Politics and Prose Presents

Highlighting the year’s most significant independent journalism—including reports on ICE surveillance, Meta censorship, and police violence—Project Censored’s State of the Free Press 2026 illuminates issues the establishment press have obscured and raises voices corporate media have throttled. Balancing critical analysis with optimistic vision, the volume’s diverse contributors champion press free...

Shade is a place  meanders east-west along Charlottesville's Downtown Mall, seeking "a Black sense of place" at the pace of stressed shade and street trees, the mall's architectural history, and the speaker's ongoing questions and reflections. The collection of poems is a moving invitation to open one's attention by looking up, down, and always within. Through lyric walki...

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd's and Sandra Bland's, capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold.  The Coroner's Silence  reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circum...

In the minds of many, Detroit is undergoing a renaissance thanks to gentrifying urbanites who've been drawn to the city with the promise of cheap housing and thriving culture. But what happens when gentrification attempts to come to one of the most depopulated neighborhoods in the country--a place where every other property in the neighborhood was a vacant lot and every third house stood empty...

In 2020, the United States Congress, in an unprecedented and bipartisan piece of legislation, created the Naming Commission. It was tasked with a monumental mission: rename nine of the U.S. military's most prominent army bases--all of which were named for Confederate leaders who waged war against America in the name of maintaining a slave republic. Over the course of twenty months, that commis...

Should my drapes have a pinch pleat or a rod pocket? What rug material will stand up best to my pets and children? How tall should my side tables be? Where should I put the TV?! There are so many decisions that go into designing a home--and the choices can be overwhelming. Sometimes, you just want to be told what to do. Designer Annie Elliott is here to do just that: offer simple, direct answers t...

One hundred years after the shipwreck of the  Valbanera , known to history as the "poor man's  Titanic ," Mara Denis gets an assignment to report on the Canary Islands, where, she has been told, her ancestors lived before they moved to Cuba. Unexpectedly, she discovers that the grandmother her mother cherished was listed among the dead of the  Valbanera , years before Mara's moth...

America’s bestselling biographer reveals the origins of the most revolutionary sentence in the Declaration of Independence, the one that defines who we are as Americans—and explains how it should shape our politics today. To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, Walter Isaacson takes readers on a fascinating deep dive into the creation of one of history’s most powerful sentences: “We hold these t...

Lucy and her three best friends share a glamorous but decaying house in the heart of Georgetown. They call themselves “the Sweeties” and live an idyllic post-grad lifestyle complete with exciting jobs, dramatic love lives, and, most importantly, each other. But when Addie, the group’s queen bee, discovers that her ex-boyfriend Josh has gone missing, the Sweeties’ worlds are turned upside down. In...

From iconic author and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore comes a breathless search for intimacy and connection, ranging from club culture to the art world, from the AIDS crisis to COVID-19. Terry Dactyl  has lived many lives. Raised by boisterous lesbian mothers in Seattle, she comes of age as a trans girl in the 1980s in a world of dancing queens and late-night house parties just as the AIDS c...

Peter Buck Feller's father disappeared in Moscow in 1938, when Feller was just six months old. As a young boy he asked his mother about him, but his questions went invariably unanswered. Decades later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Feller embarked on a detailed search to reclaim his father. His journey took him and his adult daughters to Moscow, Siberia, and Germany. He gained access...

From the host of Hardball (now on Substack) and acclaimed Kennedy biographer Chris Matthews comes a centennial tribute about why Robert F. Kennedy’s revolutionary vision offers the roadmap America needs today. Bobby Kennedy exemplified moral leadership and political bravery. He led us in pursuit of ideals. He took risks for peace and united us. Look at our country now, with its wide and deepening...

As the 75th anniversary of the legendary Battle of Chosin Reservoir approaches, Steve Vogel tells the little-known story of the Army soldiers who gave all during the Korean War’s most consequential battles and then were denigrated for their sacrifice.   A Task Force Called Faith  delivers a fresh perspective on Chosin, where 150,000 Chinese soldiers trapped 20,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers in the...

A teenage girl stares at her roof, hoping it won’t collapse over her head. A young student searches the Internet for photos of libraries around the world, hoping he’ll be able to visit them one day. Another walks around the city, taking notes of all the buildings she dreams of repairing. These are the stories of young people from Gaza, born under Israeli occupation and blockade. They are people wh...

A revelatory book that lifts the curtain on America’s most consequential public deception: how the rich get richer using tools the government gave them. Amid conflicting narratives about the drivers of wealth and inequality in the United States, one constant hovers in the background: the US tax code. No political force has been more consequential—or more utterly opaque—than the 7,000-page document...

From acclaimed author Shadi Hamid comes an urgent and deeply personal argument for why American dominance, despite its many flaws, remains the world's best hope. Hamid traces his journey from opposing America's role in the world to reluctantly embracing it--while grappling with how recent events, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to Israel's devastating war in Gaza, have challenged...

When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan's first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world. More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and wall...

In 1978, Greta Rideout was the first woman in United States history to accuse her husband of rape, at a time when the idea of "marital rape" seemed ludicrous to many Americans and was a crime in only four states. After a quick and conservative trial acquitted John Rideout and a defense lawyer lambasted that "maybe rape is the risk of being married," Greta was ridiculed and scor...

What is going on with our atmosphere? The headlines are filled with news of devastating hurricanes, murderous tornadoes, and cataclysmic fires affecting large swaths of America. Gale force advisories are issued on a regular basis by the National Weather Service. In 2022, a report was released by atmospheric scientists at the University of Northern Illinois, warning that winds--the force at the cen...

America’s Founding Era reconsidered through the lives of two women as formidable as, and in some respects stronger than, the men they loved, married, and mothered. Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York’s Hudson Valley during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became emb...

Today, South Carolina congressman James E. Clyburn is renowned as a Democratic kingmaker and our nation’s most august Black political leader. But behind him stand eight other remarkable men: the first Black politicians to go to Congress from his home state, and who blazed a path for his own ascent. Since his own arrival in Congress in the early nineties, Congressman Clyburn has been guided by the...

Americans have always fought over the meaning of freedom and equality. What is not commonly recognized is that the battles most pivotal in defining our democracy, from the framing of the Constitution to the decades-long backlash to the civil rights movement, hinged on one issue--taxes. In  The Price of Democracy , Vanessa S. Williamson challenges the myth that Americans are instinctively anti-tax,...

A “big-hearted and true” (Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winner)  debut novel set in a small rural town amid a congressional race that forces the candidates, their families, and a clique of gay second homeowners to confront lies, betrayals and shifting allegiances. The trendy rural town of Griffin has become a popular destination for weekenders and the city’s second homeowners, but now a congre...

Hundreds of female eyes, locked in oil and clay, latch onto Jacquelyn's body as she wanders the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Female images frozen in frames and on pedestals as virgins and victims adrift in a sea of male kings and conquerors. The fierce female gaze ignites a panic attack, and she swears she can hear their plea: Set us free. Two months later, a dream as insistent as the fe...

Aphorisms are literature's hand luggage. Light and compact, they contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul. Aphorisms, the oldest written art form on the planet, have been going viral for thousands of years, delivering the short, sharp shock of old forgotten truths. Today, visual artists are mixing pithy language with compelling imagery an...