza Mundy, an award-winning journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of four books, including Code Girls. A former staff writer for The Washington Post, Mundy writes for The Atlantic, Politico, and Smithsonian Magazine, among other publications.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063423541?ic_referral=Qr729UfQ_pXMY7rnNZnumC7MygL-ikysVgmbKi68HWUwM67WiYvJdrTDrFqS5U8MJeAIkUV4IMFkfXe_TOus6HaDmKhEd2pFo0LTPVbYt-98QDb8K9RiIp5GzuCLbRx8wRLZNic

The spectacular rise and dramatic fall of super-assassin Carlos the Jackal—one of history’s most infamous terrorist masterminds—told with new revelations from the Jackal himself, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags.A black-bereted, gun-slinging avatar of one of the most turbulent eras in global politics, Carlos the Jackal burst onto the world stage in 1975 as the first true celebrity terrorist and the TV-ready face of a violent Palestinian resistance movement that was then just beginning to gain traction. In a bloody career that would ultimately span three decades, Carlos innovated a new kind of spectacular terrorism, one that embraced hijackings, hostage crises, airport bombings, and international assassinations. And he personally masterminded one of the most shocking operations of the era: the kidnapping of an entire conference of world oil ministers for ransom in Vienna. The polar opposite of today’s most infamous terrorists, Carlos was a hard-drinking libertine and self-styled romantic who entranced dozens of beautiful women and murdered his victims with callous disregard, often with his own hand.But Carlos was not all that he seemed to be.Through newly declassified archives, secret witness accounts, and a rare interview with the Jackal himself, acclaimed journalist Joby Warrick reveals a previously hidden side of the man born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—an ideologically driven figure whose myth was as carefully constructed as his attacks were deadly.As he did in his Pulitzer Prize–winning Black Flags, Warrick delivers a powerful and highly cinematic tale that explains and illuminates the root causes, and founding personalities, behind one of the great conflicts of our time.Joby Warrick is a bestselling author, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and national security correspondent for The Washington Post, where he has served for almost three decades. He has written extensively on topics ranging from Middle East conflicts and terrorism to nuclear proliferation and climate change. Warrick is the author of three previous works of narrative nonfiction, including the 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS. A native of North Carolina, he has two adult children and lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.Warrick is joined in conversation with Ian Shapira, an investigative reporter for The Washington Post, where he's worked for 26 years. He's written a series of stories about CIA officers killed in the line of duty, racism at the Virginia Military Institute, and abuse and sexual misconduct allegations within the Anglican Church in North America. He is the recipient of numerous journalism honors, including the George Polk Award. PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668070550?ic_referral=W9ffBltUTtHK_wq5YnXdBZmMYBbAUmhkf-b7Zr-tg0swM0snuWgZz1hI1a4Sl4WLmI9zYyhxxWf6L76Q2aqxl_XIsj6SkDFNqXVLGKwahLd7qr74E07vYZDZNayJFFwFa7lA2AQ

Skye Perryman—TIME 100 honoree and CEO of Democracy Forward—offers an urgent, inspiring blueprint for how ordinary people can fight for freedom in extraordinary times.The future of our country lies in all of our hands. From protecting voting rights and public schools to finding courage in the face of fear, Skye Perryman makes the case that defending democracy isn’t the job of lawyers or politicians alone—it’s a role for every one of us, seasoned and brand-new activists alike.Drawing on her frontline experience challenging threats to democracy in courtrooms across the nation, Perryman combines gripping personal stories with practical “how-to” guides that empower readers to take action in their own communities.Accessible, hopeful, and deeply practical, this inspiring book shows that the path forward begins not in the halls of power but at our kitchen tables, in our neighborhoods, and through the everyday choices we make to speak up, build community, and protect our future.Skye Perryman, president & CEO of Democracy Forward and a TIME 100 honoree, is a nationally recognized attorney and leader advancing democracy and individual rights. Under her leadership, Democracy Forward has secured major court victories protecting healthcare, education, and reproductive freedom. Perryman is a frequent media commentator, appearing on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and NPR, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, and Newsweek. A sought-after speaker at venues including SXSW and the Texas Tribune Festival, she is recognized for blending legal expertise with accessible, inspiring storytelling.Perryman is joined in conversation with Eugene Daniels, an MS NOW Senior Washington Reporter and co-anchor of MS NOW’s “The Weekend” from 7 to 10 a.m. ET on Saturdays and Sundays. He is also the co-host of the MS NOW original podcast, “Clock It with Symone & Eugene." In 2026, MS NOW announced Daniels’ first podcast with the network, “MS NOW Presents: Clock It,” co-hosted by Daniels and Symone Sanders Townsend. In the series, the Washington power-players take on the latest political news, the catchiest cultural moments, and how the two converge. Throughout his career, Daniels has interviewed countless political leaders and policy experts, and was one of the few reporters to have interviewed former Vice President Kamala Harris during her run for president in 2024. He has covered midterm elections, the Democratic presidential primary, and general elections through print, video journalism, podcasts, and live events. He also previously worked as a Political Reporter at Newsy and began his career in local television in Colorado Springs. Daniels holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Colorado State University and lives in Washington, D.C.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217273997?ic_referral=ovK8qS3A9AZiqBMKuRV7nCPN1VpdDjBG9UzMBtCGDBgwM6eNeDR2haU0s7Nr7SgROkNR0wYp2JbS7sy5Qky1Z6OBtiFwzh5mIHzHpJxaj42_FWESTT3FSYFjPfNCCezbQfT7a-g

A leading historian’s revelatory exploration of antisemitism in the United States—from 1940s anti-Jewish riots until today—showing that it has long served as a frontline in our wars over freedom of speech and the nature of American liberalism Few issues are as vexed today as antisemitism and free speech. There is scarcely an arena—college campuses, congressional hearings, immigration courtrooms, social media platforms—where we are not polarized over what counts as antisemitism, which speech is protected by the First Amendment, and what the law should do about hatred. At a time of political crisis, antisemitism has become a point of ideological obsession.None of this is new. In a sweeping history of ideas and law, James Loeffler recovers the forgotten roots of our contemporary turmoil. From two antisemitic riots in postwar Chicago to a neo-Nazi march in 1970s Skokie, Illinois, and the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in our own time, Loeffler explores the ways in which America’s courts have grappled with hatred, freedom, and the tensions at the heart of liberal democracy: Are some hatreds more dangerous than others? Is tolerating hate speech the price we must pay for free speech? And can liberalism ever make good on its promise to end hatred through law?Confronting these questions, Exceptional Hatred restores a missing history of hate speech, antisemitism, and the law, one that points to how we might protect difference without surrendering our principles of equality and freedom.An award-winning historian, James Loeffler is the Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century. Previously he taught at the University of Virginia and served as Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Currently a Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.Loeffler is in conversation with Franklin Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor of The New Republic. He is the author of several books, including most recently The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250806079?ic_referral=9_v-kN_Zk363BOexherfJOvJtVrr06HaYtEEzOTnnxQwM3tHwHlmUH_KI-fDoheg7JbfCCb55UvpB-DKB1p0A38NFkpuiIoSp7fXF64i2TbhzHlOs7HtQaH8Sb3xc-T41WhxZGs

What do you do when someone you love, maybe the person you love most in the world, is in trouble—even drowning? Do you jump in to save them? Will you be able to bring both of you back to shore? One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten, just steps from their house. Virginia jumped into the water. She dived into the responsibilities of being a primary caregiver. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, she and her partner struggled to stay afloat in the sea of tasks required to keep them both safe and alive despite wave upon wave of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and, for J, a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, Virginia herself developed what is known as collateral PTSD, a condition common among caregivers but rarely discussed. Virginia looked for help. She turned to reliable sources for survival tips: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she signed up for instruction in wilderness first aid, kayak self-rescue, Winter Survival 101, map and compass use, bushwhacking, lifeguarding. She went out in search of other people’s stories and of experts, interviewing everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. She gathered skills and knowledge that made her feel strong, competent, more prepared for the challenges ahead.As disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is the story—heart-wrenching and all too relatable—of how one woman tried to save her beloved and learned that she would also have to save herself. It is a moving, hopeful love story about two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built fromcataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the ways in which we tend our loved ones and ourselves, and it reminds us: no one survives the wilderness alone.Virginia Eubanks is a professor and an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, Nature, and Scientific American. She is the author of the award-winning book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. When not sleeping in her truck in the Adirondacks, she lives in Troy, New York. Eubanks is in conversation with Jason Resendez, President of National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC). PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374611798?ic_referral=oDw1TLAFF-emI6i1SO7N4TEKHjGBUlGvxtN1G_AOdpEwM8vta8BBWtRpK7as0ysH-W9ZbicmU5Ch8d9Zi_Im7R5R6nUxZzE1H_d0M59DZEaTnNDfe4IjSR2PERNynM1S-zojI-w

From the New York Times bestselling author of the runaway hit Mother-Daughter Murder Night, a Reese’s Book Club pick, comes another fun, family-centered whodunnit about two sisters who work together to find a killer as they raft down the rapids of the Grand Canyon.What's a family vacation without a little murder?Liv and Mandy Chisholm’s yearly sister trip is a sacred tradition, an attempt to bond as their lives increasingly diverge. Liv, the ever-practical older sister, packs the color-coded itineraries. Mandy, a bedazzled human tumbleweed, brings the spontaneity.This year, the sisters take off for a rafting adventure through the breathtaking depths of the Grand Canyon with a group of strangers. But beyond the terrors of whitewater rapids, sibling squabbles, and rogue reptiles, the ferocious beauty of the river carries a darker undercurrent, and an unexpected guest: a murderer in their midst.When a fellow traveler is found dead and another corpse hits the water, the rafting trip flips from idyllic sister vacation to high-stakes murder investigation. Every suspect has a secret, every clue is drenched in mystery, and Liv and Mandy can hardly trust each other, let alone their own instincts. With the river raging and danger around every bend, the Chisholm sisters must work together to catch a killer—and keep their relationship from capsizing—before it’s too late.Nina Simon writes crime fiction about strong women. She is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Mother-Daughter Murder Night, which she wrote for her mother, as a way to entertain, comfort, and connect with her during a major health crisis. This debut novel was a Reese's Book Club pick, a Golden Poppy Award winner, and a "best of 2023" selection for Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CrimeReads, and Library Journal. Before turning to fiction, Nina wore many hats: NASA engineer, slam poet, game designer, museum director, and nonprofit CEO. Her work on community participation in museums, libraries, parks, and theaters has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, and the TEDx stage. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Nina now lives off-the-grid in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her family. More information can be found on her website, ninaksimon.com.Simon is in conversation with S.A. Cosby, a New York Times bestselling writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the author of All the Sinners Bleed, which was on more than forty Best of the Year lists, including Barack Obama's, as well as Edgar Award finalist Razorblade Tears and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Blacktop Wasteland. He has also won the Anthony Award, ITW Thriller Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, BCALA Award, and Audie Award and has been longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063478022?ic_referral=zAaefY5syVOlqfyHyY8BtXPfvU1NFqFw6QMd6BM0fZgwM9aEf3HRpUkUFYMMeQkOE26W4aZeCBmxtCu89s92aTmk7z9pvrMDU4Z7TDBPzZA4cZIL1QJLRKLglbcVSfBHo6Pl7FU

