Detailed Event List

Sarah McCammon — The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church - with Michel Martin — at Conn Ave

Tuesday, March 19, 7:00 pm
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church By Sarah McCammon Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781250284471
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: St. Martin's Press - March 19th, 2024

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and—most of the time—a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she'd been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

Sarah McCammon is a National Political Correspondent for NPR and cohost of The NPR Politics Podcast. Her work focuses on political, social and cultural divides in America, including the intersections of politics and religion, reproductive rights, and the conservative movement. She is also a frequent guest host for NPR news magazines, and has appeared on the BBC, CNN, PBS, and MSNBC. During the 2016 election cycle, Sarah was NPR’s lead political reporter assigned to the Donald Trump campaign and previously reported for NPR Member stations in Georgia, Iowa and Nebraska. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia with her husband and two children.

McCammon will be in conversation with Michel Martin, a host of Morning Edition. Previously, she was the weekend host of All Things Considered and host of the Consider This Saturday podcast, where she drew on her deep reporting and interviewing experience to dig in to the week's news. Outside the studio, she has also hosted "Michel Martin: Going There," an ambitious live event series in collaboration with Member stations. She has spent more than 25 years as a journalist — first in print with major newspapers and then in television. Martin has been honored by numerous organizations, including the Candace Award for Communications from The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Joan Barone Award for Excellence in Washington-based National Affairs/Public Policy Broadcasting from the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association and a 2002 Silver Gavel Award, given by the American Bar Association. Along with her Emmy award, she received three additional Emmy nominations, including one with WNYC's Robert Krulwich, at the time an ABC contributor as well, for an ABC News program examining children's racial attitudes. In 2019, Martin was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in journalism. She is the 2021 recipient of PMJA's 2021 Leo C. Lee Award.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Matthew Cappucci - Extreme Weather for Kids - at Union Market

Wednesday, March 20, 10:30 am
Extreme Weather for Kids: Lessons and Activities All About Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Blizzards, and More! By Matthew Cappucci, Stephanie Hathaway (Illustrator) Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9780760385142
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Quarry Books - March 26th, 2024

About the Book:

Extreme Weather for Kids is a tour of the world’s wildest weather and natural disasters—what they are, what makes them, how to prepare, and how humans are affecting them. Designed to harness children’s natural curiosity, this action-packed introduction to meteorology incorporates firsthand accounts from inside Mother Nature’s most dramatic moments. For each phenomenon introduced, explanatory text, informative illustrations, sidebars, and asides allow readers to explore at their own pace. Along with storm-chasing reports and photos from in the field, each chapter includes a step-by-step hands-on activity for engaging with the science.
 
 
About the Author:

Matthew Cappucci is an American meteorologist based in Washington, DC. He graduated from Harvard in 2019 with a degree in atmospheric sciences, and works on all platforms creating and delivering forecasts for an audience locally and internationally. A former weather reporter for DC's FOX5, Matthew writes daily articles for The Washington Post, provides the forecast on WAMU radio, the capital’s NPR affiliate, and produces daily video forecasts in the MyRadar app. He also works as an educational consultant. Outside of work, Matthew is an avid storm chaser and photographer, and drives a custom armored truck into severe thunderstorms in search of tornadoes. (He has lost three windshields in hail the size of baseballs or larger).

Ages 8 - 12

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Téa Obreht — The Morningside - with Angie Kim — at Conn Ave

Wednesday, March 20, 7:00 pm
The Morningside: A Novel By Téa Obreht  Cover Image
$29.00
ISBN: 9781984855503
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Random House - March 19th, 2024

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia's aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena's stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

Startling, inventive, and profoundly moving, The Morningside is a novel about the stories we tell--and the stories we refuse to tell--to make sense of where we came from and who we hope we might become.

Téa Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming.

Obreht will be in conversation with Angie Kim. Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award, and was named one of the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time by Time, and one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the Today show. Happiness Falls, her second novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a book club pick for Good Morning America, Barnes & Noble, Belletrist, and Book of the Month Club. She lives in northern Virginia with her family.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Robert L. Tsai — Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All - with Carrie Johnson — at The Wharf

Wednesday, March 20, 7:00 pm
Demand the Impossible: One Lawyer's Pursuit of Equal Justice for All By Robert L. Tsai Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9780393867831
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 12th, 2024

Stephen Bright emerged on the scene as a cause lawyer in the early decades of mass incarceration, when inflammatory politics and harsh changes to criminal justice policy were crashing down on the most vulnerable members of society. He dedicated his career to unleashing social change by representing clients that society had long ago discarded, and advocated for all to receive a fair trial.

In Demand the Impossible, Robert L. Tsai traces Bright's remarkable career to explore the legal ideas that were central to his relentless pursuit of equal justice. For nearly forty years, Bright led the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit that provided legal aid to incarcerated people and worked to improve conditions within the justice system. He argued four capital cases before the US Supreme Court--and won each one, despite facing an increasingly hostile bench. With each victory, he brought to light how the law itself had become corrupted by the country's thirst for severe punishment, exposing prosecutorial misconduct, continuing racial inequality, inadequate safeguards for people with intellectual disabilities, and the shameful quality of legal representation for the poor.

Organized around these four major Supreme Court cases, each narrated in vivid and dramatic detail, Tsai's essential account explores the racism built into the criminal justice system and the incredible advancements one lawyer and his committed allies made for equal rights. An electrifying work of legal history, Demand the Impossible reveals how change can be won in even the most challenging times and how seemingly small victories can go on to have outsized effects.

Robert L. Tsai is Professor of Law and Law Alumni Scholar at Boston University. He is the author, most recently, of Practical Equality, and his essays have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Politico, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Slate. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, DC.

Tsai will be in conversation with Carrie Johnson, NPR's National Justice Correspondent. She covers a wide variety of stories about justice issues, law enforcement, and legal affairs for NPR's flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Johnson regularly appears on the NPR Politics Podcast. Prior to coming to NPR in 2010, Johnson worked at the Washington Post for 10 years. Johnson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Benedictine University in Illinois. She sits on the advisory board for the Center for Journalism Ethics at UW-M and the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

 

610 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024

Leah Hunt-Hendrix & Astra Taylor — Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea - with Olúfémi O. Táíwò – at Union Market

Thursday, March 21, 7:00 pm
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea By Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Astra Taylor Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780593701249
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Pantheon - March 12th, 2024

This event is in partnership with All Above All.

Solidarity is often invoked, but it is rarely analyzed and poorly understood. Here, two leading activists and thinkers survey the past, present, and future of the concept across borders of nation, identity, and class to ask: how can we build solidarity in an era of staggering inequality, polarization, violence, and ecological catastrophe? Offering a lively and lucid history of the idea--from Ancient Rome through the first European and American socialists and labor organizers, to twenty-first century social movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter--Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor trace the philosophical debates and political struggles that have shaped the modern world.

Looking forward, they argue that a clear understanding of how solidarity is built and sustained, and an awareness of how it has been suppressed, is essential to warding off the many crises of our present: right-wing backlash, irreversible climate damage, widespread alienation, loneliness, and despair. Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor insist that solidarity is both a principle and a practice, one that must be cultivated and institutionalized, so that care for the common good becomes the central aim of politics and social life.

Leah Hunt-Hendrix was born and raised in New York City. She has a PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Princeton University where she wrote her dissertation on the Ethics of Solidarity. Leah has founded multiple organizations that have impacted the American political landscape. In 2012, she co-founded Solidaire, a national network of philanthropists dedicated to funding progressive movements, and in 2017, she co-founded Way to Win, a network with a similar structure, this time dedicated to electoral strategy. Both organizations are grounded in building solidarity between major donors and grassroots organizing.

Astra Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. She is the author of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It is Gone, and The People’s Platform (winner of the American Book Award), among other titles, and the director of What Is Democracy? and other films. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, n+I, The Baffler, and elsewhere and she is an advisor to Lux Magazine and on the editorial board of Hammer & Hope. A former touring member of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, she was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer.

Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor will be in conversation with Olúfémi O. Táíwò, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. He has published in academic journals ranging from Public Affairs Quarterly, One Earth, Philosophical Papers, and the American Philosophical Association newsletter Philosophy and the Black Experience. Táíwò’s theoretical work draws liberally from the Black radical tradition, anti-colonial thought, German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, and histories of activism and activist thinkers. His public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in The New Yorker, The Nation, Boston Review, Dissent, The Appeal, Slate, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, Aeon, and Foreign Policy. He is the author  Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Steven Hahn — Illiberal America - with Eugene Robinson — at Conn Ave

Thursday, March 21, 7:00 pm
Illiberal America: A History By Steven Hahn Cover Image
$35.00
ISBN: 9780393635928
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 19th, 2024

A storm of illiberalism, building in the United States for years, unleashed its destructive force in the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021. The attack on American democracy and images of mob violence led many to recoil, thinking “That’s not us.” But now we must think again, for Steven Hahn shows in his startling new history that illiberalism has deep roots in our past. To those who believe that the ideals announced in the Declaration of Independence set us apart as a nation, Hahn shows that Americans have long been animated by competing values, equally deep-seated, in which the illiberal will of the community overrides individual rights, and often protects itself by excluding perceived threats, whether on grounds of race, religion, gender, economic status, or ideology.

Driven by popular movements and implemented through courts and legislation, illiberalism is part of the American bedrock. The United States was born a republic of loosely connected states and localities that demanded control of their domestic institutions, including slavery. As white settlement expanded west and immigration exploded in eastern cities, the democracy of the 1830s fueled expulsions of Blacks, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and abolitionists. After the Civil War, southern states denied new constitutional guarantees of civil rights and enforced racial exclusions in everyday life. Illiberalism was modernized during the Progressive movement through advocates of eugenics who aimed to reduce the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities as well as the poor. The turmoil of the 1960s enabled George Wallace to tap local fears of unrest and build support outside the South, a politics adopted by Richard Nixon in 1968. Today, with illiberalism shaping elections and policy debates over guns, education, and abortion, it is urgent to understand its long history, and how that history bears on the present crisis.

Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who studies American political and social movements. His acclaimed works include A Nation Under Our Feet and A Nation Without Borders. He teaches at New York University and lives in New York City and Southold, on Long Island.

Hahn will be in conversation with Eugene Robinson. Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Washington Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. He started writing a column for the Op-Ed page in 2005. In 2009, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for “his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture.” Robinson is the author of Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, Last Dance in Havana, and Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Michael Kimmage — Collisions: The Origins of War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability - with Dr. Linda Kinstler — at Union Market

Friday, March 22, 7:00 pm
Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability By Michael Kimmage Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9780197751794
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - March 22nd, 2024

In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, a historian and former State Department official who focused on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, offers a wide-angle, historically informed account of the origins of the current Russia-Ukraine war. Tracing the development of Ukraine and Russia's fractious relationship back to the end of the Cold War, Kimmage takes readers through the central events that led to Vladimir Putin seizing a large portion of Ukraine--the Crimea--in 2014 and, eight years later, initiating arguably the most intensive military conflict of the entire post-World War II era.

From the halls of power in Washington, Kyiv, and Moscow to the battlefields of Ukraine, Kimmage chronicles Putin's ascendency to the Russian presidency, delves into multiple American presidencies and their dealings with Russia and Europe, and recounts Europe's efforts to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. He tells the story of how Ukraine went from an embattled country on the edge of Europe to a formidable military power capable of pushing back the Russian military. Just as importantly, Kimmage captures how the current war has transformed multiple centers of power--from China to the United States--and dramatically altered the path of globalization itself. He makes the case that the war in Ukraine has shifted the direction of major macro-trends in world politics, contributing to the fragmentation of international politics, higher inflation, greater food insecurity, and the general collapse of arms control. These intersecting dangers amount to a new age of global instability,
born in war and in the collision between Russia and the United States that has brought the world to the brink of a new Cold War.

An authoritative interpretation of possibly the most important geopolitical event of the post-Cold War era, Collisions is essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of this epochal conflict and its ripple effects across the globe.

Michael Kimmage is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy. He writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and other publications.

Kimmage will be in conversation with Dr. Linda Kinstler, the executive editor of The Dial and a contributing writer to The Economist and to Jewish Currents. Her book, Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends, won a Whiting Award in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in Jewish literature. She teaches at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. 

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Tricia Rose — Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives — and How We Break Free - with Rashad Robinson — at Conn Ave

Friday, March 22, 7:00 pm
Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—and How We Break Free By Tricia Rose Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781541602717
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Basic Books - March 5th, 2024

In recent years, condemnations of racism in America have echoed from the streets to corporate boardrooms. At the same time, politicians and commentators fiercely debate racism's very existence. And so, our conversations about racial inequalities remain muddled.

In Metaracism, pioneering scholar Tricia Rose cuts through the noise with a bracing and invaluable new account of what systemic racism actually is, how it works, and how we can fight back. She reveals how--from housing to education to criminal justice--an array of policies and practices connect and interact to produce an even more devastating "metaracism" far worse than the sum of its parts. While these systemic connections can be difficult to see--and are often portrayed as "color-blind"--again and again they function to disproportionately contain, exploit, and punish Black people.

By helping us to comprehend systemic racism's inner workings and destructive impacts, Metaracism shows us also how to break free--and how to create a more just America for us all.

Tricia Rose is Chancellor's Professor of Africana Studies and the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. The author of three books, including The Hip Hop Wars, she has received fellowships from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and her research has been funded by the Mellon and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations.

Rose will be in conversation with Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, a racial justice organization with more than 7 million members who demonstrate the power of Black communities every single day. Color Of Change uses innovative strategies to bring about lasting change in systems and sectors that affect Black people’s lives. Under Rashad’s leadership, Color Of Change has developed winning strategies for leading the $7 billion advertiser boycott of Facebook, changing how crime, policing and race are represented on TV, winning net neutrality as a civil rights issue, and holding decision-makers accountable to Black communities — from local prosecutors to multinational corporations. Rashad’s analysis, advocacy and activism are featured frequently in a wide range of major media and community media. He also regularly serves as a keynote speaker at events across the country, won a Webby Award for Best Political Podcast, has been a speaker at roundtables convened by both Oprah Winfrey and President Obama, has received several other awards and has authored several published works related to social change. He testified to Congress about regulating Big Tech corporations, and about ensuring racial equity in banking, housing and education, served as Co-Chair of the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder and sits on the board of the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Saleha Mohsin — Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order - with Margaret Talev — at Conn Ave

Saturday, March 23, 3:00 pm
Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order By Saleha Mohsin Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780593539118
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Portfolio - March 19th, 2024

In 1995, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin re-defined the next thirty years of currency policy with the mantra, "A strong dollar is in America's interest." That mantra held, ushering in exceptional prosperity and cheap foreign goods, but the strong dollar policy also played a role in the devastating hollowing out of America's manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, abroad, the United States increasingly turned to the dollar as a weapon of war. In Paper Soldiers, Saleha Mohsin reveals how the Treasury Department has shaped U.S. policy at home and overseas by wielding the American dollar as a weapon--and what that means in a new age of crisis.

For decades, America has preferred its currency superpower-strong, the basis of a "strong dollar" policy that attracted foreign investors and pleased consumers. Drawing on Mohsin's unparalleled access to current and former Treasury officials like Robert Rubin, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen, Paper Soldiers traces that policy's intended and unintended consequences, including the rise of populist sentiment and trade war with China--culminating in an unprecedented attack on the dollar's pristine status during the Trump presidency--and connects the dollar's weaponization from 9/11 to the deployment of crippling financial sanctions against Russia. Ultimately, Mohsin argues that, untethered from many of the economic assumptions of the last generation, the power and influence of the American dollar is now at stake.

With first-hand reporting and fresh analysis that illustrates the vast, often unappreciated power that the Treasury Department wields at home and abroad, Paper Soldiers tells the inside story of how we really got here--and the future not only of the almighty dollar, but the nation's teetering role as a democratic superpower.

