Politics and Prose Presents

A passionate and illuminating account of soul, the hard-won wisdom shepherded by Black people throughout generations How did enslaved Africans turn America’s infamous failure into the greatest moral occasion of modern Western life? In this book, Christopher Freeburg answers that question with one word: soul. It was soul, Freeburg believes, which drove Black individuals and communities, grappling w...

An inspiring account of how the US government built a start-up development program to fight AIDS called PEPFAR, which saved more than twenty-six million lives and created a new blueprint for results-oriented American foreign aid. In 2002, more than two million Africans died of AIDS. Militaries reported HIV infection rates of more than twenty-five percent. Nearly four in ten pregnant women in some...

From acclaimed journalist Anand Giridharadas, a groundbreaking feat of reporting on a tragic encounter in a New York subway car that held up a mirror to a troubled and divided nation In 2023, the lives of two men—Jordan Neely, a homeless man known in better days for his Michael Jackson impersonations, and Daniel Penny, an ex-Marine who had moved to the big city seeking more than Long Island could...

“I can’t teach you, but I can show you.” With these words, Kentucky balladeer Doc Hopkins shared his musical knowledge with a willing student, summoning an independent streak deeply embedded in the American character. His words capture the informal creativity and colloquial practice that marks folk tradition as it extends from the countryside to the city and back again. Stephen Wade recounts creat...

When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is caught between revelation and madness as an uncanny pull toward a brilliant campus colleague ensnares him in a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator’s acc...

A powerful and authoritative account of how the Biden administration fueled atrocities in Gaza, from an award-winning foreign affairs journalist. Following Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack, Israel launched an offensive of staggering violence in Gaza, saying it targeted militants while regularly striking hospitals, schools, and homes. Critically acclaimed journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers exten...

We’re living in an age of deep political anger and frustration. Where did it come from? All the Wrong Moves offers a new, eye-opening answer, rooted in history, business, and the author’s firsthand experience, that reveals the true origins of America’s current political crisis. In All the Wrong Moves , Anthony Scaramucci charts how both political parties, over three decades, made a series of catas...

In a lyrical and profoundly moving memoir, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad reclaims her extraordinary journey from the embers of devastation to a fight for freedom—and for what comes next when a young girl’s flame cannot be extinguished.  In 2014, Nadia Murad was living in northern Iraq when her world was shattered. Fighters from the so-called Islamic State attacked her village, massacring...

Ke Huy Quan’s Hollywood adventure began when he was twelve years old, a mere five years after his family escaped Communist Northern Vietnam and settled down to a relatively peaceful life in L.A.’s Chinatown. After attending an open call audition on a whim, he was unexpectedly swept up in the wild world of filmmaking: learning to swim from Harrison Ford on the set of  Indiana Jones and the Temple o...

From the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor (“John le Carré’s nonfiction counterpart”—The New York Times) comes the ultimate true-life Cold War thriller: the story of a Russian double agent with a terrible secret—and the key to stopping a nuclear apocalypse.  The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the A...

From the New York Times best-selling author, a tragic history of the United States’ war on terror across four presidential administrations. 2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the most devastating attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The resulting war on terror cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. And yet despite its blunders, this campaign has kept America safe from...

A gripping, major new history of the explosion of the “Titanic of the Skies,” the rise of Nazism and the beginning of World War II For thirty-seven seconds on May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg lit up the sky over Lakehurst, New Jersey in an indelible conflagration that shocked the world and brought the airship era to a close.  In this definitive account, acclaimed historian Catherine Grace Katz brings t...

The definitive, sure to be headline-making, investigation into how Putin successfully mounted a decade-long covert war on the United States and how Donald Trump aided and abetted the operation and upended America and the world. How Russia Won tells the little-understood yet crucial story of how Vladimir Putin waged a secret campaign to subvert and weaken the United States—and how Trump, his MAGA m...

A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had o...

Drawing on deep, exclusive reporting, a veteran national security correspondent reveals how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security,...

The outspoken liberal voice on the Fox News show The Five shows us how to stay true to our values, find common ground, and communicate with confidence when engaging across political and social divides. Imagine you’re sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, knowing it’s going to get heated. One uncle is ready to argue about politics, another relative has very different views, and you usually try to st...

From “one of the best writers in the English language” ( The Washington Post ), a sweeping yet intimate novel about one man’s life in the aftermath of the Civil War “I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things...were gone forever.” Born into bondage in Union-leaning northwestern Tennessee, Tennyson Bouguereau’s life revolves around his sister, Rosalee, his work in the M...

The panoramic story of the 1980s, exploring the triumphs and failures of the decade that shaped the 21st century more than any other, from a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who witnessed the transformations firsthand In January 1980, America seemed broken. Inflation raged. Interest rates topped 20 percent. Americans were held hostage in Iran. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with impunity. Jap...

Join Governor Andy Beshear for a hopeful conversation about reclaiming faith as a force for good instead of harm and healing a divided nation through our shared values. Centered around his new book, Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country , Governor Beshear will share stories of healing, justice, forgiveness, welcoming, and moral clarity. In Go and Do Likewise , Governor Beshear shares wh...

Twelve short masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, vainglorious wars, gargantuan wildfires, and shipwrecks Across centuries and wildly diverse locations, Shepard holds us in his grip. We witness the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida from multiple points of view, read the 1864 lett...

Perfect for fans of Eat, Pray, Love, this soulful travel memoir blends poetry, global adventure, cultural connection and personal transformation with reflections on race, identity, and belonging. In 2010, twenty-nine-year-old poet Ebony Walden quits her job to go to on an eight-month solo journey across fifteen countries and five continents. Propelled by a sense of purpose and adventure, she moves...

The true, inspiring story of the new parents who spearheaded an unlikely climate victory. From the rising climate advocate named to the Time100 Next list, for political junkies and anyone who cares about the environment. They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, the...

For fans of Master Slave Husband Wife and Django Unchained comes the extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels . The year, 1851. The place, a Quaker farming community turned Underground Railroad stronghold, where a Maryland enslaver had journeyed in pursuit of four men who’d f...

The definitive history of go-go music and culture Go-go is the heart and soul of Washington, DC's African American culture--a source of resilience for the community and a way to celebrate Black lives. As the soundtrack of the District since the mid-1970s, go-go was designated the official music of Washington in 2020, and it has been incorporated into music genres such as hip-hop and R&B fo...

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare. One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the su...