A gay Christian's behind-the-scenes account of evangelical megachurches and eight years in conversion therapy before finding wholeness and authenticity.Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez was an invisible architect behind evangelical Christianity's digital empire, crafting messages of belonging for some of the most influential megachurches -- Hillsong Church, Elevation Church, Willow Creek -- all while secretly questioning his own place within the faith.In a desperate attempt to "fix" himself, he turned to conversion therapy, spending eight years trying to pray the gay away. And he wasn't alone. More than 700,000 people in the US have undergone some form of conversion therapy. Even though Exodus International, the largest ex-gay organization, closed in 2013, the practice still thrives in many conservative religious communities. After years of this harmful "therapy," Schraeder Rodriguez's sexuality never changed. But his faith did.The more time he spent in evangelical Christianity, the more he witnessed the hypocrisy of institutions that claimed to love everyone while quietly pushing people like him into silence. But Schraeder Rodriguez wouldn't remain silent. Instead, he forged a new path, discovering a vibrant faith beyond the constraints of non-affirming theology and finding a community that embraced his whole self.Conversion Therapy Dropout is a behind-the-scenes look at megachurch culture, the hidden harm of non-affirming Christian spaces, and the ongoing impact of conversion therapy on gay Christians. This isn't just a coming-out story -- it's about what happens after. About rebuilding a life outside the only world you've ever known. And the radical act of stepping into the light after being told your whole life to stay in the shadows. Sometimes, the greatest act of faith isn't holding on -- it's letting go.Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez spent almost a decade trying to "pray the gay away" in conversion therapy--all while working at some of the world's most influential megachurches. After embracing his identity as a gay Christian and stepping away from church work, he co-founded Church Clarity, an organization that helps queer people find affirming faith communities. His story and work have been featured by NBC, VICE, Huff Post, Religion News Service, and Newsweek. Born in the Midwest, he now calls New York City home, where he continues his work as a digital strategist, writer, and advocate for queer people of faith.Schraeder Rodriguez is in conversation with Andrew Marin, President and Founder of The Marin Foundation, which over the past dozen years has been widely credited with creating a new cultural category of building bridges between the LGBT community and social, political, and religious conservatives. On this topic he frequently lectures at universities and facilitates trainings for community groups and religious organizations around the world. His speech, Homophobia and Bridging from within the Evangelical Church, given on Capitol Hill the night before the first Inauguration of President Barack Obama, is archived in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Andrew is the award winning author of three books and a DVD curriculum, and publishes his academic research in theology and political journals.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798889835431?ic_referral=Rzm3Z0TWdWSOdNz6bvl5iUV8PhgWGa-tDny2Yct8iqwwM_1PjRQ2AZRbdV3C0nymuWRJXTd_4pcOIPQEApmxOopVXjUbdi_GvA32D1X2XsaP9Az95YFsmr1G_m6kTqFKjwUibJg

An eye-opening look at how Republican policies have affected health outcomes in rural communities and why poor, rural white voters are turning to the Republican Party―not despite this harm, but because of it.Over the last four decades, the health of rural Americans has been in free fall. Just as opioid and gun deaths have ripped apart rural communities, hospitals have closed at alarming rates, leaving millions desperately far from care. At the same time, voters in struggling rural communities have increasingly come to vote for the Republican Party.In Rural Pain, Republican Gain, Michael E. Shepherd demonstrates that these two trends are closely connected. At both the federal and state levels, the Republican Party has increasingly enacted policies that worsen rural health. Rural voters are not indifferent to this development (quite the contrary), but they misassign blame, in part, because the Democratic Party is more commonly associated with health-related policy initiatives and has ownership of health as an issue area. Republican politicians can reap rewards from their own destructive policies by appealing to the shared grievances of rural people.Shepherd draws on new, wide-ranging data, including in-depth studies of the opioid epidemic, hospital closures, and COVID-19. In so doing, he quantifies the harm of Republican policymaking and its disproportionate effect on rural communities, recasting how readers understand growing Republican support among less healthy, lower-income rural white Americans.Michael E. Shepherd is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments in the School of Public Health and the Department of Political Science. The New York Times and Bloomberg have featured his research, and he has published op-eds in Jacobin and the Washington Post. He grew up in rural Kentucky, where he experienced first-hand many of the shifts that he describes in his research.Shepherd is joined in conversation with Marcia Brown, a food and agriculture reporter for POLITICO. She brings deep analysis and new perspectives to her coverage of the ways federal policy is reshaping how we eat and how we farm. Her reporting spans federal agencies, Congress and the courts, with a focus on federal nutrition programs. She previously covered competition policy for The Capitol Forum and was a writing fellow at The American Prospect, where she reported on immigration, labor and criminal justice. She graduated with a degree in history from Princeton University, where she was editor-in-chief of The Daily Princetonian. An Ohio native, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780226851792?ic_referral=bE-kJV2v369Kdcd_ucUZt_Y_-6ZXlY41AROVap71mLQwM2Td6EOpkWODQpMnAB1a71JbEA0ksvKZomAi74vL01pvPtRK1sQwZ6m53t7CVeW2jBSFJ1z3ZKRyDW9Eqa2PUYTGl_E

A story of love, marriage, and flowers from beloved writer and gardening enthusiast Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn Six months before her wedding, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn’s fiancé broke off their engagement. Stunned, reeling, and newly uninsured, Alysia married her friend Sarah in an arrangement that secured them both free health insurance. They moved in together in the midst of the pandemic, and with time and while tending a garden, their marriage of convenience grew into a marriage of love. In science, art, and mythology, we cannot help but to see flowers as metaphors for the fleeting nature of youth, vitality, and love. It’s easy to casually admire something beautiful, but it takes a discerning eye to appreciate the effort that went into nourishing and tending to that beauty. In both gardening and relationships, one cannot expect to fill your garden with flowers if you are unwilling—or unable—to put in the work they need to thrive. In I Have This Thing For Flowers, Sawchyn does just that, likening the many flowers she has grown in her gardens to a range of relationships and moments of her life, reflecting on topics from motherhood to perfumery to scientific illustration. Cataloguing many of the great romances and loves of her life like an herbarium of flowers preserved from the garden, Sawchyn examines the kinds of love that can't be explained.Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn is a writer, editor, and educator living in Western North Carolina. Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of The Rumpus magazine, she has received fellowships from the Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers' Conferences. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.Ying Sawchyn is in conversation with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, the author of The Sleeping World, Are We Ever Our Own, and Clear Water, which will be published by Flatiron Books on November 3rd. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay Artists in Residency, Yaddo, the Millay Colony, Lighthouse Works, and the Blue Mountain Center. She holds a BA from Brown University, an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a PhD from the University of Georgia. She is an associate professor at the University of Maryland. She lives in Maryland with her familyPURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250397614?ic_referral=blFFQBA0u2Ypb1LO9WPXWyMmO9Xap7hrpaaiOHzqrWUwM6pB1pCRBELHYIR5dnLYiu_lpcQFDF2liswnVeBQMRU1Y0hK7GmCgTmJkBcWfFJflzDhgJeGUFX3RlwMC5weysKkEAg

Peter J. Ortiz’s path to becoming the most battle-decorated member of America’s first spy agency—and one of the most decorated Marines of World War II—was unlike any other. Born in New York and raised between California and France, he would have stints as a merchant seaman, dude ranch manager, race car driver, lion tamer, circus performer, and Hollywood stuntman and actor. As a teenager, Ortiz ran away from boarding school in France to join the French Foreign Legion. He first experienced combat in North Africa against tribesmen in the Sahara. Fighting on the front lines against the Germans in 1940, he was badly wounded and captured. He repeatedly escaped, one time fleeing a hospital train after assuming the identity of a dead soldier.Docking in the US the day after Pearl Harbor, Ortiz enlisted in the Marine Corps. As someone who could speak French like a native--and get by in Arabic, German, and Spanish--the dashing former Legionnaire immediately stood out. Instead of being deployed to the Pacific like the majority of Marines, Ortiz was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—America’s World War II forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency—for special operations in North Africa and Europe.In 1944, Ortiz parachuted into France on two top-secret inter-Allied missions. Operating deep behind enemy lines, he traveled throughout Southeastern France—at times donning his Marine uniform—arming and training the Maquis, blowing up Nazi infrastructure, and aiding downed Allied airmen. Rotating his many covers—including as a fashion designer and minor Vichy government official—he infiltrated Nazi gatherings and funneled intelligence about German positions back to OSS London ahead of D-Day. By the time he escaped across the Pyrenees, he was among the Gestapo’s most wanted.Two months after the Normandy landings, Ortiz jumped back into the French Alps, this time with a team of Americans he recruited for “Le Grand Parachutage,” a drop that sent more than 150 tons of supplies raining down to the Maquis to fight the Axis. When his six-man patrol was surrounded by more than one hundred Germans at the village of Centron, Ortiz faced a choice: fight the enemy or save the village from Nazi annihilation.A rare Marine in the European Theater, he received two Navy Crosses. Ortiz’s story—an untold corner of World War II history—is one of extraordinary courage, resistance, and self-sacrifice.Nicholas Reynolds has worked in the fields of modern military history and intelligence off and on for 40 years, with some unusual detours. Freshly minted PhD from Oxford University in hand, he joined the Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as an historian. As a reservist, he became officer in charge of field history, deploying historians overseas to capture history as it was being made. Additionally, he edited The Journal of America’s Military Past, a scholarly publication at the intersection of military history and historic preservation. For years, he served as a CIA officer, most recently as the historian for the CIA Museum. Reynolds will be joined in conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Rogg, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for National Security and associate director of scholarship for the Intelligence Studies Project. He previously held roles at the University of South Florida, Joint Special Operations University, and The Citadel, and completed a postdoc at the U.S. Naval War College. He is vice president of the Society for Intelligence History and an associate editor of Intelligence and National Security. PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781400256167?ic_referral=kXC_0_ayCr35E71spuKeSQ7qY13JLV-3yxr0EBV15zkwM8NmI0S7j2dgv3I0EvU1Mk89ugwLeTJ-9LpxHmh-rZmD8mve1S_5C2sU1wFky7StBrf0wPqXZ6aBQnvfGibY7i90HNA

Politics and Prose has partnered with The Atlantic for an evening of discussion surrounding the magazine’s August issue. Atlantic staff writer Rose Horowitch will discuss her cover article, “The End of Reading Is Here.” She will discuss her approach to research and writing the article, as well as the implications behind the lower reading rates. Rose will be in conversation with Yoni Appelbaum. Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor of The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He is the author of Stuck.