Saleha Mohsin is senior Washington correspondent for Bloomberg News covering policy, politics, and power in Washington, D.C. An Ohio native, Mohsin previously lived in Oslo, Norway and in London.

Mohsin will be in conversation with journalist Margaret Talev, senior contributor at Axios and director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism & Citizenship in Washington, DC. She appears regularly on CNN, Sirius XM and NPR and is a professor of practice at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Donald G. McNeil Jr. — The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics with Neil Lewis — at Conn Ave

Saturday, March 23, 5:00 pm
The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics By Donald G. McNeil, Jr. Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9781668001394
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Simon & Schuster - January 9th, 2024

For millions of Americans, Donald McNeil was a comforting voice when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. He was a regular reporter on The New York Times's popular podcast The Daily and told listeners early on to prepare for the worst. He'd covered public health for twenty-five years and quickly realized that an obscure virus in Wuhan, China, was destined to grow into a global pandemic rivaling the 1918 Spanish flu. Because of his clear advice, a generation of Times readers knew the risk was real but that they might be spared by taking the right precautions. Because of his prescient work, The New York Times won the 2021 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service.

The Wisdom of Plagues is his account of what he learned over a quarter-century of reporting in over sixty countries. Many science reporters understand the basics of diseases--how a virus works, for example, or what goes into making a vaccine. But very few understand the psychology of how small outbreaks turn into pandemics, why people refuse to believe they're at risk, or why they reject protective measures like quarantine or vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic was the story McNeil had trained his whole life to cover. His expertise and breadth of sources let him make many accurate predictions in 2020 about the course that a deadly new virus would take and how different countries would respond.

By the time McNeil wrote his last New York Times stories, he had not lost his compassion--but he had grown far more stone-hearted about how governments should react. He had witnessed enough disasters and read enough history to realize that while every epidemic is different, failure was the one constant. Small case-clusters ballooned into catastrophe because weak leaders became mired in denial. Citizens refused to make even minor sacrifices for the common good. They were encouraged in that by money-hungry entrepreneurs and power-hungry populists. Science was ignored, obvious truths were denied, and the innocent too often died. In The Wisdom of Plagues, McNeil offers tough, prescriptive advice on what we can do to improve global health and be better prepared for the inevitable next pandemic.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. spent almost his entire career at The New York Times, starting as a copy boy in 1976. For twenty-five years, he was a science correspondent, reporting from sixty countries as he covered global health and infectious diseases, including AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, SARS, Zika, swine flu, and bird flu. His prescient reporting on the coronavirus epidemic and his insightful appearances on The Daily podcast helped The New York Times win the 2021 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service. He also won the 2020 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, the 2007 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Grand Prize, and awards from GLAAD, the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He is the author of Zika: The Emerging Epidemic and The Wisdom of Plagues: Lessons from 25 Years of Covering Pandemics.

McNeil will be in conversation with Neil Lewis. Lewis was a correspondent with the New York Times from 1985 until 2009 when he resigned his full time assignment and became a contract writer for the paper.  During that period, his assignments included the Justice Department, the State Department and a variety of other issues including investigative projects and presidential campaigns. Before joining The Times, he worked for Reuters, the British-based news agency, working in Washington, London and Johannesburg. He was Reuters' White House correspondent and served as senior correspondent in South Africa in the early 1980's. His work has appeared in several magazines including The New Republic, the Washington Monthly, Rolling Stone and the New York Times Book Review. Born and educated in New York City, Mr. Lewis holds degrees from Union College and the Yale Law School where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow. He is a co-author of a book published by Random House about Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who spied for the Soviet Union. Mr. Lewis has covered presidential campaigns, Iran-contra, the business of lobbying, Supreme Court confirmation proceedings, legal issues and the detention center at Guantanamo among other assignments. Since leaving The Times, he has taught media law at Duke Law School, served as an international election observer in Jordan and was a Shorenstein Center fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.  He is currently a contract writer for The Times and has also published in the Columbia Journalism Review and Politico. In November, 2015 he became the Press Freedom Fellow at the University of Maryland Merrill School of Journalism.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Jessica Pryce — Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker - with Kamilah Bunn — at Conn Ave

Sunday, March 24, 3:00 pm
Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services—Notes of a Former Caseworker By Jessica Pryce Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9780063036192
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Amistad - March 19th, 2024

Dr. Jessica Pryce knows the child welfare system firsthand and, in this long overdue book, breaks it down from the inside out, sharing her professional journey and offering the crucial perspectives of caseworkers and Black women impacted by the system. It is a groundbreaking and eye-opening confrontation of the inherent and systemic racism deeply entrenched within the child welfare system.

Pryce started her social work career with an internship where she was committed to helping keep children safe. In the book, she walks alongside her close friends and even her family as they navigate the system, while sharing her own reckoning with the requirements of her job and her role in the systemic harm. Through poignant narratives and introspection, readers witness the harrowing effects of a well-intentioned workforce that has lost its way, demonstrating how separations are often not in a child's best interests.

With a renewed commitment to strengthening families in her role as activist, Pryce invites the child welfare workforce to embark on a journey of self-reflection and radical growth. At once a framework for transforming child protective services and an intimate, stunning first-hand account of the system as it currently operates, Broken takes everyday scenarios as its focus rather than extreme child welfare cases, challenging readers to critically examine their own mindsets and biases in order to reimagine how we help families in need.

Jessica Pryce is on Faculty at Florida State University's College of Social Work. For the past fifteen years, she has worked in child welfare from multiple angles, including direct casework, research, teaching, training, and policy development. She has trained over 150 child welfare organizations where she empowers professionals to reimagine their role and their work. She currently lives in Florida where she partners with child welfare leaders who are working on system-wide culture shifts and organizational change. Pryce holds an MSW from Florida State University and a PhD from Howard University.

Pryce will be in conversation with Kamilah Bunn, CEO of the National Adoption Association (NAA). For more than two decades, Kamilah has dedicated her career to increasing permanency outcomes for children, especially children of color, who are both disproportionately represented in foster care and wait the longest for permanency. Kamilah leads NAA’s work to transform systems to address the root causes that create barriers to family connections for children and youth particularly those who are overrepresented – Black, Indigenous and Hispanic youth with an intersectional lens those who are also LGBTQIA+. She serves as the authorized official over AdoptUSKids and as the child welfare subject matter expert on the Aspen Institute’s National Criminal Justice Reform Network.The Ujima Black Family Program was launched by NAA under Kamilah’s leadership. Kamilah serves as national spokesperson and frequently appears at events and on nationally syndicated television news broadcasts highlighting the needs of children, youth and families affected by the US foster care system. Kamilah lives in Maryland with her two daughters and husband. She serves on the boards of Voice for Adoption and Family Builders Network.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Michael Arceneaux — I Finally Bought Some Jordans - with Bassey Ikpi — at Conn Ave

Monday, March 25, 7:00 pm
I Finally Bought Some Jordans: Essays By Michael Arceneaux Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9780063140417
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: HarperOne - March 12th, 2024

In his books I Can't Date Jesus and I Don't Want to Die Poor, Michael Arceneaux established himself as one of the most beloved and entertaining writers of his generation, touching upon such hot-button topics as race, class, sexuality, labor, debt, and, of course, paying homage to the power and wisdom of Beyoncé. In this collection, Arceneaux takes stock of how far he has traveled--and how much ground he still has to cover in this patriarchal, heteronormative society. He explores the opportunities afforded to Black creatives but also the doors that remain shut or ever-so-slightly ajar; the confounding challenges of dating in a time when social media has made everything both more accessible and more unreliable; and the allure of returning home while still pushing yourself to seek opportunity elsewhere.

I Finally Bought Some Jordans is both a corrective to, and a balm for, these troubling times, revealing a sharply funny and keen-eyed storyteller working at the height of his craft.

Michael Arceneaux is the New York Times-bestselling author of I Can’t Date JesusI Don’t Want To Die Poor, and his latest, I Finally Bought Some Jordans. He is currently doing the best with what he’s got in Los Angeles.

