Politics and Prose Presents

With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what's gone wrong at One First Street. In   Lawless , she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it's running on vibes. By "vibes," Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up i...

On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love.  After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up—a place she swore she’d never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island’s summer reside...

Tattooing within Indigenous communities is a time-honored practice that binds the tattoo recipient to a deeply felt collective history. More than mere decoration, tattoos embody cultural values, ancestral ties, and spiritual beliefs.  Indigenous Tattoo Traditions  captures ancient tribal tattooing practices and their contemporary resurgence, highlighting a beautiful aspect of humanity's shared...

It's spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein--mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite--is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex...

A courtly man of Southern roots, Murray Kempton worked as a labor reporter for the  New York Post , won a Pulitzer Prize while at Newsday, and was arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago along the way. He wore three piece suits and polished oxfords and was known for riding his bicycle around New York City while listening to his CD Walkman and smoking a pipe with wild red hair tha...

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping. At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined M...

Combining the powers of speculation of Kazuo Ishiguro and the sharp social critique of Aravind Adiga,  Katy Family  offers readers the ultimate experience of global fiction, stories bound and shaped by Katy, Texas, a place made by oil and capitalism. The stories weave between Bangladeshi characters experiencing the reality of the immigrant experience in America and those still in Bangladesh, wishi...

At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system,  Capitalism and Its Critics  provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from the East India Company and Industrial Revolution to the digital revolution. But here John Cassidy, a staff writer at  The New Yorker  and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, adopts a bold...

In a career that has spanned more than fifty years, Judith Viorst has captivated readers with her bestselling children's books and collections of poetry reflecting on each decade of life. Now in her nineties, Viorst writes about life's "Final Fifth," those who are eighty to one hundred years old. Her signature blend of humor and vulnerability infuses personal anecdotes and observ...

When Jennifer Hope Choi first stumbled upon the "curse" known as yeokmasal--an allegedly inheritable affliction causing one to roam farther and farther from home--she immediately consulted her mother. "Oh yeah," Umma quipped. "I have that." Technically this wasn't a revelation. Since 2007, the no-nonsense open-heart surgery nurse had moved suddenly from the Golden...

Most Americans are likely to encounter the effects of government malfeasance or neglect close to home--from their governors, mayors, town councils, school boards, police, and prosecutors. In fact, deals shrouded in darkness are regularly made at the state and local levels, often the result of closed-door discussions between governments and industry without any scrutiny whatsoever from the public....

"You were dead, Sarah, you were dead." In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza's crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings...

Many people know something of Plato's works, yet few are familiar with his life outside of his writings. In  Plato and the Tyrant , acclaimed classicist James Romm uses a little-known set of Plato's personal letters to introduce the man behind the ethereal image, and to explore the formation of his most famous work,  Republic . In the second half of his life, an already famous Plato involv...

Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career to live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will, and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood home: Vivian's grand, sprawling, Southe...

Grit & Gravity  is the 11th volume of the Grace and Gravity anthology series, a literary journal devoted to women writers in the DC region.  Grit & Gravity  features 38 fiction and nonfiction pieces about personal triumphs, resilience, bravery in the face of danger, and ultimately, hope. In the past twenty-two years, the project has published eleven volumes of more than 300 local women wri...

Haunted by his youthful romance with Dara, gifted and sensitive violinist Adam must confront his past to find a way forward. At the Philadelphia graveside of his mother, Adele Pearl, wife and partner in a celebrated two-piano team, his father, Victor, mourns the loss of both his wife and musical career. As Adam reflects on their relationship, he realizes his mother was absent in ways that truly ma...

The story of John B. King, Jr's inspiring path to President Obama's Cabinet begins the day that his mother died. He insisted on going to school that day, knowing he would find comfort in his classroom. As he navigated living alone with a father dying from undiagnosed Alzheimer's, it was public school teachers who saved his life. King's teachers believed in him and saw his potential...

Raising kids in America is difficult--no federally supported parental leave, a lack of mental health support, a crushing combination of workplace pressure and aspirational parental perfection, and the fresh hell that is the playgroup Facebook page. But what if there was another way? Parenting--and specifically motherhood--looks wildly different across nations.  Please Yell at My Kids  is an around...

Follow the fascinating growth and development of the world's largest museum and research complex during its first 60 years. The English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson never visited the United States, yet he bequeathed his estate to the country to establish the Smithsonian Institution. The rest is history, told in rich detail in  Smithson's Gamble .  This book reveals how, as it de...

After winning independence in 1957, Ghana instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to snatch any assets that British colonialism hadn't already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country's gold overseas. Into this big lie stepped one of history&#3...

A Genocide Foretold   confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence. The book includes chapters on: What life is like in Gaza City and...

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS--a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of--poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files,  Poisoning the Well    traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the 'fore...

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a "humane" death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true. Secrets of the Killing State  pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, present...

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe's Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack's reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a national...

It began with a name. Sancho. Gleaned from the memory of his oldest living relative, that name set author Keith Rushing on a quest to recover his family's story. Rushing came to learn that Sancho was an African name, a common practice among the Gullah-Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands. He found that Sancho had been born into slavery on Hilton Head Island and lat...