A marriage cracks apart as a near-future United States redraws its borders in this penetrating and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Fantasyland.Natalie and Asher’s marriage has long been marked by fault lines, quiet rifts in how they view their fellow Americans and navigate AI-suffused life in 2045. After twenty-three years together, and after surviving the two years of civil war in the 2030s, Natalie in rural Tennessee (part of the new Free American Republic) and Asher in San Francisco (in the now smaller United States). Natalie and Asher’s relationship mirrors America’s own unraveling—confused, messy, painful, ambivalent, and impossibly intimate.When Natalie and Asher are brought back into proximity while touring far-flung colleges with their seventeen-year-old, they find themselves on a road trip through a strange, uncertain new American landscape, transformed by both the terrorist uprising and technology, all while dealing with the flux—and resilience—within their own family. They face the questions the nation has reckoned with for a generation: what differences are irreconcilable, and when is something broken worth saving?Razor-sharp, ambitious, ranging from tragic to comic and brimming with imagination, The Breakup is a sweeping story where the personal and sociopolitical intersect in ways bracingly plausible, keenly insightful, and surprisingly hopeful.Kurt Andersen is the author of the recent New York Times bestsellers Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland, as well as several bestselling novels, including You Can’t Spell America Without Me, Heyday, and Turn of the Century. With Steven Soderbergh he co-created the dystopian comedy series Command Z. He co-founded Spy magazine and hosted the Peabody Award–winning public radio show and podcast Studio 360. A commentator on MSNOW and regular contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic, he was previously editor-in-chief of New York and a columnist for The New Yorker. He grew up in Nebraska, graduated from Harvard, and lives in New York City with his wife Anne Kreamer.Andersen is in conversation with Sean Rameswaram, who hosts Vox’s daily news podcast, Today, Explained. Before joining Vox Media to launch the show, he was a correspondent for WNYC’s Radiolab series More Perfect, where he reported features on guns in America, gerrymandering, and other urgent constitutional questions. Earlier at WNYC, he was a producer for Studio 360 with Kurt Andrsen and hosted Studio 360’s Sideshow podcast. He also hosted and helped launch CBC’s Podcast Playlist.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781984801371?ic_referral=pgJJYlQlnPj34Cx62FvK-3RgYA6NNTmk3lHBKqUX0n4wM5PzjO6UiLY2lw5oZz4Rck3m0fL_kB1-KDDbnBn0r3lSsHE1Hl6DMhY3Hk5PhuxlDKRs2VLtbHHQCAungsWfGSP0JR0

Gives voice to the Black women whose lives were devastated by the carceral system and sheds powerful light on its slavery-based roots to transform how we think about mass incarcerationHistorian Talitha L. LeFlouria centers Black women at the core of a fresh argument: that the system of mass incarceration was established as protection for the institution of slavery and the profits of enslavers and that this legacy continues today.For centuries, Black women in America have experienced extreme rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the nation’s jails and prisons, yet their experiences have often been overlooked in favor of Black men’s.Arguing that the merger between profit and punishment continues to keep Black people bound, LeFlouria traces the connection between enslavement and incarceration, revealing how they have always been intertwined—from the domestic slave trade of 1810-1865, when an estimated one million people were incarcerated in privately owned slave jails, to the post-Civil War era when Black people were enslaved through new systems of state-sponsored mass incarceration, and through to today.Using archival sources and personal testimonies, LeFlouria tells a new origin story of mass incarceration with the stories of numerous Black women throughout history, including:· Delia Garlic, who was incarcerated in a slave jail and later sold to a sheriff at the height of the domestic slave trade· Eliza Purdy, who was jailed and sold to the highest bidder a year after the Civil War ended, and· Susan Burton, who was commodified and trafficked through a 20th-century cell block, much like an enslaved person on the auction block 200 years prior.Talitha L. LeFlouria is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the history of Black women, mass incarceration, and the legacies of American slavery. She is an associate professor of history, and the Mastin Gentry White Fellow in Southern History at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the multi-award-winning book, Chained in Silence. Dr. LeFlouria has received numerous awards for her research, including an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, The Root, and Vox.LeFlouria is in conversation with Marcus Board Jr., Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University in Washington D.C. and author of Invisible Weapons (Oxford 2022). His research engages social movements, radical Black feminist theories of power, and public opinion. Marcus' community work has grown over the past twenty years, building politically and personally connected communities while advocating for youth empowerment, abolition, and systemic accountability.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780807003930?ic_referral=M3vA_vZc5JmgryFUepu1hEuDOI8uTJ9nhunGqCNGFL0wM-Df3dZ3x-NqLhhQIlzsJm1PsDDECS566TB1QDD_4QN_4nGvtbaHAyVKxHX2IQsPZuPw1XVh0KqjtUHIp3yhK0en2qw

An explosive inside account of how the Democratic establishment used every weapon in its arsenal to subvert the will of the people and stop Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid in 2016—told by his chief strategist who witnessed it all firsthand.One question haunted the American left after the 2016 election: how could a grassroots movement that drew massive crowds and shattered fundraising records fail? The answer exposes fundamental flaws in American democracy itself.In How the Democrats Screwed Bernie, Sanders’s chief strategist in the 2016 Democratic primary unravels how the “Clinton Machine”—a network of operatives, Super PACs, and media allies—in consort with the Democratic National Committee deployed dark money and dirty tricks to stop a wildly popular outsider candidate. A candidate who may well have been the peoples’ choice and defeated Donald Trump.You’ll discover how deeply the entrenched Democratic establishment orchestrated opposition research campaigns, the true story behind the voter file crisis that nearly derailed the campaign, and why primary rules are deliberately structured to favor insiders over often more compelling outsiders.This isn’t just another campaign memoir. Nor is it just a reflection on the doomed Sanders’s candidacy ten years hence. It is a cautionary tale about a crisis in American democracy that is becoming more urgent by the day. As voters grapple with growing distrust of political institutions, How the Democrats Screwed Bernie reveals how our democratic processes really work, how they can be manipulated by those with enough money to game the system, and how the people can make their voices heard again. This is the story the Democratic establishment doesn't want you to read.Tad Devine is a Democratic political strategist with over thirty years of campaign experience. Prior to serving as chief strategist for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, he was a senior adviser in Al Gore’s 2000 and John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaigns. In addition to his political work and media consulting, he has held academic positions at Boston University, the Harvard Kennedy School, and George Washington University, among others.Devine is in conversation with Chuck Todd. Todd is a renowned political analyst, Host of The Chuck ToddCast, a weekly podcast offering in-depth interviews with political figures and experts, and Head of Politics & Host of “Sunday Night with Chuck Todd" for the Noosphere App. A six-time Emmy® Award-winner, Todd was NBC News’s chief Political Analyst and moderator of Meet the Press from 2014 to 2023. He also hosted Meet the Press NOW, a daily show on NBC News NOW, bringing timely political analysis to a digital audience.PURCHASE BOOK:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668232286?ic_referral=0tiuL3rFwlszvSJR0LIUZ1AB58YijWYIZlc7eAWq_rQwM6FywPnEY2W0nrHVEjDIU53-TqBxYdFuVhIrgEVeGw5_dcDA8dJuhgHZBxieKNsH5NLOCo6rGHpH5F09zKI4MnAG1d4

A staggering examination of how America's wealthiest infiltrated the government and allied with dictators, transforming the U.S. from democracy to oligarchy.For years, a small group of billionaires has amassed increasing power, steering American politics for their own benefit. Many of these figures are familiar. There’s Elon Musk, who has used his wealth to help place Donald Trump back in the White House. There’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has used his resources to transform America into his own digital playground. There’s Jared Kushner, who has used family connections to gain more political power than he ever dreamed of.There is only one word to describe such extreme levels of wealth, avarice, and political control: Oligarchy. But the oligarchs are not working alone. From China to Russia to Saudi Arabia and beyond, many of these men have cultivated alliances with America’s most notorious adversaries, opening the doors for autocrats around the world to sink their teeth into the U.S. Placing profit over patriotism, they have transformed into vectors of influence for some of the world’s most repulsive dictatorships, all of whom are trying to create a world dominated by imperialism and tyranny. Connecting everything from the devastation in Ukraine to destruction in Gaza to destabilization in Greenland, these oligarchs have transformed American policy and American politics into their own private fiefdoms, regardless of what Americans actually want. In United States of Oligarchy, Casey Michel illuminates a story decades in the making, from the earliest efforts to corral and combat American oligarchs, to the new crop of individuals monopolizing American democracy and making the world safe for dictatorship – all for their own benefit. The oligarchs have risen, and are attempting to reign. The only question remaining is whether or not it’s too late to stop them.Casey Michel is an author, journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy, named by The Economist as one of the "best books to read to understand financial crime," and Foreign Agents, which received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly and was described by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the "biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024." His writing on offshoring, foreign lobbying, authoritarianism, and illicit wealth has appeared in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post, among other outlets, and he has appeared on NPR, BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, among other stations. He has also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the links between illicit financial networks and national security. He received his Master’s degree in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and he is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work. United States of Oligarchy is his third book.Michel is in conversation with Matt Duss, the Executive Vice-President at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250430113?ic_referral=bJ-Hh19xZeMN24stWWlXDbhwrHFxnsR5qqCECc23KEUwM9Aj_sA55zm2beaxERYaQmleB7GWAqetZ_s40-Rmq80EvCRtzkLJbHWzUFQeUziTrIMKmaNpU-1BKZYLqWHjjMmCr9s