Arceneaux will be in conversation with Bassey Ikpi, a Nigerian American writer and mental health advocate. Her debut essay collection, I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying, was an instant New York Times bestseller. She appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and joined the touring company for their Tony Award-winning Broadway show, and has appeared on numerous stages across the globe. Bassey is an active voice in the mental health community and a pop culture connoisseur; Her essays on both topics can be found on platforms including The New York Times, The Root, and Okay Africa. She is also the creator of #NoShameDay, an initiative that normalizes conversations surrounding Black mental health in order to reduce stigma. In short: Bassey Ikpi is a Nigerian American writer, ex-poet, constant mental health advocate, underachieving overachiever, and memoir procrastinator. She lives in Maryland.

This event is free with first come, first served seating. 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

La Comunidad Reads: A Conversation with Lupita Aquino — at MLK Library

Monday, March 25, 7:00 pm
Say Hello to My Little Friend: A Novel By Jennine Capó Crucet Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9781668023327
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Simon & Schuster - March 5th, 2024

Flores and Miss Paula: A Novel By Melissa Rivero Cover Image
$29.00
ISBN: 9780063272491
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Ecco - December 5th, 2023

Click here to RSVP. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

An Evening with Jennine Capó Crucet and Melissa Rivero

Join DCPL and Politics and Prose for another conversation in our La Comunidad series with Lupita Aquino (aka Lupita Reads). Lupita will host an engaging discussion featuring esteemed special guests — Jennine Capó Crucet author of the forthcoming book Say Hello To My Little Friend and Melissa Rivero author of Flores and Miss Paula, as we delve into the way both novels navigate themes of self-identity and autonomy, through the characters grappling with their desires, dreams, and responsibilities amidst familial expectations and societal pressures.

Copies of the book will be available for sale by Politics and Prose bookstore, and a limited number of copies will be available to give away courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation.

Melissa Rivero is the author of The Affairs of the Falcóns, which won the 2019 New American Voices Award and a 2020 International Latino Book Award. The book was also long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Brooklyn, she is a graduate of NYU and Brooklyn Law School. She still lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Flores and Miss Paula - Thirtysomething Flores and her mother, Paula, still live in the same Brooklyn apartment, but that may be the only thing they have in common. It's been nearly three years since they lost beloved husband and father Martín, who had always been the bridge between them. One day, cleaning beneath his urn, Flores discovers a note written in her mother's handwriting: Perdóname si te falle. Recuerda que siempre te quise. ("Forgive me if I failed you. Remember that I always loved you.") But what would Paula need forgiveness for?

Now newfound doubts and old memories come flooding in, complicating each woman's efforts to carve out a good life for herself--and to support the other in the same. Paula thinks Flores should spend her evenings meeting a future husband, not crunching numbers for a floundering aquarium startup. Flores wishes Paula would ask for a raise at her DollaBills retail job, or at least find a best friend who isn't a married man.

When Flores and Paula learn they will be forced to move, they must finally confront their complicated past--and decide whether they share the same dreams for the future. Spirited and warm-hearted, Melissa Rivero's new novel showcases the complexities of the mother-daughter bond with fresh insight and empathy.

Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of four books, including the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award and was cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, and others; the story collection How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the John Gardner Book Award; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, which was long-listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. A former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, she’s a recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and the Hillsdale Award for the Short Story, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her writing has appeared on PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and in publications such as The Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, and others. She’s worked as a professor of ethnic studies and of creative writing, as a college access counselor for the One Voice Scholars Program, and as a sketch comedienne (though not all at the same time). Born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, she lives in North Carolina with her family.

Say Hello to My Little Friend -Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes--you can call him Izzy--might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull's legal team and living in his aunt's garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.

When Izzy's efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are--permeating everything from Miami's sinking streets to Izzy's memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzy's story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguana's claws, and as menacing as a killer whale's teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzy's boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Wildly narrated and expertly rendered, Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Capó Crucet's most daring, heart-breaking, and fearless book yet.

901 G st NW
Washington, DC 20001

Debbie Hines — Get Off My Neck: Black Lives, White Justice, and a Former Prosecutor's Quest for Reform with Bremante Bryant — at Conn Ave

Tuesday, March 26, 7:00 pm
Get Off My Neck: Black Lives, White Justice, and a Former Prosecutor's Quest for Reform By Debbie Hines Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9780262048910
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: The MIT Press - March 26th, 2024

In Get Off My Neck, Debbie Hines draws on her unique perspective as a trial lawyer, former Baltimore prosecutor, and assistant attorney general for the State of Maryland to argue that US prosecutors, as the most powerful players in the criminal justice system, systematically target and criminalize Black people. Hines describes her disillusionment as a young Black woman who initially entered the profession with the goal of helping victims of crimes, only to discover herself aiding and abetting a system that prizes plea bargaining, speedy conviction, and excessive punishment above all else. In this book, she offers concrete, specific, and hopeful solutions for just how we can come together in a common purpose for criminal justice and racial justice reform.

Get Off My Neck explains that the racial inequities in the prosecutorial system are built into our country's DNA. What's more, they are the direct result of a history that has conditioned Americans to perceive the Black body as insignificant at best and dangerous at worst. Unlike other books that discuss the prosecutor's office and change from inside the office, Hines offers a proactive approach to fixing our broken prosecutorial system through a broad-based alliance of reform-minded prosecutors, activists, allies, communities, and racial justice organizations--all working together to end the racist treatment of Black people.

Told intimately through personal, family, and client narratives, Get Off My Neck is not only a deeply sobering account of our criminal justice system and its devastating impact on Black children, youth, and adults but also a practical and inspiring roadmap for how we can start doing better right now.

Former Baltimore prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Maryland, and trial attorney Debbie Hines is an advocate for racial equity in the criminal justice system. She maintains a private law practice focused on civil and criminal litigation in Washington, DC. A leading voice in the discourse of criminal justice and race, Hines is often called on by media networks for legal commentary.

Hines will be in conversation with Bremante Bryant. Bryant is a journalist whose has spent three decades covering news and sports as a reporter, anchor. He has reported on stories as diverse as murder trials, political elections, healthcare, soldiers returning home from war, the NFL, the NBA, and NHL Stanley Cup and NCAA basketball national championships. He currently serves as a reporter and fill-in host for WHUR-FM, 96.3. He also hosts the public affairs program This Just In on WDCW in Washington, DC. Besides a love of journalism, Bremante is passionate about history and transmits that zeal to students at Prince George’s Community College as an adjunct professor of African American and American history.

This event is free with first come. first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Annie Jacobsen — Nuclear War: A Scenario - with Lt. Gen. Charlie Moore and Jon Wolfsthal — at The Wharf

Wednesday, March 27, 7:00 pm
Nuclear War: A Scenario By Annie Jacobsen Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780593476093
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Dutton - March 26th, 2024

Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have.
 
Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

Annie Jacobsen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist in history The Pentagon’s Brain, the New York Times bestsellers Area 51 and Operation Paperclip, 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 will be in conversation with Lt. Gen. Charlie Moore and Jon Wolfsthal. Lt. General a highly decorated retired Lieutenant General of the United States Air Force who is recognized as one of the most influential and impactful senior cyber leaders and aviators within the United States Military. Prior to his retirement, after 33 years of service, he served as the Deputy Commander, United States Cyber Command, where he and the Commander answered directly to the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense as the agents responsible for the planning and execution of global cyberspace operations, activities and missions. He held a variety of additional assignments including command of two Fighter Wings, a combat Operations Group and a fighter squadron. He participated in Operations Southern Watch, Joint Forge, Iraqi Freedom, Inherent Resolve, and Enduring Freedom. Charlie currently serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt University and as an Executive Advisor/Consultant on cyber and national defense related issues. Jon Wolfsthal is the director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists.  He is a former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director at the National Security Council for arms control and nonproliferation.  He was a special advisor to Vice President Joe Biden from 2009-2012 at the White House.  He has conducted on-site missions in North Korea, Iran, Russia and China and has over 35 year experience on nuclear weapons, deterrence, arms control and national secuirty.  He is co-author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

610 Water Street, SW
Washington, DC 20024

W. Joseph Campbell — Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections with Filippo Trevisan — at Conn Ave

Wednesday, March 27, 7:00 pm
Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in U.S. Presidential Elections By W. Joseph Campbell Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9780520397781
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: University of California Press - February 20th, 2024

Lost in a Gallup tells the story of polling flops and failures in presidential elections since 1936. Polls do go bad, as outcomes in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2004, and 2000 all remind us. This updated edition includes a new chapter and conclusion that address the 2020 polling surprise and considers whether polls will get it right in 2024.

