Politics and Prose Presents

A sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter. The Stories of John Cheever , published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection was honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it would go on to sell mill...

With the 2024 reelection of Donald Trump, it has become impossible to deny that male supremacy is America's chief value system. To deny this is to ignore the root cause of democratic crises here and all over the Western world. And denial undermines our ability to resist and overcome. With her trademark "skill, wit, and sharp insight" (Laura Bates, author of  Girl   Up ), Soraya Chema...

To truly grasp the roots of America's political polarization, economic inequality, public health crises, and democratic collapse, we must examine the country's longstanding regional divides. In  Nations Apart ,  Colin Woodard--an expert on North American regionalism and European ethnonationalism --delves into how centuries-old settlement patterns and the cultural geography they created hav...

George Packer’s gripping fable of imperial collapse illuminates the crises of our times. George Packer’s bestselling nonfiction work exploring American life has won many prizes, including the National Book Award. With  The Emergency , he turns to fiction, bringing us a visionary novel that goes to the nerve center of what it means to live in a time of fracture and upheaval. An empire has collapsed...

"Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can't do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed." Gerard Baker, the first Native American superintendent of Mt. Rushmore, shared those words with author Matthew Davis. From the tragic history of Wounded...

Join  April Ryan  for another installment in an ongoing series of discussions focusing on the panelists' most recent books and current events. Ryan will examine recent and longstanding issues with the following panelists:  White House Correspondent  April Ryan  has a unique vantage point as the only Black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House - a position she has held for...

Every story exists within a world, either existing, created, or adapted. What preconceived notions or associations does the reader bring to those worlds, and how does the writer navigate them? What are the constraints of working with an existing place or time, and how do its traditions, mythology, or folklore affect the stories we choose to tell? Memoirist  Kyoko Mori  speaks with local writers  M...

An original transatlantic history of the invention of the corrections profession and of ensuing debates about punishment’s purposes and prisoners’ rights. Impermissible Punishments  explores the history of punishment inside prisons and how governments grappled with obligations to justify the punishments they impose. Legal scholar Judith Resnik charts the creation of the corrections profession and...

Our solar system is a dynamic place where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our comparatively minuscule corner of the cosmos: planet Earth. In  Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean ,  Dagomar Degroot traces the surprising threads linking human endeavor to the rest of t...

When six-year-old Laurel Taylor vanishes without a trace, her family is left shattered, struggling to navigate the darkness of grief and unanswered questions. As their search turns to despair, Laurel's older sister, Nadine, begins experiencing nightmares that blur the line between dream and reality, and she becomes convinced that Laurel's disappearance could be connected to other family tr...

Hard to figure how so much awful horror could've started out with just them two horses and not a one yet named... From the bestselling author of  House of Leaves  comes a magisterial novel about two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter. While folks still like to focus on the crimes that shocked the small city of Orvop, Utah, back in the fall of 1982, not to mention t...

What just happened? From the moment Trayvon Martin's senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by the new social movements--around guns, gender violence, sexual harrassment, race, policing, and on and on--and an equally powerful backlash that abetted the rise of the MAGA movement. In this punchy, powerful collection of dispatches, mostly pub...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning  Washington Post  reporters  Carol Leonnig  and  Aaron C. Davis , a shocking investigation of unparalleled depth into the subversion of the Justice Department over the last decade, culminating in President Donald Trump upending this cornerstone of democracy and threatening America’s rule of law as we have long known it  Throughout his first administration, Trump did mor...

This event will be in partnership with  Free DC . Amid a national housing affordability crisis with political and social implications, Washington, DC is notorious for its rapidly rising income inequality, high rates of displacement, and some of the most expensive rents in the country. Housing policy expert Rosemary Ndubuizu uncovers more than 100 years of affordable housing politics in the nation&...

Our world is dominated by a handful of tech platforms. They provide great conveniences and entertainment, but also stand as some of the most effective instruments of wealth extraction ever invented, seizing immense amounts of money, data, and attention from all of us. An economy driven by digital platforms and AI influence offers the potential to enrich us, and also threatens to marginalize entire...

In this revelatory and enthralling book, award-winning historian Richard Bell reveals the full breadth and depth of America's founding event. The American Revolution was not only the colonies' triumphant liberation from the rule of an overbearing England; it was also a cataclysm that pulled in participants from around the globe and threw the entire world order into chaos. Repositioning the...

'One day you’ll look back and realise how hard it was, and just how well you did’ Charlie Mackesy’s four unlikely friends are wandering through the wilds again. They’re not sure what they are looking for. They do know that life can be difficult, but that they love each other, and cake is often the answer.  When the dark clouds come, can the boy remember what he needs to get through the storm?...

The must-read new book from Jonathan Karl, the author of  New York Times  bestsellers  Tired of Winning ,  Betrayal , and  Front Row at the Trump Show In  Retribution , Jonathan Karl’s unparalleled access brings us behind closed doors deep inside the White House and presidential campaigns, revealing the extraordinary moments that ended one man’s presidency and brought another back to power. This i...

Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), a towering figure of twentieth-century American letters, achieved so much during his lifetime, in so many different areas, that people have struggled to pin him down. While ambivalent about his WASP privilege--as a teenager he demanded that his name be removed from the New York  Social Register --he attended Yale and cut his teeth in postwar Paris, co-founding  The P...

In the final year of World War II, Audrey is holding tightly to her dream of becoming a painter, while falling hard for a naval doctor. Not long after they marry he's sent overseas, leaving her alone in Washington, DC. Audrey rents a room to Lucille, launching an unlikely friendship that's a comfort to them both. But not everything is quite what it seems. Although Lucille's past has be...

Immortal beloveds Rebekah and Hugh are on vacation! Against a backdrop of ongoing war, this pair of chic emotional vampires from San Francisco sets off on a queer Black Sea Cruise, eager to relax, join an orgy, and feast upon their fellow passengers' desires and sorrows. When Hugh becomes enchanted by an alluring--and possibly magical--nonbinary social media influencer named Heaven, Rebekah&#3...

We are all familiar with the romantic vision of the civil rights movement: a moment when heroic African Americans and their allies triumphed over racial oppression through courageous protest, forging a new consensus in American life and law. But what are the effects of this celebratory storytelling? What happens when a living revolt against injustice becomes an embalmed museum piece? In this innov...

Every major modern art museum in the world has Chaim Soutine in its collection. Yet, a full biographical study of the artist and his work does not exist. His paintings, which are shocking, grotesque, difficult, touching, and brilliant, were revered but misunderstood by his contemporaries who mistook him for an expressionist. In  Chaim Soutine , Celeste Marcus offers a compelling history of the art...

For Nicholas Thompson, running has always been about something more than putting one foot in front of another. He ran his first mile at age five, using it as a way to connect with his father as his family fell apart. As a young man, it was a sport that transformed, and then shook, his sense of self-worth. In his 30s, it was a way of coping with a profound medical scare. By his early 40s, Thompson...

In  The Pursuit of Liberty ,  bestselling author and president of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define--and divide--our country: Jefferson championed states' rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a pow...