This event will be in partnership with The Atlantic.The untold story of the women who debunked the Warren Report—a riveting history of obsession, heartbreak, and the myth of the great American centuryIn the winter of 1967, the official account of the Kennedy assassination was beginning to unravel. A scattered group of Americans had pointed to major problems with the report prepared by President Johnson’s handpicked Warren Commission. Many of the most serious criticisms of the government’s work came from a source that surprised some: women who, within the community of critics, outnumbered the men two to one.Politicians and reporters dismissed these women, referring to them as “scavengers” and suggesting they were eccentrics with murder-mystery fixations or crushes on the deceased President Kennedy. But in The Housewives Underground, Kaitlyn Tiffany resurrects the story of Maggie Field, Shirley Martin, and Sylvia Meagher, whose collaboration and friendship reshaped both their own lives and our national memory. Field hosted screenings of the Zapruder film and raised money to pursue new leads. Martin traveled frequently to Dallas, enlisted her children to help interview witnesses, and irritated J. Edgar Hoover with her “antagonistic” attitude toward the FBI.And at the center of the story is Sylvia Meagher—a born-and-raised New Yorker who was devoted to the ballet and the Mets, cultivated fierce friendships and firm grudges, and dedicated twenty-five years to her conviction that the whole truth of JFK’s assassination had not been told.Painstakingly researched and engrossing, The Housewives Underground takes readers back to the turbulent 1960s and 1970s—a time when Americans’ belief in their government was eroding—introducing readers to the so-called housewives who asked the first, hardest questions about one of the most shocking events in American history.Kaitlyn Tiffany is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It. She is also the co-author, with Lizzie Plaugic, of the collection On Nobody Famous: Guesting, Gossiping, Gallivanting. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.Tiffany is in conversation with Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com. Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, LaFrance was an investigative reporter for several local and national news organizations, covering politics, technology, and media. She is a former reporter at WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Weekly, Honolulu Civil Beat, and Nieman Journalism Lab. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and several other newspapers and magazines.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593728628?ic_referral=0fGP2qc69WqnRUmslrarhXDPYG7Mb3DvE9HqZQgs-s4wM37Ebbh4Btuf4_6e1GPdXKB2rPEg8zSZBHFYyo2wvAA4t9a8bGUfl-RzUTPViXYYLNCq8M4mRQwDJedpZYTcKKCYzuQ

A Pulitzer-finalist historian charts a 250-year-old intellectual and political tradition—the conviction that all Americans are NOT created equal.We think of the United States as a nation committed, at least on paper, to ideals of human equality, under God and/or under the law. But as robust as the notion of the “American dream” is a longstanding defense of social hierarchies, including vast gulfs between rich and poor.Drawing on forgotten characters and neglected archives, Kim Phillips–Fein tells the story of the executives, intellectuals, and political leaders who have argued that the words of the Declaration of Independence—that “all men are created equal”—are a myth. John Adams, William Graham Sumner, Andrew Carnegie, journalist Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Ford, Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, Peter Thiel, and others represent this counter-tradition of hostility to democratic government. Phillips-Fein explores their ideas, and the aspirations they were reacting to, in order to understand our political life today—in hopes we might imagine a more egalitarian way forward.Kim Phillips-Fein is Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of History at Columbia University. She is the author of Fear City, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Invisible Hands. She lives in New York City.Phillips-Fein is in conversation with Timothy Shenk, a historian of modern American politics at George Washington University. His latest book, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, was named one of the best books of 2024 by the New Republic, and his previous book, Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy, was chosen as one of the best political books of 2022 by the Wall Street Journal. A former editor of Dissent, he was named GW’s best professor by the university’s student newspaper, the Hatchet, in 2024.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324074441?ic_referral=pnglwVR-pGf_UjLY8ivaCBdk09htANbd25sUQhpL5SowMxFUbtWfjcnFlcywmnww7meUMjBRz0bf-Nh8yltVyL6bck7fNRRrd3bh1k8_wykkQB8lLsFjmxLSJEe_ptcGKuLGHWM

Thirteen-year-old Maggie lives in a trailer on the edge of a rural New Hampshire town, where her brother barely speaks, her father works double shifts at the gun factory, and her mother disappeared without a trace. She finds comfort in the warmth of her best friend Sarah’ s seemingly perfect family— until a classmate’ s mother goes missing, and the girls are drawn to Erin, the daughter left behind.Compelled by a need to understand what makes mothers vanish, Maggie convinces the others to search for answers in the woods and abandoned backroads. But a charged encounter with older boys shifts their path and challenges everything they thought they knew about themselves— and each other.Set in the early 1990s, When We Were Feral is a haunting coming-of-age story about friendship, longing, and the dangerous terrain between girlhood and adulthood. In a world where mothers vanish and truths stay buried, the girls begin to realize the wilderness they fear most isn’t outside— it’ s within.Shasta Grant grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in Indianapolis. An Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest winner, and recipient of writing residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac Project, she holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home and her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, wigleaf, and elsewhere.Grant is in conversation with Chloe Yelena Miller. Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her family. She is the author of Perforated (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026), Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013). She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College (poetry) and a BA from Smith College (Italian language and literature). She has received residencies from Bread Loaf, A Room of Her Own and Vermont Studio Center and has received three DC Arts and Humanities grants for her writing.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781646037384?ic_referral=XzVK9DrHIiJnlEGAw7bjB4RyHJZtWyT4oASYC7RGsNAwM5DpJGPt7zTRYaxh-Qrxqx8UBdV8REVEpPalT_YI5MWRzpM5Al-E1JQR5hGgUOTH8b-j9tS0af0_Lrste5FA6lzg-qU

From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, a story of guilt, innocence, and a boy on the cusp of adolescence.A spellbinding exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants, A Tender Age joins the rich tradition of the American bildungsroman. The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caufield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.Devastating in its emotional precision, A Tender Age captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away—then thinking about it for the rest of his life.Chang-rae Lee is the author of six other novels, including Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.Lee is in conversation with Kat Chow, the author of Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir, named a Notable Book by The New York Times. She was a reporter at NPR, where she helped start the Code Switch team and podcast. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and on Radiolab, among others. She’s received residency fellowships from Storyknife and Millay Arts, and taught creative writing at The George Washington University as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington. Currently, she is a visiting professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217048441?ic_referral=7dpTRzz4QCWGWdn7LDo50mo9KG5ypCMYfkjDkKACxM4wMwtAffYCDdeQolrBw05RT8XJwisxAsSlkvMTbmHbLdaETOceHev22RxsQ0bPKz_766q0lws9Vq4_lt3fVFbbEPx0n2I

A practical road map to become a more empowered patient and reclaim agency over your health.As a primary care physician with her own healthcare struggles, Dr. Lucy McBride knows what it’s like to feel powerless—caught between a health care system that rushes through appointments focused on testing and prescriptions, and a wellness industry full of expensive false promises. She understands the frustration of transactional encounters, not knowing who to trust, and the sense that nobody sees you as a whole person.In Beyond the Prescription, Dr. McBride offers a solution: a proven five-step process to help you take charge of your health and shift the locus of control from external checklists to your own informed decisions.The Five Steps to Becoming the CEO of Your Health:1. Redefine health on your own terms: Move beyond narrow metrics like BMI and cholesterol to understand what health truly means for you2. Understand your broad health ecosystem: Expand the aperture on your health to include nutrition, mental health, and crucial elements of your life story using Dr. McBride’s four-quadrant framework (Informatics, Inputs, Infrastructure, and Insight)3. Reckon with your patient personality: Discover how you naturally approach healthcare and how to leverage your strengths while addressing your blind spots4. Ask for—and get—the help you need: Learn to navigate the medical system, ask better questions, and find trusted guides5. Accept what you cannot control: Make peace with uncertainty and focus your energy where it matters mostThis isn’t about becoming your own doctor or rejecting modern medicine. It's about moving from awareness to acceptance to agency—transforming yourself from a passive patient into an empowered partner who knows how to advocate for comprehensive, relationship-centered care.Beyond the Prescription is like having a trusted doctor by your side, helping you ask better questions, advocate for yourself, and reframe what it means to be healthy. Whether you're managing a chronic condition, navigating a new diagnosis, seeking better care, or trying to make sense of conflicting health advice, this book is your guide to getting the care you need.Lucy McBride, MD, is a primary care physician and co-founder of the Ackerly McBride Group in Washington, DC. For over twenty-five years, she has practiced evidence-based, relationship-centered medicine. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Medical School, with a master's degree in Pharmacology from Cambridge as a Fulbright Scholar, she completed her internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She writes the weekly newsletter Are You Okay? and hosts the podcast Beyond the Prescription. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She has contributed to CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, advocating for a holistic, patient-centered approach to health. A native Washingtonian, she lives in DC with her husband and is the proud mother of three grown children. You can find her work at lucymcbride.com.McBride is in conversation with Franklin Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor of The New Republic. He is the author of several books, including most recently The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668024386?ic_referral=vwAgeEORNHXbl-Cy7xEUC3Z6llQPlNDRjo-yboQuwAEwM0pwrBH9EddEIO4ZutWTHLn0y4mzAi2_DJLsqBjR7op9FWVZYkCy_bccvorcc-v-LorowHyoplU_LiUrxx3uiXTt0fQ

From critically acclaimed podcaster and bestselling author Aaron Mahnke comes this engrossing and macabre exploration of the folklore and early medical practices that led to the New England Vampire Panic in the 1890s.What would drive a man to exhume the body of his daughter and remove her heart? That question has haunted Aaron Mahnke, creator and host of the award-winning podcast Lore. Fueled by a decade of research, Mahnke excavates the past to understand the hysteria that fueled the ghastly exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892, who like her mother and sister before her, succumbed to “consumption” at the age of 19.With Exhumed, Mahnke presents a unique history of the intersection of folklore and science, and how pop culture and both genuine medical advancements and pseudoscience of the time shaped the perspectives of people in 19th century America. From the death of George Washington to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, Mahnke leads reads on a fascinating journey through history, touching on methods of mummification, the multifaceted role of executioners, medicine made from corpses, European folklore that traveled across the Atlantic, and so much more. He reveals that as shocking as Brown’s exhumation might seem, it also reflected surprisingly common attitudes and beliefs about the relationship between the dead and the living, the nature of science and magic, and the fate of a human soul. It all builds to a revelatory understanding of human behavior that continues to this very day.Possessing an irreverent view of science, history, and the human condition, Exhumed is perfect for fans of Mary Roach’s Stiff, as well as readers of forgotten American histories like Brad Meltzer’s New York Times-bestselling The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington.Aaron Mahnke is the writer, host, and producer of the award-winning podcast Lore, which has been downloaded over half a billion times. His love of the mysterious and frightening has also led to a number of other chart-topping documentary podcasts. He lives in the historic Boston area—the heart of Lovecraft Country and the epicenter of the Salem Witch Trials.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798894141817?ic_referral=5bnSFYSj3LjNyj-g0CKqFC6Mr4SKEtmY-YZzXHIPHtQwM1EAzd8NX0zwirO7LdFLJXSkT_rMju6kQLgA3glx2Wg3pnZsadQD0tGBUZ1o8kvlqaDYUPi2puxVK8ck5XW6bDP9Grs