As author W. Joseph Campbell discusses, polling misfires in presidential elections are not all alike. Pollsters have anticipated tight elections when landslides have occurred. They have pointed to the wrong winner in closer elections. Misleading state polls have thrown off expected national outcomes. Polling failure also can lead to media error. Journalists covering presidential races invariably take their lead from polls. When polls go bad, media narratives can be off-target as well. Lost in a Gallup encourages readers to treat election polls with healthy skepticism, recognizing that they could be wrong.

W. Joseph Campbell is an American writer, historian, and media critic who is the author of six other books, including the award-winning Getting It Wrong: Debunking the Greatest Myths in American Journalism. Campbell is a former journalist whose 20-year professional career took him on assignments across North America to Europe, West Africa, and parts of Asia. He earned his doctorate in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997 and soon thereafter joined the American University faculty, where he taught 20 different courses in 26 years. Among them was an honors colloquium, "When Polls Go Bad." Campbell, who recently retired from AU, is a past recipient of the "Faculty Member of the Year" award given by the university's student government. His work has appeared in a variety of news outlets including the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, The Hill, Fortune, and The Conversation.  Campbell discussed his book, 1995: The Year the Future Began, in a program in February 2015 at Politics&Prose.

Campbell will be in conversation with Filippo Trevisan. Trevisan is Associate Professor of Public Communication and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at American University’s School of Communication, where he teaches in the Strategic Communication and Political Communication programs. His research examines the intersection of technology, political participation, and marginalization. His first book Disability Rights Advocacy Online: Voice, Empowerment, and Global Connectivity was released in 2017, and he has two new books that will be out later this year: Story Tech: Power, Storytelling, and Social Change Advocacy, which examines how advocacy organizations use personal stories to influence public debates and policy, and The Routledge Handbook of Political Campaigning, an edited volume that charts the state of the art and the future of political campaigns. A native of Italy, before moving to the D.C. area Filippo lived in Glasgow, Scotland for nearly a decade and previously worked as a reporter for the English desk of Italy’s largest private news agency in Rome.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Lauren Oyler — No Judgment - with Jacob Brogan — at Conn Ave

Thursday, March 28, 7:00 pm
No Judgment: Essays By Lauren Oyler Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9780063235359
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: HarperOne - March 19th, 2024

In her writing for Harper's, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature--whether celebratory or scarily harsh--have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today's fraught environment? How do we understand ourselves, and each other, as space between the individual and the world seems to get smaller and smaller, and our opinions on books and movies seem to represent something essential about our souls? And to put it bluntly, why should you care what she--or anyone--thinks?

In this, her first collection of essays, Oyler writes with about topics like the role of gossip in our exponentially communicative society, the rise and proliferation of autofiction, why we're all so "vulnerable" these days, and her own anxiety. In her singular prose--sharp yet addictive, expansive yet personal--she encapsulates the world we live and think in with precision and care, delivering a work of cultural criticism as only she can.

Bringing to mind the works of such iconic writers as Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, and Terry Castle, No Judgment is a testament to Lauren Oyler's inimitable wit and her quest to understand how we shape the world through culture. It is a sparkling nonfiction debut from one of today's most inventive thinkers.

Lauren Oyler’s essays on books and culture appear regularly in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was a national bestseller when it was published in 2021. Before that, she co-wrote two books with Alyssa Mastromonaco, and she has ghostwritten other works as well. She lives in Berlin. 

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Keith O'Brien — Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball — at Union Market

Thursday, March 28, 7:00 pm
Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball By Keith O'Brien Cover Image
$35.00
ISBN: 9780593317372
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Pantheon - March 26th, 2024

Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago, which still stands. At the same time, he was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn't

In the 1980s Pete Rose came to be at the center of the biggest scandal in baseball history. Baseball no longer needed Pete Rose, and he was magnificently, publicly cast out for betting on baseball and lying about it. The revelations that followed ruined Pete, changed life in Cincinnati, and forever altered the game.

Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America's most epic tragedies, the rise and fall of Pete Rose, one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Drawing on first-hand interviews with Pete himself, his associates, as well we on investigators, FBI and court records, archives, a mountain of press coverage, Keith O'Brien chronicles how Pete fell so far from being America's "great white hope." It is Rose as we've never seen before.

This is no ordinary sport biography, but cultural history at its finest. What O'Brien shows is that while Pete Rose didn't change, America and baseball did. This is the story of that change.

Keith O'Brien is the New York Times bestselling author of Paradise Falls, Fly Girls, and Outside Shot, a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, and an award-winning journalist. O'Brien has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico, and his stories have also appeared on National Public Radio and This American Life. He lives in New Hampshire.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Talmage Boston — How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons From Our Top Presidents - with Evan Thomas — at Conn Ave

Monday, April 1, 7:00 pm
How the Best Did It: Leadership Lessons From Our Top Presidents By Talmage Boston Cover Image
$32.00
ISBN: 9781637586976
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Post Hill Press - April 2nd, 2024

The President of the United States is the most powerful leader in the world. He’s called to make the nation’s most impactful decisions while maintaining the support of the multitudes. Though many have failed at the job, a select few have led America to new heights, and how they did it is worthy of study.

How the Best Did It takes the leadership lessons gained from our greatest presidents and makes them instructive today for all leaders who seek to enhance their performance.

· Want to get promoted without being seen as a self-promoter? Do what Washington did.

· Want to reduce conflict among your group’s factions? Do what Jefferson did.

· Want to know how to take the high road when major problems arise? Do what Lincoln did.

· Want to expand your power into entirely new areas of influence? Do what Theodore Roosevelt did.

· Want to move the needle steadily until ultimate goals are achieved? Do what Franklin Roosevelt did.

· Want to have your team work like a well-oiled machine? Do what Eisenhower did.

· Want to grow in expertise while leading? Do what Kennedy did.

· Want to inspire optimism throughout your enterprise? Do what Reagan did.

Based on Talmage Boston’s sound evaluations, which have been endorsed by America’s leading presidential historians, every chapter ends with a self-examination questionnaire that allows the reader to evaluate his or her own leadership skills.

Talmage Boston is a well-known figure among leading historians as an author, speaker, and onstage interviewer. His work has been endorsed by David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, Douglas Brinkley, Annette-Gordon-Reed, Evan Thomas, and H.W. Brands, as well as many other esteemed presidential biographers. Boston is the author of Cross-Examining History, Raising the Bar, Baseball and the Baby Boomer, and 1939: Baseball’s Tipping Point. He is also one of the most highly recognized lawyers in Texas, having been chosen for three major statewide awards in the last four years by the Texas Bar Foundation and the State Bar of Texas’ Litigation Section. Boston has been named a “Texas Super Lawyer” by Thompson Reuters every year since 2003, and among the “Best Lawyers in America” every year since 2013. He is the only lawyer to receive a “Presidential Citation” from eight different presidents of the State Bar of Texas for outstanding service to the State Bar. Working as both a full-time commercial litigator and a full-time historian throughout the twenty-first century, Boston’s varied experience and notable achievements in both fields make him uniquely qualified to write How the Best Did It due to his knowledge of history, his skills as a writer, and his vast experience in business and law. In November 2023, Boston was recognized by the Dallas Historical Society as “The History Maker of the Year” in the field of promoting history in North Texas. Boston lives in Dallas with his wife Claire, son Scott, daughter Lindsey, son-in-law Mitchell, and his two grandsons. 