The 2024 nomination of Donald Trump was both predictable and wildly unusual. Parties almost never nominate someone who has previously lost the presidency - let alone a candidate who helped organize a riot and faced dozens of criminal indictments. Why, then, did Republicans nominate Trump for a third time? In this fascinating follow-up to Learning from Loss, leading scholar and political analyst Seth Masket conducted surveys and interviews with local Republican leaders across the country between 2021 and 2024. He finds that most were deeply wary of nominating Trump again but had lost any control they once had over their party to a passionate core of voters. The Elephants in the Room captures a political party in the act of making a fateful decision; attempts to understand what has happened within the Republican Party in recent years by focusing on the people most critical to it; and looks at how the party has changed, what we should be learning from it, and how the US political system has changed as result.Uses Donald Trump's 2024 nomination as a lens for understanding how Republicans interpret election losses and adjust for future electionsIllustrates that voters, not party leaders, are the ones really in charge of decision making in the current Republican partyShows that transformations in the Republican Party largely occurred before Trump ever ran for officeSeth Masket is a professor of political science at the University of Denver. He has written five books on political parties, including Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016–2020 (2020). He was the Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University (2024–2025), and the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress (2018). He writes regularly at his 'Tusk' newsletter.Masket is in conversation with Hans Noel, a Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University. His research is on political coalitions, political parties and ideology, with a focus on the United States. He is the author or co-author of four books, including Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America and The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (with Martin Cohen, David Karol and John Zaller) His research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, among other journals. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2006.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781009601139?ic_referral=9khMlSAcdMpmbhlSJVI-jXS6TyKcjlrPK2SWUF4LUUMwMwFesiLT67_wshGqhXwR83q2-QV03Pcd9OT1N4Ylc7zXoRhVyzJQxwPdgxXFrgoT7ESNmuZajBWz66Av5p_KEXsIP1s

Reissued for the 50th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, A Burning Hunger reveals how one family’s courage ignited resistance and forever changed South Africa.If the Mandelas were the generals in the fight for black liberation, the Mashininis were the foot soldiers. Theirs is a story of exile, imprisonment, torture, and loss, but also of dignity, courage, and strength in the face of appalling adversity. Originally published in Great Britain to critical acclaim, A Burning Hunger: One Family’s Struggle Against Apartheid tells a deeply moving human story and is one of the seminal books about the struggle against apartheid.This family, Joseph and Nomkhitha Mashinini and their thirteen children, became immersed in almost every facet of the liberation struggle—from guerrilla warfare to urban insurrection. Although Joseph and Nomkhitha were peaceful citizens who had never been involved in politics, five of their sons became leaders in the antiapartheid movement. When the students of Soweto rose up in 1976 to protest a new rule making Afrikaans the language of instruction, they were led by charismatic young Tsietsi Mashinini. Scores of students were shot down and hundreds were injured. Tsietsi’s actions on that day set in motion a chain of events that would forever change South Africa, define his family, and transform their lives.A Burning Hunger shows the human catastrophe that plagued generations of black Africans in the powerful story of one religious and law-abiding Soweto family. Basing her narrative on extensive research and interviews, Lynda Schuster richly portrays this remarkable family and in so doing reveals black South Africa during a time of momentous change.Lynda Schuster worked as a foreign correspondent for TheWall Street Journal and The Christian Science Monitor in Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East. She is also the author of a memoir, Dirty Wars and Polished Silver:The Life and Times of a War Correspondent Turned Ambassatrix.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780821416525?ic_referral=S_yKp9dysgtnxZI1IWiKZlA6C7OttXqoMI7WU572e6UwM7MVaWrZY57ZbCeheNG-enXfeld9mhtHd7-sPVSpPynDk99QTIH3ZyNEZKc-B9cPMDdiM12TO2WI27VR5Rkn1EZGDy0

A biography of iconic radical historian Howard Zinn, examining his life and work as a progressive icon and thought leader through the story of the times that shaped him as well as the United States of America.From The Nation magazine columnist and New York Times bestselling author Dave Zirin, The People's Historian is a deeply researched biography of Howard Zinn, the beloved author of the classic national bestseller with more than four million copies sold, A People's History of the United States. With input from family and access to Zinn's personal papers, The People's Historian paints a picture of the man behind A People's History, examining his work and legacy in the broader context of the United States.Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation magazine, their first sports editor in 160 years of existence. The author of eleven books on the politics of sports, including most recently The Kaepernick Effect and the NAACP Image Award nominated The John Carlos Story, Zirin has also worked as an advisor for filmmakers and documentarians such as Ang Lee and Ken Burns. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin has been a frequent guest on ESPN, MSNBC, and CNN.The Zinn Education Project provides free people's history lessons, classes, and study groups for teachers in all states and territories -- with a growing number of teachers each year committed to teaching outside the textbook.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593473658?ic_referral=wtxrv4LbVKb0tWL-UoZHNbzAqkk_aK7f79r2d9sZ_lwwM5E7Ob21gttjzHknlCUs-a-REZigH5LHRbjtnN0GKdKxeP6Cw_9KbedqeJNTDTJd7f3uxzs-miwCy2tziBbCVJqcx7s

A remarkable account of the kidney and the scientific, medical, and health evolution tied to our understanding of it.The kidney is an extraordinary organ - in many ways the regulator, the metronome, the keeper of the human body's delicate equilibrium. On a given day, minute by minute, it purifies the body of toxins it encounters from diet, climate, activity, and injury. It allows us to be and to move in the world. And yet most of us know so very little about these extraordinary vessels nestled in our bodies - and indeed millions of us only really learn about them when they stop working. Nearly a million Americans every year have end stage kidney disease, about 37 million have some form of chronic kidney disease. And it is an incredibly common universe of challenge and ailment that, until relatively recently, would simply kill those afflicted with it.Renowned nephrologist Dr. Paul Kimmel takes us on an eye-opening journey through the history of kidney disease, dialysis, and transplantation. Drawing on both his extensive research and decades of experience in the field, he explains the development of treatments, technologies, and medical practices that have advanced the care of patients with kidney disease. Kimmel illuminates the impact of medical advances on the lives of those suffering from this debilitating disease and offers a clear understanding of the challenges that remain.The Body's Keepers also reveals the inequities and injustices at the heart of America's healthcare system. Filled with case studies, personal histories, and first-hand accounts, the book reveals the shocking truth about the exploitation of vulnerable populations in the pursuit of profit. Kimmel examines how disparities in access to care have led to life-threatening consequences for many Americans. He also looks at the ways in which the medical industry has profited from the suffering of others, and how the path to health equity is still far from being realized. With unflinching honesty and a passionate commitment to social justice, his book is an essential read for anyone looking to understand the complexities of modern healthcare.Paul L. Kimmel, M.D., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P., F.A.S.N. is Clinical Professor of Medicine Emeritus at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Born in Brooklyn, he was educated at Canarsie High School, Yale College, and New York University School of Medicine. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians in London. In 2019 he received the Belding H. Scribner Memorial Award from the American Society of Nephrology, for "outstanding contributions that have a direct impact on the care of patients with renal disorders or have substantially changed the practice of nephrology." He has taught medical students, housestaff and faculty over the last forty years at informal and invited lectures, nationally and internationally, and has cared for patients for more than thirty years. Kimmel is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and an editor of monographs on HIV-associated kidney diseases, nutrition in patients with kidney disease, psychosocial aspects of kidney disease and a textbook entitled Chronic Renal Disease.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798887700304?ic_referral=o2qDcgdoa0Ns451cKc9ZZ6cz_FVTxxm-OgsgMLHA3jUwM7gwvQACAMOn-GTDaY8PDnbJ6djDYWBSRXdEBh5HSOHgXTyBTy3RZvNw21eD9FuhORVY1k5kZPB1ezhCoYcYfg4Oezo

From George Pelecanos, bestselling author and Emmy-nominated writer for HBO’s The Wire and Treme: private investigator Derek Strange returns, in a riveting drama about revenge, greed, and redemption.He was curious. It was the cop in him. That flame was still alive.The neon “Strange Investigations” sign may be flickering in disrepair outside his office, but private investigator Derek Strange is still accepting new cases. When a flashy drug lawyer hires him to prove an alibi for an accused murderer, Strange can’t help getting drawn into the darkness. In his hunt for answers, he stands his ground against some of Washington, D.C.’s most dangerous criminals, and a police department that doesn’t entirely welcome his interference. As the violence escalates and claims another victim, the raised stakes force Strange to question his own moves. Are his instincts still intact?The Blue Flame is signature Pelecanos: tough, smart, rich with details of a time and place—and at its core, exposing the good and bad that exist side by side in so-called heroes and villains alike.George Pelecanos is the bestselling author of twenty-three novels and story collections set in and around Washington, D.C.  He was a writer and producer on HBO’s The Wire, The Pacific, Treme, The Deuce, We Own This City, and the feature film D.C. Noir.  He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538779101?ic_referral=BU-RbmuoEm5iH1RCd3yQ6xednc7OEVAPxcXVZMNOi5UwM_JMsJ_ef-LUZulpy4p72jbzEjagqtWxlX9XNuV4aW6OE_-WhOxNFbLgHxtkeKErBc88lUxpwV1URYtU4pwA6JCRaic

Shakespeare's most powerful female character, her historical inspiration, and her reinventions in performance through the centuries.She is more violent than Lady Macbeth, more complex than Ophelia, more strategic than King Lear’s daughters. She is the only Shakespearean character, male or female, whose entire life—from youth to old age—appears on stage. She is a wealth of insight into Shakespeare’s understanding of, and influence on, ideas of gender and sexuality, and she speaks by far the most lines of any of his female characters. She has allowed the likes of Peggy Ashcroft, Helen Mirren, and Sophie Okonedo full range for their stunning talents. Yet today, most audiences have still never heard of Margaret of Anjou.But who was Margaret? In the fifteenth century, she was a fourteen-year-old French princess married to an English king, soon thrust into command amid a bloody civil war. A hundred and fifty years later, she was resurrected on the Elizabethan stage in four of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III.And in every era since the Bard’s, actors, directors, and producers have recast their own Margaret, slicing, dicing, and rearranging the original Shakespeare to highlight or diminish Margaret’s role depending on the sensibilities of the time. It is this evolution of Margaret’s portrayal that Charles O’Malley and Scott W. Stern track in Shakespeare’s Margaret, from Elizabethan boy-actors in wigs enacting misogynist fears of witchy women to feminist celebrations of Margaret’s uninhibited grasp of power and clever commentaries on global politics and world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher. Her story, as it has changed over the centuries across the page and on the stage, brings to life the evolution of theatre and shows how Shakespeare’s plays have always been living collaborations among actors, directors, writers, critics, and history itself, still unfolding.Charles O’Malley holds a doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from the Yale School of Drama and has worked at theatres across the United States. He is the editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance.Scott W. Stern is a scholar and critic. He is the author of The Trials of Nina McCall, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas, which the Times called “powerful new history.”PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324076551?ic_referral=Y4iarS7vG3qnIUygNHnFXVsPYGm2WVq66F_9Fem6XE8wM949is8hpt3O-Ielyx4tgLklMckiZgS0zqShrh__PCP6ekOa52mzAUynqtJAfLGAqxq4FCJ0MLhNW4utWsV4_xJfMGU

From Annie Jacobsen, the author of the bestselling Nuclear War: A Scenario, a book on a subject that has long orbited her reporting: biological warfare.A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. In this essential new book, based on dozens of new interviews with experts with high-level political, governmental, medical, and military responsibility, Annie Jacobsen examines this very scenario. It would be only a matter of days from such a global infection before the infrastructure built to handle this gravest of situations would be in a battle for human existence.The fallout: mass death, total societal breakdown, widespread insurrection, anarchy, and a plague-ravaged wasteland that no longer resembles modern civilization. In other words: dystopia.Following the gripping narrative style that launched Nuclear War to the New York Times bestseller list, Jacobsen looks deeply at a situation that is in some ways the opposite of a nuclear bomb: There is no mushroom cloud, no shock wave or blast. Instead, the scenario that could end the world as we know it begins with something so small, and something so malicious, that when used for evil, only evil can result. This is what could happen; a ticking-clock roadmap to the hours, days, and weeks following the release of a biological agent, that serves as the most essential, forward-looking journalism in preparation for urgent societal upheaval.Annie Jacobsen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Nuclear War, Area 51, and Operation Paperclip, the Pulitzer Prize finalist in history The Pentagon’s Brain, First Platoon, and other books. She was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons. Jacobsen’s books have been named Best of the Year and Most Anticipated by outlets including The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Boston Globe. Coverage has ranged from the New York Times to Joe Rogan’s podcast. Audiences have included the Vatican and the United Nations.Jacobsen is in conversation with Shane Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic. He has written about intelligence, security, and foreign policy for more than two decades. Previously, he was a staff writer for The Washington Post, where he was part of the team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. For his work as a writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, he has received the James Beard Media Award, the Gerald R. Ford Prize, the George Polk Award, and an Emmy nomination. He is the author of two books, The Watchers and @War.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217046034?ic_referral=rMdRJ-6d8Pdym_Ei4xDjgqmgGiRkGz2x4JHJ5swcO1MwM-LBsljHy_U0oPQSKRpkejnhrfTe18PKF0Fwijby7BjjMy-BeHsT-H7Vx32M-696JynwdYHifQ_Y6HY9nEqJ5Uj0-O0

From an acclaimed historian, a revelatory account of the Declaration of Independence, centered not on the lofty preamble but on the specific grievances that make up the bulk of the document and that offer an entirely new view into the Revolutionary era.We think of the Declaration of Independence as timeless. We know the sacred phrases: “all men are created equal,” “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “self-evident truths,” “certain inalienable rights.” These are some of the most important words human beings have ever written. And they are all from the Declaration’s preamble, which has inspired people for centuries, including generations of revolutionaries all over the world.But as historian Robert G. Parkinson points out, the Declaration was not written as a timeless statement of political philosophy. It was, rather, produced in the heat of a confusing, bloody, and desperate war. And in that moment, it wasn’t high ideals alone that drove the patriots forward. Parkinson’s great innovation is to allow us, 250 years on, to see the Declaration as its authors did. For them, the opening paragraphs were not the main event. It was the body of the Declaration—the twenty-seven grievances against King George—that formed the essential part. Even Thomas Jefferson would have been puzzled by history’s fixation on his opening sentences.Parkinson takes us into the grievances, giving us stories of the Revolutionary era that are little known today but loomed large for the patriots. As the leaders of the Revolution saw it, they had been pushed to the breaking point by British officials who undermined colonial legislatures and courts, corrupted the judiciary, turned military power against civilians, inflamed slave revolts, forced colonists to fight one another—ultimately, waging war on their own people.In his brilliantly original reading of the Declaration, Parkinson asks fundamental questions that have too often been overlooked: Why did the colonies declare independence when they did? What were their nonnegotiable demands? Who were the individuals whose actions made reconciliation impossible? By recovering the people and conflicts behind the Declaration’s grievances, Parkinson offers a strikingly new account of the American Revolution—and shows that the issues that most alarmed colonists in 1776 are urgent once again today.Robert G. Parkinson is professor of history at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Common Cause, Thirteen Clocks, and Heart of American Darkness. He lives in Charles Town, West Virginia.Parkinson is joined in conversation with Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a presidential historian and Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Dr. Chervinsky is the author of the award-winning books Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic and The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture. Dr. Chervinsky regularly writes for public audiences in publications like the Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and provides commentary and historical context for outlets like CBS News, C-SPAN, Face the Nation, the New York Times, and NPR.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324124542?ic_referral=8EWddKrzaPe4ObQF9XKxhAHF8eqj9CT1-y0TKCPw56UwM1-Kg5g0cEWFAalPCqd-E_VPoBaZK5A9ePw9h9ln8Up7Tm3kpR2Yr0DQEpDedV327a_f_2BOL8ooNuM7zElhguE7_LA

In 1970s Ethiopia, 13-year-old Elen, determined to escape her arranged marriage, secretly abandons her tiny village hoping to find her aunt living in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. Meanwhile, Girmai escapes his abusive stepmother after the death of his beloved father, only to end up homeless and starving on the streets of the city. Overcoming the odds, Elen and Girmai both grow up to be successful business owners, each with their own lives and familiesWhen the Derg regime overthrows the government, they turn Asmara into a nightmare of roaming bands of soldiers, who torture and kill civilians with impunity. Refusing to accept the injustice and mass killings of the Red Terror campaign, Elen and Girmai join the Eritrean People's Liberation Front's (EPLF) underground network to fight for freedom.The stakes rise as the horror of Derg-sanctioned torture leaks out of dissident detention centers. Elen and Girmai struggle to maintain their precarious fight for justice and a growing passion for each other. As they fall in love, they are faced with impossible choices, tragedy, and heroism in a cause much bigger than their own lives.Based on a true story, Born at the End of the World is a powerful narrative of patriotism, love, camaraderie, and courage, no less uplifting or appalling than Schindler's List.Donica Merhazion, born in the midst of Ethiopia's Red Terror, channels her family's experiences into her debut novel, Born at the End of the World. A former journalist and educator with degrees in journalism and education, she calls Eritrea, Zambia, and the United States home. Passionate about storytelling, she inspires her students to love learning and embrace their potential while finding time to write in her favorite quiet spots.Merhazion is in conversation with Bsrat Mezghebe. Mezghebe received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Her writing has appeared in Guernica, The Paris Review, and the anthology Well–Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area. PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781960803337?ic_referral=NaUCwsjtx3oQxs9ZjcNVGB3R0W8XigH8AbDFmKqU4tcwMyzstpA0_so7hPvWgO4DeQs5KXJTM5Qyr4ibq-hu3rUh0MSxqsJk_n9A1_kEidugvfK4LbEN7uwtXwhycw9fmpMcMxs

As a Black child adopted out of the New York foster care system as a toddler and raised by white Evangelical parents, Rhonda Roorda had to learn how to walk in two different worlds. She often questioned “whether my skin was too dark” and if she “acted too white.” She recalls being haunted by feelings of shame and not “being enough.” Torn from the Root is her illuminating story of identity, belonging, and purpose, and lays bare the deep pain she felt navigating life as a vulnerable Black girl and how she healed herself.Roorda suffered trauma and abuse in her youth, but she also developed resilience. Eventually, she resolves to find her birth family and takes readers on her exciting and agonizing journey.Torn from the Root thinks critically about the child welfare system and the long-term impacts of transracial adoption. Roorda helps readers understand her experience, posing necessary questions about the challenges of transracial adoption. Her emotional story, full of wisdom and reflection, recounts how she “accepted the truth” of her adoption and found balance, not discomfort, in her own skin.Rhonda M. Roorda, M.A., is a nationally recognized speaker, author, and consultant on transracial adoption whose insights have been featured on Good Morning America and ABC News, in People magazine, and in the Emmy Award–winning television series This Is Us. A transracial adoptee, she is the author of the acclaimed In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption, recognized as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and the coauthor of a groundbreaking trilogy on transracial adoption. Through her writing, research, and speaking, Roorda has become a leading voice exploring identity, belonging, and the lifelong impact of adoption across racial and cultural boundaries. She lives in Michigan with her family.Roorda is in conversation with Jelani Freeman, a community leader, attorney and advocate for children and families. Jelani’s commitment to children & families grew from his lived experience of being placed in the foster care system at the age of 8. Jelani spent time in multiple foster homes, shelters, group homes and juvenile facilities,  but later in life was sworn into the New York State Bar by the very same court system that emancipated him from the foster care system at 18 years old, leaving him on his own. Pursuing his passion to serve the underserved, Jelani began his career in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, working legislatively to improve the lives of children in the foster care system. Subsequently, he provided direct services to young people at the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. His dedication to transforming the foster care system he endured and give back to young people navigating those all-too-familiar circumstances is the reason that Hillary Clinton in her book, It Takes a Village, wrote that when she needs inspiration, she looks to people like Jelani who “now works to bring opportunity to another generation of kids at risk." Jelani has served for years as a Board Member for non-profits such as the Center for Adoption Support & Education, Barker Adoption Foundation, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and currently serves as a Board Member for the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Jelani relished being a mentor and an advocate for the rights of children in the DC foster care system in his role as a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) and also regularly volunteered at Martha’s Table since 2011.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781439927939?ic_referral=UE5qwtDk96xgdMBhYlQ5GxZ5bFT0rzYeLrJcZXQoOGowMzoBIzSk4BlmuXYccz3nldUY2dYiJcJTAyxhNPJhZIUCCGtPxlWkchV4tb69MJSbNiYh9AWGfjlFxxOetsCvMVMSUYQ