Boston will be in conversation with Evan Thomas. Thomas is the author of nine books including New York Times bestsellers John Paul Jones and Sea of Thunder. Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for thirty-three years at Time and Newsweek.  He wrote more than one hundred cover stories and in 1999 won a National Magazine Award. He wrote Newsweek’s fifty-thousand-word election specials in 1996, 2000, 2004 (winner of a National Magazine Award), and 2008. The author of dozens of book reviews for The New York Times and The Washington Post, Thomas has taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton, where, from 2007 to 2014, he was Ferris Professor of Journalism.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Alisyn Camerota — Combat Love: A Story of Leaving, Longing, and Searching for Home with Rachel Louise Snyder — at Conn Ave

Tuesday, April 2, 7:00 pm
Combat Love: A Story of Leaving, Longing, and Searching for Home By Alisyn Camerota Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781644283714
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Rare Bird Books - March 26th, 2024

CNN Anchor Alisyn Camerota’s memoir Combat Love is her story of growing up longing for stability and attachment as the foundation of her family crumbled. Set on the Jersey Shore in the free-range 1980s, Camerota finds the belonging she craves courtesy of a local punk rock band named Shrapnel and their diehard fans. Combat Love chronicles her near-misses and misadventures at clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, coupled with the sex, drugs, and punk rock of 1980s New Jersey. By the time she leaves home at sixteen, it feels like home had left her long ago. 

Combat Love is also the story of two women, mother and daughter, trying to forge their own paths and independence, and find their own happiness, success and wholeness. Camerota’s story searches for the line between shelter and risk, nurture and neglect, parenting and personal freedom. What are we willing to sacrifice for self-actualization and happiness? What if the answer is your mother, or your daughter? 

The two-time Emmy-award-winning Camerota retraces her steps down an often gritty path toward her dream of becoming a journalist. At times heartbreaking and pulse-pounding, Combat Love is an inspiration for anyone who’s ever searched for that elusive place called home.

Alisyn Camerota is the anchor of CNN Newsroom. For the last few months, she has also been the guest host of the popular podcast Distraction, which deals with complex family subjects and themes, and will be instated as a permanent host of the podcast by the end of the year. She is also the author of Amanda Wakes Up (Viking), which received glowing reviews from the New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, and NPR.

Camerota will be in conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder. Snyder is the author of 4 books, most recently the memoir Women We Buried, Women We Burned. Her book No Visible Bruises was a “Top Ten” book of 2019 by the New York Times. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Snyder is a professor in creative writing in the MFA program at American University and a New York Times opinion Contributing Writer.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Ciera Burch - Something Kindred - with Ronald L. Smith - at Conn Ave in the Children and Teens Department

Tuesday, April 2, 7:00 pm
Something Kindred By Ciera Burch Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9780374389130
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) - April 2nd, 2024

About the Book:

After many years away, Jerika and her mother move back to their small hometown in rural Maryland to care for her ailing grandmother. As she creates ties to the town with new friends, a new crush and her photography portfolio, Jerika discovers the ghosts both in her family and from the town’s historic tragedy.  In the end, Jerika must decide if she wants to leave town like her mother and grandmother, or if she will even be able to get out? 

 

About the Author:

Ciera Burch is a lifelong writer and a graduate of American University with an MFA from Emerson College. Her first book is Finch House but she has other works in multiple journals.   Originally from New Jersey, she currently resides in Washington, D.C. with her stuffed animals and far too many books.  
 

Ronald L. Smith, the award-winning author of several middle grade novels including Gloomstown, Black Panther: The Young Prince Trilogy from Marvel-Disney with the latest novel being Where the Black Flowers Bloom. He has also contributed to multiple anthologies. Roland lives in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Ages 12-18

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Lauren Wesley Wilson — What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success - with April Ryan — at Conn Ave

Wednesday, April 3, 7:00 pm
What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success By Lauren Wesley Wilson Cover Image
$25.99
ISBN: 9781401974893
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Hay House Business - April 2nd, 2024

What do you need? This question, as simple as it is powerful, is not often asked of women of color. But the answer to this question could be the difference between dreaming of a successful life and actually living one.

As founder and CEO of ColorComm Corporation, Lauren Wesley Wilson has been on the forefront of empowering women to become leaders and changemakers in business. At age 25, Lauren founded ColorComm, which began as an informal networking luncheon series and has since evolved into a multimillion-dollar communications company.

Like any successful venture, your career needs a strategic plan; and that starts by determining where you want to go and what you need to get there. A fundamental piece of developing that vision is the crucial question that ColorComm has long-asked its community: What do you need?

In her groundbreaking book, Lauren reveals the unwritten rules that women of color need to know in order to succeed in the workplace. Drawing from her own career experiences, Lauren shares the playbook you'll need to advance to the C-Suite.

Whether you are a woman of color seeking to thrive in the workplace or an ally committed to creating an inclusive environment where everyone can excel, What Do You Need? is your indispensable road map to understanding, supporting, and empowering women of color in their careers.

What Do You Need? is a reminder that by understanding each other's needs we can build bridges that lead us toward a more equitable and inclusive society, all while enjoying the journey up the ladder to success.

Told through stories from her own career and those of her friends and connections--including Whoopi Goldberg, Gayle King, Ann Curry, Michelle Lee--as well as through tools, resources, and practical strategies, Lauren uncovers the secrets of how women of color can reach executive leadership positions.

Topics include:

  • tackling imposter syndrome
  • building a network
  • establishing your value
  • insights for recognizing the red flags when a job is a dead end
  • and much more

Lauren Wesley Wilson is one of the nation's leading thought leaders on media relations, diversity and inclusion, and crisis communications. She is the founder and CEO of ColorComm Corporation. Prior to ColorComm, Lauren worked as a communications strategist at a prestigious crisis communications firm in Washington, D.C., where she oversaw media strategy and crisis communications for international governments and stakeholder engagement for consumer brands. Lauren has been featured in The Washington Post, Forbes, People, as well as on MSNBC and CNBC, and more. She has been recognized by PR Week's 50 Most Powerful in PR, Ad Age's Women to Watch , New York Women in Communications, and many others. Lauren previously served on the Glass Lions Jury at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France. Lauren graduated from Spelman College with a bachelor's degree in political science and from Georgetown University with a master's degree in communications. Lauren resides in New York City.

Wilson will be in conversation with White House Correspondent April Ryan. 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 over 26 years. She is now the longest-serving Black woman in the press corps. April is the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for TheGrio. Ryan has served on the board of the White House Correspondents Association. She is one of only four African Americans in the Association's over 100-year history to serve on its board.  She is also an esteemed member of the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club. In 2015, Ryan was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for her first book and was the 2017 Journalist of the Year for the  National Association of Black Journalists. In 2019 Ryan was recognized as the  2019 Freedom of the Press Award Winner by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In 2021, she was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Social Justice Impact. April considers her greatest life's work raising her two daughters. She is the author of the books The Presidency in Black and White, At Mama's Knee, and  Under Fire. Her latest book, Black Women Will Save the World, celebrates Black women's resilience and unheralded strength, reflects on "The Year That Changed Everything" and discusses African-American women's unprecedented role in upholding democracy. 

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Benjamín Labatut — The MANIAC with Emily Esfahani Smith — at the Wharf

Wednesday, April 3, 7:00 pm
The MANIAC By Benjamin Labatut Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593654477
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Penguin Press - October 3rd, 2023

Benjamín Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.

Benjamín Labatut is a Chilean author born in the Netherlands in 1980. He was raised in The Hague before settling in Chile, where he lives and works. He is the author of Antarctica starts here (2009), a short story collection; After the Light (2016), a series of scientific, philosophical, and historical notes on the void; The Stone of Madness (2021), a diptych on madness, chaos, and modernity; and When We Cease to Understand the World (2021), a book that explores the ecstasy and agony of scientific breakthroughs and has been translated into over thirty languages.