When the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School gymnastics team competes in the Ohio High School Athletic Association state gymnastics meet, they're expected to win. That's because they've won each year-since 2004. And as the streak builds, there's more pressure each year on the public school's team to continue that tradition. No year was more tense than the year that they were hoping to take home their 20th straight title.A Fraction of a Point follows the Bees throughout the intense 2022-2023 season as the team works toward the state meet. During one of their most competitive seasons in recent years, sports journalist Nina Mandell explores the gymnasts' backstories and traces the legacy of the Ganim family, the team's longtime coaches.But this isn't just a story about one historic season. At its heart, it's also about the teenagers balancing athletics with high school life, the larger community that supported the team, what it means to compete for the joy of the sport, and the athletes' and coaches' dedication even while facing immense pressure.Ultimately, the state title comes down to the final event. As the Bees line up to compete, the gym falls silent. Hundreds of gymnasts and their supporters from around the state watch and wonder: Will the Bees maintain their streak? Or will this be the year it all ends?Nina Mandell is a journalist living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, who has written for Bustle, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA Today, The New York Daily News, and NBC Regional Sports Networks. She is the former managing editor of USA Today's "For The Win" site and the former digital director/managing editor of NBC Sports Washington, and currently works in sports marketing.Mandell is joined in conversation with Robert Samuels, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post. For close to a decade, Robert has traveled across the country to chronicle politics, policy and the changing American identity. He is the co-author of His Name is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Robert has also worked as a staff writer at The Miami Herald and the New Yorker. He grew up in The Bronx and resides in Washington, DC.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781606355077?ic_referral=d7z4Za7e6EaaRoTGKW7syfDgReIJ3lT4O5Jk_Fk_GW0wM6pNowqbREzMKB3Xe8TIgf3m_1IkK27dALQXet2zQB2HYWYXJdWUGVDX4CShcY5zvBojOFv5HL0Yl0q7Lf7Bn-G2zuY

The highly anticipated biography of one of the world’s most treasured literary voices, showcasing a life as triumphant and inspiring as the stories she crafted.To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Deenie; and Summer Sisters—touched the lives of tens of millions of readers. For more than fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: it rewired the world’s expectations of what literature for young people can be—frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But little is known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now.In Judy Blume, journalist, historian, and longtime Blume aficionado Mark Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait of the acclaimed author through extensive interviews with Blume herself, invaluable access to her papers and correspondence, and thoughtful analysis of Blume’s beloved novels, including early, unpublished works that shed light on the pathbreaking writer she would become. Oppenheimer goes deep, exploring Blume’s middle-class 1950s upbringing, complicated childhood, varied relationships and marriages, unabashed sexual experiences, bouts of heartache and loss, and enduring legacy as a champion of free speech and contemporary literature. Oppenheimer peels back the curtain to reveal the woman behind the literary empire in all her complex, multifaceted glory—a true gift for anyone who grew up reading and loving these extraordinary books.Mark Oppenheimer is the author of four critically acclaimed books, including Squirrel Hill, Wisenheimer, and Thirteen and a Day. He has taught at NYU, Stanford, Yale, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Professor of Practice. Mark lives with his family in New Haven, Connecticut.Oppenheimer is in conversation with Katherine Marsh, an award-winning author of novels for middle-grade readers including The Lost Year; Nowhere Boy; The Night Tourist; and The Myth of Monsters series. Among her honors are National Book Award finalist, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, winner of the New York Historical Society Book Award, and winner of the Middle East Book Award. Her books have also been Junior Library Guild Selections, American Library Association Notables, and have been translated into eighteen languages. A former magazine journalist, Katherine lives in Washington, DC with her husband, two children and an astonishing array of pets.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593714447?ic_referral=zJV4wnKfGGAwxuSDLBpgvT1QTxDYBw6dL4uOI1O67qIwM7WBXbPKxr-tn33N8Dis9M6xHimb85tjc51-byVnhAf9y2GOsMlwmpRaVyobNPnsMzYZu_BXGad2q_fq7gZYALlBJhE

Why do some fights for justice hit a wall while others succeed? What does it take to win social change, especially now? It comes down to understanding one thing: the difference between presence and power.Failing to do so is one way we got into this mess, but understanding how power really works is a big part of how we get out of it. Rashad Robinson would know. A social change strategist, he’s spent more than twenty years at the highest levels of leadership in two of the most significant social movements of our time: the fight for LGBTQ rights and the fight for racial justice. He’s taken on tech giants and the criminal justice system, politicians in Washington and corporate executives in Hollywood. He’s been on the front lines of protest and in the back rooms of negotiation. Robinson argues that achieving presence—the visibility of marches, media fads, and making issues popular—is not the same as gaining the leverage required to change the rules for how society works or change the decisions that politicians, corporate executives, and other people in authority make. This book offers a set of essential lessons about power for anyone who wants to understand it, gain it, and use it to win the progress we all deserve—and to defeat the forces trying to take our freedoms away. Robinson provides the tools needed to help everyday people build real leverage in systems designed to prevent them from doing so.As someone who helped shape the resistance after the 2016 election, and continues to help leaders at every level find innovative ways to fight back and win progress today, Robinson offers a hopeful, practical guide to achieving positive impact in the most challenging times.Rashad Robinson is a social justice leader, strategist and organization builder. He has designed campaigns to change public policies, corporate practices, electoral outcomes, and media representations. He speaks widely on corporate accountability, narrative change, infrastructure for organizing, and strategies for creating a more equitable world. Through Rashad Robinson Advisors (RRA), he advises and collaborates on developing high-impact strategies to bring about progress with foundations, nonprofits and leaders across media, politics, government and business. He previously led Color Of Change for nearly fourteen years, transforming it from a start-up into a national force for racial justice, and also led programs at GLAAD, reshaping media representations of LGBTQ people during the fights to win marriage equality and end discrimination. More information about Rashad, including his weekly How We Win newsletter, can be found at www.rashadrobinson.com.Robinson is in conversation with Joy Ann Reid, a New York Times bestselling author, a former Emmy nominated, two time NAACP Image Award winning primetime host at the artist formerly known as MSNBC and the current host of The Joy Reid Show streaming podcast which you can find on YouTube at thejoyreidshow.com, on audio podcast platforms, and at joyannreid.com on Substack.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593243565?ic_referral=IKxCP2H8EHc963yofaM8vneG3kF0tRYv9hweGA5Ynf4wM_OWtl8iINx9GIacZtJBnFPlygOlPQu7mqvKOrRKN2aHwlv2OpT1MSN_0-VoyLJhXO8LV4g00YU4A9-Q6He3wgzekdU

Bronia Feldman never imagined she would become the backbone of an underground medical lifeline, least of all inside the brutal forced-labor system of the HASAG munitions factory in occupied Poland. Torn from her family in September 1942, she arrives there shattered by grief. The only force strong enough to keep her alive is the chance to save others.Left behind in the ghetto of Skarzysko-Kamienna are her husband and two young daughters. Her 13-year-old daughter, Hajuta, has been sent to a nearby labor site. Bronia seizes a rare opportunity to escape and manages to reach her daughter. After their brief reunion, she faces an impossible choice: flee into the forest to join the partisans, or slip back to the place she has just escaped.When they are reunited months later, the moment is both miraculous and heartbreaking. Hajuta is no longer the girl Bronia remembers. Together they endure still darker days when they are deported to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945.This true story of a Jewish mother and daughter is a testament to courage, devotion, and the fragile thread of hope that sustained them. Amid cruelty and terror, they also encounter moments of humanity.Throughout it all, both cling to memories of the River Kamienna, where they once danced, played music, and believed in a future. For Bronia and Hajuta, the river is more than a memory. It is a promise that one day they might return home.Pauline Steinhorn is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Moment magazine. She is a Board Member of Generation After DC, a nonprofit network of Jewish Holocaust survivors and their children. When she's not writing or directing, Pauline shares her family’s Holocaust experiences at synagogues, Yom HaShoah commemorations, and in middle and high school classrooms. She and her husband, Bill Creed, live in Chevy Chase, MD.Steinhorn is in conversation with Deborah Kalb, a freelance writer and editor. She spent about two decades working as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for news organizations including Gannett News Service, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News & World Report, and The Hill, mostly covering Congress and politics. Her book blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, which she started in 2012, features hundreds of interviews she has conducted with a wide variety of authors.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9789493418844?ic_referral=YitakzOaC8XYOQCK0aXCDeMU5HtcnRxfiFyfzPkFGqQwMxBOAz8zgRLd7gdaQad8Cceeb7dVVte_EBeNrINE1UsFIxXFUb5xK0yeRbztUvloIYXSMF1qIswGfXHrJyAtwc5LVBg

Born to Run meets Why We Swim and Breath in a globe-spanning work of immersive narrative nonfiction that dives into the hidden world of cold water plunging and swimming—and what it reveals about the human body, mind, and need for connection."Mesmerizing...I loved this book.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling authorWhen award-winning Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard receives a cryptic text promising to extend his athletic life, he has no idea it will lead him into a parallel athletic universe—one populated by record-breaking grandmothers, obsessive scientists, rogue visionaries chasing Olympic legitimacy, and everyday people willingly plunging into freezing water together, a realm that subverts the idea of what “elite” athletes are supposed to look like. What begins as curiosity becomes a three-year reporting journey across continents, from the saunas of Finland and seas of Ireland to Norway, England, and Boston.Blending adventure journalism with rigorous research, The Plunge traces humanity’s long relationship with cold water—from the ancient Greeks and Victorian sea bathers to polar plungers and modern laboratories studying stress, resilience, and mental health, a lifeline for those “drowning on dry land.” Reporting from the front lines of emerging science, Ballard explores how brief, voluntary cold exposure can sharpen focus, elevate mood, reduce inflammation, stunt cortisol, and retrain the body’s stress response, creating a rare state of being both calm and alert.Along the way, Ballard introduces pioneers like legendary distance swimmer Lynne Cox, follows Ram Barkai’s improbable quest to bring ice swimming to the Olympics, and charts a global movement that’s surged from fringe ritual to mainstream phenomenon. As his reporting deepens, so does his participation: Ballard graduates from cold plunges to competing alongside Olympians at the Ice Swimming World Championships. Along the way, his body and outlook change in surprising and measurable ways.Unfolding through vivid scenes and unforgettable characters, The Plunge is a story of endurance, science, and human connection, an exploration of why, in a climate-controlled, screen-saturated world, so many people are choosing to seek out discomfort—and what becomes possible when we do hard things together.Chris Ballard, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for two decades, is the award-winning author of four books, including One Shot at Forever, and has contributed to National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine. Reporting Plunge took him from cold plunges to competing alongside Olympians at the Ice Swimming World Championships. Ballard is in conversation with S.L. Price, a Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated from 1994-2019, who has written five books—his most recent, The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse, a wide-ranging examination of the continent’s oldest and most representative sport. Of Price’s work, the New York Times said, “The seasoned reporter … is a master of the new journalism developed by Hunter Thompson, Gay Talese and Price’s personal paragon, Pete Hamill. Whenever he writes about sports–or about the craft of writing–he hits it over the fence.”PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668055861?ic_referral=sGucsvDXSE-rI2w96hfVgyB2x68iScpgPhQTonsZgHIwM0_tpKqXIYtCUQP9F6QAYF9_Lz0xHbIle4Ye4TU29VeoeLsQ_kgeXqPfZy8fqCb0U4p6-g2fdbJ1l4gaaocbiO3iojY

When the Pickford siblings arrive at The Grand Hotel—a nostalgic tourist paradise of horse-drawn carriages, muddled cocktails, and white sweaters on the tennis court—they have every intention of spending the long weekend making nice. Pete, the nation’s foremost expert on gastropods (mollusks), is keen to wade around the lake in search of a rare and exciting Carthusian snail. Viv, reeling from the secret revelation that her husband is gay, is determined to put on a brave face for her daughter. And Corey, a charming, handsome grifter, has lucked into five pounds of cocaine he plans to sell to the first dumb rich guy he can find.But when Pete falls for the alluring mother of a local kid, when Viv’s daughter gets up to teenage trouble, and when Corey finds the wealthy guests less interested in party drugs than golf clubs and waffle cones, the long weekend of family bonding veers into disaster. Why did their father bring them to this cushy island resort in the first place? And why does Corey, the biggest screw-up of them all, seem to be the only one who knows the truth? As secrets spill, old flames are fanned, and an innocent snail is crushed beneath the unrelenting heel of a hiking boot. In a story that is as sneakily wise as it is absurdly funny, Ryan Effgen’s debut shows how sometimes the people who bring out your worst—your family—can also be the ones to bring you out of your shell.Ryan Effgen’s fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, Fiction Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has earned creative writing fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and George Mason University. He works as an instructional designer and lives in Virginia with his wife and children.Effgen is in conversation with Lina Patton. Patton is a writer, illustrator, and teacher. Originally from Maine, she moved to Minnesota at thirteen, trading the ocean for 10,000 lakes. Her work has appeared in ELLE, The Cut, Narrative, and Driftwood Press, among others. After seven years living abroad, she and her husband currently reside in Washington, DC, where she teaches Creative Writing at The George Washington University and co-produces the storytelling series Generation Women DC. The Lake Club is her first novel.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217208128?ic_referral=1ktDbeexnggMtPSoRlgmjwsLc3wMLR3KNpOs3gNCocYwMwaw_Rd7YKhjSvOj9wHpln8dsKdQX78InHhtKeT_YiTTbk9oPjW06cviNnPigg_YDfym2k_MfpSLqQuGHjRmAWesRuc

Around the world, antidemocratic forces are taking aim at women leaders. Misogynistic authoritarianism has entered the mainstream, seeking to reverse decades of progress. Weaponized digital technologies have unleashed sexualized smears and violent threats. There is a deep connection between attacks on women and attacks on democracy—and female leaders can show us how to fight back.Linda Robinson—an award-winning journalist and foreign policy expert—tells the powerful stories of the women on the frontlines of the battle between democracy and authoritarianism. Despite age-old obstacles and virulent new dangers, these remarkable leaders have strengthened their countries, expanded gender equality, and promoted policies that benefit all. Tsai Ing-wen crafted a strategy to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression while advancing social reforms. Estonia’s Kaja Kallas and Moldova’s Maia Sandu fought Russian hybrid warfare by pursuing European integration. Balkan leaders Vjosa Osmani and Nataša Pirc Musar bolstered their democracies against Serbian and Russian destabilization. Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados became a global champion for climate justice, rising above sexist attacks to achieve international financial reforms. Robinson distills the hard-won lessons of these and other recent leaders—including New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s Sanna Marin, and Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands—providing a roadmap for countries facing existential threats. Timely and vivid, this book spotlights women’s leadership amid the global crisis of democracy.Linda Robinson is senior fellow for women and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was previously director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation. A former foreign correspondent, Robinson is the author of three acclaimed and best-selling books about America's "long wars.Robinson is in conversation with Tamara Cofman Wittes, who became the fourth president of NDI in 2024. Before joining the Institute, she served as Director of Foreign Assistance in the U.S Department of State. Previously, she led the Russia sanctions effort for the State Department's sanctions coordination office. Dr. Wittes also served in the State Department from 2009 - 2012 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, coordinating U.S. policy on democracy and human rights in the Middle East during the Arab uprisings. Dr. Wittes spent nearly twenty years as a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, including as director of its Center for Middle East Policy. She is a founder of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, and served on the board of the National Democratic Institute from 2014 - 2022. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Women in International Security. A native of Michigan, Dr. Wittes lives in Washington, D.C., where she tends a robust pollinator garden..PURCHASE BOOK:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780231221740?ic_referral=t1YDNC6QCU4H-6y_TTjoKLASwPJVwot9897PpNwyYmcwM3WxnyDfmUJvsW4Y2L21NTuF7QnM1E3s-1hhNhJg6n53o3xTXIRDmkp6JGh2roRd4GUcB_mf7Yqv-Ot84p3fxfvnmgA

Living, Together features 21 writers and organizers on chosen family, hacking adulthood, and other lessons communal living can teach us about the future of housing in America.At age 29, when Samantha Paige Rosen made an unexpected move back home, she was surprised to find how much she loved living with her parents again. Inspired and curious, she began searching for others who had redefined home and community. The essays and Q&As in Living, Together are about carving out spaces of communal connection and joy in our 3-bed, 2-bath starter home culture. Although they recount life at different stages and in different regions, these stories showcase the delights and tradeoffs of more dynamic shapes of “home.” Across sections on family, intentional community, and what lies beyond housing, readers will hear from voices like:Samantha Paige Rosen's writing on identity, the arts, and culture has appeared in the Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Slate, Them, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives outside of Philadelphia, where she is a freelance writer and editor, a writing tutor and coach, and an amateur potter. Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection is her first book.Rosen will be in conversation with Washington, D.C. locals and Living, Together contributors Rhaina Cohen, Hannah Grieco, and Ayesha Rascoe.Rhaina Cohen is an award-winning producer and editor for NPR’s documentary podcast, Embedded. Her work, often focused on social connection, has aired on numerous podcasts and radio shows, including Hidden Brain, Invisibilia, and All Things Considered, and her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New Republic and elsewhere. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cohen is a graduate of Northwestern University and Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, friends, and her friends’ children.Hannah Grieco's debut short story collection First Kicking, Then Not is out now from Stanchion Books. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Brevity, Craft, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, The Offing, and more. She writes a monthly literary column for the Washington City Paper and edits prose for a variety of independent presses and literary journals. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.Ayesha Rascoe will moderate the conversation with Rosen, Cohen, and Grieco. Rascoe, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and the weekend host of the Up First podcast. In these roles, she interviews newsmakers, entertainers, and politicians, bringing her signature wit and sharp perspective to the stories shaping the national conversation. Beyond the airwaves, Rascoe is the editor of HBCU Made: A Celebration of the Black College Experience, a collection of essays highlighting the profound impact of historically Black institutions. She is a proud alumna of Howard University. Rascoe joined NPR in 2018 and quickly became a mainstay of the network’s programming. Before stepping into her role as host, she served as a White House Correspondent, covering three presidential administrations. She earned a reputation for her incisive questioning in the briefing room and reported from major international events, including the 2019 Hanoi Summit with Kim Jong Un and President Obama’s final NATO summit in Warsaw. During this time, she was also a regular fixture on the NPR Politics Podcast. Her versatile career includes guest-hosting It’s Been a Minute and appearing as a frequent contributor to Pop Culture Happy Hour.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9780807021293?ic_referral=rVNsOkZlv6mZLuchRgOjYZCHFRskLhDYahtprTiDrWcwM1VjrLskEc59kDCKn0evB6m3wL0tJ1tgdl6bGnGFttz2AvSuxMzPkCKIXqNOQBdlGhruRlwH7rkQuGW9RzFJfbras2s

From a New York Times bestselling author comes a gripping debut that defies all expectations—a story of feverish obsession, new motherhood, and a friendship pushed to the edgeEmily is unmoored as a new mother in Manhattan—exhausted, broke, and slipping away from her well-meaning husband. She becomes fixated on finding the one person who ever truly understood her: her college roommate Daisy who vanished years ago after dancing at a seedy strip club off campus.In her desperate search for Daisy, Emily tumbles from new-mom message boards into a world of porn, secrets, and a high-end escort service for global billionaires, hitting one dead end after another—until the unthinkable happens: Daisy suddenly reappears.Daisy infuses Emily’s life with newfound purpose and community as the two launch a new mothers’ group in a vacant luxury skyscraper (matcha on tap, vibrators on offer). But the joy of their reunion soon fades, revealing deep cracks in their friendship. Is Daisy the key to Emily’s happiness—or is she unraveling her world? And where has Daisy really been all these years?Amy Chozick is a bestselling author, screenwriter and award-winning journalist who has covered the biggest stories in politics, business and media for The New York Times. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chasing Hillary, which she adapted into the HBO Max series The Girls on the Bus. In addition to the Times, Amy’s writing has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other publications. Amy is currently adapting With Friends Like You into a major motion picture with Fifth Season and Academy Award-winning producer Brad Weston. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.Chozick will be in conversation with Adrienne LaFrance, the executive editor of The Atlantic, where she was previously a staff writer. She still reports regularly and writes about a wide range of topics: political violence, technology, the Pacific region, American comedy, and culture. PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217046546?ic_referral=IHcBgzlbOOQcDq8vzWkOABLQajEVmTrAwHH2Eo7Ra_gwMx1ryf0xmrb0G1ZcrDJeL0awqFRQ8qRgMaGgrKD3VnZ8WRVvce0FYiZjcULInT_CuJvPrdCfE5MDHc7oZZD4levJHPA