Labatut will be in conversation with Emily Esfahani Smith. Emily Esfahani Smith is the author of The Power of Meaning, an international bestseller that has been translated into 16 different languages. The former managing editor of The New Criterion, Smith’s articles and essays about psychology and culture have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and other publications. In 2019, she was a Poynter Journalism Fellow at Yale University. Smith is also a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the Catholic University of America, where she is training as a therapist.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

610 Waters St SW
Washington, DC 20024

Cambria Gordon - Trajectory - in conversation with Monica Hesse at Conn Ave in the Children and Teens Department

Wednesday, April 3, 7:00 pm
Trajectory By Cambria Gordon Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9781338853827
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Scholastic Press - April 2nd, 2024

About the Book:

When seventeen-year-old Eleanor is approached by the glamorous Mrs. Mauchly at a Philadelphia math competition, her life changes overnight. Eleanor, a hidden math prodigy, is recruited by the U.S. Army to use her abilities to help soldiers hit their targets from airplanes during WWII. Now, instead of worrying about her Jewish relatives in war-torn Europe, Eleanor can make a tangible difference. Cambria Gordon’s Trajectory combines the spirit of "Hidden Figures" with the intrigue of the "Bletchley Circle" as Eleanor finds her voice and courage to make a difference. 

About the Author:

Cambria Gordon is the critically acclaimed author of The Poetry of Secrets, a historical fiction novel set during the Spanish Inquisition and The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming, winner of The Green Earth Book Award, a CCBC Choices selection, and translated into 11 languages. Cambria is a third generation Los Angeleno though she now considers Madrid her second home. She is married to television writer/producer Howard Gordon and is the mother of three children. 

Ages 13 - 17

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Becca Rothfeld — All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess - with Celeste Marcus — at Conn Ave

Thursday, April 4, 7:00 pm
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess By Becca Rothfeld Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9781250849915
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Metropolitan Books - April 2nd, 2024

In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish” (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation.

Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.

Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for the Washington Post, an editor at the Point, and a PhD candidate in philosophy at Harvard. Winner of the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, finalist for a National Magazine Award, and two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Reviewing Prize, Rothfeld has written for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She lives in Washington, DC.

Rothfeld will be in conversation with Celeste Marcus, a writer and artist based in Washington, DC who serves as the managing editor of Liberties Journal. She is currently at work on a biography of Chaim Soutine.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Desiree Evans & Saraciea Fennell - The Black Girl Survives in this One - in conversation with Justina Ireland, Maika Moulite & Maritza Moulite - at Union Market

Thursday, April 4, 7:00 pm
The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories By Desiree S. Evans (Editor), Saraciea J. Fennell (Editor), Tananarive Due (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Desiree S. Evans (Editor), Saraciea J. Fennell (Editor), Tananarive Due (Introduction by)
$19.99
ISBN: 9781250871657
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Flatiron Books - April 2nd, 2024

Pre-order your book to have signed at this Union Market event!

About the Book:

Monsters and demons and danger, oh my!  This panel discussion delves into a groundbreaking project in opposition to—and fixing—Black women’s invisibility and subjugation in horror. Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives In This One is a YA anthology in the horror genre for Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, yet always survive to the end. 

About the Panelists:

Desiree S. Evans writes fiction for children, teens, and adults. She is co-editor of the anthology, The Black Girl Survives in This One, and a contributor to the anthologies Cool. Awkward. Black. and Foreshadow. Desiree is a 2020 winner of the Walter Dean Myers Grant for children's fiction awarded by the nonprofit organization We Need Diverse Books.  

Saraciea J. Fennell is a Black Honduran American writer, founder of The Bronx is Reading, and creator of Honduran Garifuna Writers. She is the editor of the nonfiction anthology, Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed, and her work has appeared in Popsugar, Refinery29, and Culturess, among others. She lives in the Bronx with her family and black poodle, Oreo. 

Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including Dread Nation, Deathless Divide, Rust in the Root and the award winning middle-grade, Ophie’s Ghosts. She is the author of numerous Star Wars books and one of the story architects of Star Wars: The High Republic.

Maika Moulite is a Miami native and the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her acclaimed young adult novels Dear Haiti, Love AlaineOne of the Good Ones, and the forthcoming The Summer I Ate the Rich have been featured on NPR, in Essence magazine, and more. When she's not working on her next novel with her sister and co-author Maritza Moulite, she is sharpening her skills as a doctoral student at Howard University. Her research focuses on media representation and the ways marginalized groups subvert stereotypical depictions through culture.

Maritza Moulite graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s in women’s studies and the University of Southern California with a master’s in journalism. She’s worked at NBC News, CNN, and USA TODAY but her favorite roles have been Head Start literacy tutor and pre-k teacher assistant. She loved working with young people so much that she is now a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania exploring ways to improve literacy through children’s media. She clearly couldn’t get enough of school. Her favorite song is “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire.

Ages 14+ 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Julia Alvarez — The Cemetery of Untold Stories - with Marie Arana — at Conn Ave

Friday, April 5, 7:00 pm
The Cemetery of Untold Stories: A Novel By Julia Alvarez Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781643753843
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Algonquin Books - April 2nd, 2024

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions, and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.

Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener as Alma's characters unspool their secret tales. Among them: Bienvenida, the abandoned second wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, consigned to oblivion by history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

The characters defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories.

Readers of Isabel Allende's Violeta and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead will devour Alvarez's extraordinary new novel about beauty and authenticity, and will be reminded that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.

Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library's program "The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez." In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

Alvarez will be in conversation with Marie Arana. Marie Arana was born in Lima, Peru. She is the author of the memoir American Chica, a finalist for the National Book Award; two novels, Cellophane and Lima Nights; the prizewinning biography Bolivar; Silver, Sword, and Stone, a narrative history of Latin America; and The Writing Life, a collection from her well-known column for The Washington Post. She is the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress and lives in Washington, DC, and Lima, Peru.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Zack Rogow — Hugging My Father's Ghost - with Steven Roberts — at The Wharf

Friday, April 5, 7:00 pm
Hugging My Father's Ghost By Zack Rogow Cover Image
$25.00
ISBN: 9781959556817
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Spuyten Duyvil - April 2nd, 2024

In this memoir, Zack Rogow tries to solve the mystery of the father he never knew. Lee Rogow was a widely published fiction writer, drama critic for the Hollywood Reporter, glamorous man-about-town in Manhattan of the 1950s, captain of a submarine-chaser in World War II—and he died tragically in a plane crash when his son Zack was only three years old.

For decades, grief kept Zack from looking closely at his father’s writings. In Hugging My Father’s Ghost, Zack delves into his father’s unpublished work and unearths treasures. The memoir includes Lee Rogow’s most intimate writings that have never seen the light of day. Those pages reveal intriguing secrets about Zack’s parents and their complex connections to the couple their children knew as godparents. The memoir intersperses Zack’s father’s writings, Zack’s reflections on his parents and the Greatest Generation, and imaginary conversations between his father and himself. The book blends laugh-out-loud humor with sharp pathos, while dealing with the pressures on immigrant families and how those impacted the fates of his parents.

Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books and works for the theater. His play Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and ran in London, Indonesia, Catalonia, San Francisco, and Portland. His honors include the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize; the Lili Fabilli-Eric Hoffer Essay Prize from University of California, Berkeley; and the Celestine Award for Poetry from Holy Names University. Rogow’s blog, Advice for Writers, features more than 275 posts. His literary translations from French include works by Colette, George Sand, André Breton, and Marcel Pagnol.

Rogow will be in conversation with his cousin, Steven Roberts. Roberts has been a journalist for more than 50 years, covering some of the major events of his time. Since 1997, Roberts has been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, where he has taught for the last 31 years. His many honors include the Dirksen Award for covering Congress, the Wilbur Award for reporting on religion and politics, the Bender prize as one of GW's top undergraduate teachers and six honorary degrees. He's been named a Father of the Year by the Father's Day Council and received the Public Service Sector Award from the Aspen Institute. Steve also remains a practicing journalist and author. He serves as the chief political analyst for ABC Radio and writes a nationally-syndicated newspaper column. He also contributes regular columns to Bethesda Magazine and reviews books for the Washington Post. He has written eight books, two of them co-authored with his late wife, the noted journalist Cokie Roberts.His latest book, published in the fall of 2021, is Cokie: A Life Well-Lived. Major media coverage included NPR, ABC, CNN and PBS. The Washington Post called it ‘encouraging and enlightening’ and the New York Times recommended the audio version, which Steve recorded himself. Steve and Cokie had two children: Lee, a banker in Raleigh, NC, who was also named for Rogow's  father, and Rebecca, a museum specialist and book author in Washington, and six grandchildren.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

610 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024

Meet & Greet with Todd Boss and Rashin Kheiriyeh - The Boy Who Said Wow at Conn Ave in the Children and Teens Department

Saturday, April 6, 10:00 am
The Boy Who Said Wow By Todd Boss, Rashin Kheiriyeh (Illustrator) Cover Image
By Todd Boss, Rashin Kheiriyeh (Illustrator)
$18.99
ISBN: 9781534499713
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Beach Lane Books - April 2nd, 2024

About the Book:   

A young boy accompanies his grandfather to the Symphony Orchestra and is carried away by the transcendent power of music.  The swirling illustrations animate the lively musical notes, moving him to exclaim loudly, a surprising sound from the normally quiet boy. The inspiration goes on as the music continues in his dreams.

 

About the Author: 

Todd Boss is an award-winning producer, writer, and innovator whose lyrics have been performed at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and around the world. He has published four poetry collections, and his work has appeared in various magazines and on NPR. The Boy Who Said Wow is his debut picture book. 

Rashin Kheiriyeh has a master's degree in graphic design and a doctorate in illustration and has illustrated more than eighty books in half a dozen languages, including Welcome Home by Aimee Reid and Story Boat by Kyo Maclear, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. She was a 2017 Maurice Sendak fellow and is a lecturer at the University of Maryland. She was born in Khorramshahr, Iran, and now lives in Washington, DC. 

 

Ages 3 - 8

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Phyllis E. Greenberger — Sex Cells: The Fight to Overcome Bias and Discrimination in Women's Healthcare — at Conn Ave

Saturday, April 6, 3:00 pm
Sex Cells: The Fight to Overcome Bias and Discrimination in Women's Healthcare By Phyllis E. Greenberger, Kalia Doner Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9798887700205
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Mayo Clinic Press - April 2nd, 2024

Phyllis Greenberger has been working in the field of biological sex differences for more than 30 years, and she continues to be struck by the lack of understanding about this topic, even among medical professionals. After all, it's a fundamental aspect of human life: males and females are different biologically. What's more, those differences impact everything we must know about the diagnosis and treatment of disease--or they should impact everything we must know about the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The idea that our biological sex impacts our health seems like such a simple concept. Unfortunately, it has proven to be anything but. Greenberger's battle cry has been: Women/females need to be treated equitably in relationship to men/males. They are equal, but they are not the same.

It has been challenging to get individual researchers and practitioners to accept this, as well as research and medical institutions, and manufacturers of medications and devices. The journey towards equal treatment and the understanding of sex and gender differences in prevention, diagnosis and treatment is still unfolding. This book is the story of that journey--why it was, and still is, so important to do research specific to women/females .

Sex Cells gives readers access to the wide world of sex-specific medical issues as they play out in the research labs and doctor's offices, and how women pay the price, with a close look at the impact that has on minority populations. The story is told by the woman who is recognized as the driving force for change over the past 25 years--Phyllis Greenberger--and her allies in government, NGOs, academia, medical research, the US government, and public health advocacy. The array of experts who have contributed to the book offer an insiders' up-close view of the battle to have female cells, lab animals and humans brought into medical research, so that women can receive treatment that is appropriate and effective for a wide range of conditions.

Told with humor, ferocity and passion, Sex Cells appeals to anyone interested in health, women's rights, and public health policy.

Phyllis E. Greenberger, MSW, is Senior Vice President of Science & Health Policy for HealthyWomen. She is the former President and CEO of the Society for Women's Health Research (SWHR), a national nonprofit organization widely recognized as the thought leader in women's health research, for 26 years. In 2016 Phyllis was given the Trailblazer award by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Women's Health. Women's Day magazine awarded Greenberger the 2006 "Red Dress Award" in recognition of her work in leading the way in the fight against heart disease in women, and in 2010 named her one of 50 "Women Who Are Changing the World." She also received the "Award for Research Excellence" by the National Association for Women's Health, "Journal of Women's Health & Gender-Based Medicine's Achievement Award," "Champion of Women's Health" by Ladies' Home Journal, the "Washington Woman of Genius" by Trinity College in Washington, DC, and received an award for public advocacy from the Clinical Research Forum. She was named the 2013 'Woman of the Year' by the National Association of Professional Women.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Lily Meyer — Short War - with Vanessa Bee — at Conn Ave

Saturday, April 6, 5:00 pm
Short War By Lily Meyer Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781646053155
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Strange Object - April 9th, 2024

When sixteen-year-old Gabriel Lazris--an American in Santiago, Chile--meets Caro Ravest, something clicks. Caro, who is Chilean, is charming, curious, and deeply herself. Gabriel dreams of their future together. But everybody's saying there's going to be a coup--and no one says it louder than Gabriel's dad, a Nixon-loving newspaper editor who Gabriel suspects is working with the C.I.A. Gabriel's father is adamant that the moment political unrest erupts, their family is going home. To Gabriel, though, Chile is home.

Decades later, Gabriel's American-raised adult daughter Nina heads to Buenos Aires in a last-ditch effort to save her dissertation. Quickly, though, she gets sidetracked: first by a sexy professor, then by a controversial book called Guerra Eterna. A document of war and an underground classic, Guerra Eterna transforms Nina's sense of her family and identity, pushing her to confront the moral weight of being an American citizen in a hemisphere long dominated by U.S. power. But not until Short War's coda do we get true insight into the divergent fortunes of Gabriel Lazris and Caro Ravest.

Shaped by the geopolitical forces that brought far-right dictators like Pinochet to power, their fates reverberate through generations, evoking thorny questions about power, privilege, and how to live with the guilt of the past.

Lily Meyer is a writer, translator, and critic. Her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso's story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Short War is her first novel.

Meyer will be in conversation with Vanessa Bee. Vanessa A. Bee is a consumer protection lawyer interested in inequality and corporate power, a memoir author, and an essayist. Born in Cameroon, she grew up in France, England, and the United States. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in, among others, The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, The New Republic, The Nation, Guernica, and n+1, where she received a “Notable Essays” mention in The Best American Essays 2022. She is also a former editor of Current Affairs. She lives in Washington, DC.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

[MOVED FROM 3/1/24] Taymullah Abdur-Rahman — American Imam: From Pop Stardom to Prison Abolition - with Paris Alston — at Union Market

Saturday, April 6, 5:00 pm
American Imam: From Pop Stardom to Prison Abolition By Taymullah Abdur-Rahman Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9781506489285
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Broadleaf Books - February 27th, 2024

This event was moved from 3/1/24.

By the time he was twelve, Taymullah Abdur-Rahman (born Tyrone Sutton) was a rising pop star, recruited as part of the R&B group Perfect Gentlemen, with a top-ten hit, national teen magazine covers, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, after his music career peaked, Abdur-Rahman found himself back home, with little to show for his success. He became a teen father struggling to survive in Roxbury, MA. Seeing Islam as a way to discipline himself in an unrelenting environment, he converted. He went on to work in a maximum-security prison as a Muslim chaplain, where he became zealously focused on saving souls instead of understanding the outside forces that lead men to prison.

Later, in his work as the first paid Muslim chaplain at Harvard, Abdur-Rahman began to seek counsel outside of Islam, engaging with Jewish and Christian mentors who opened his eyes to the gifts of interreligious dialogue and helped lead him to what he was truly seeking: enlightenment. With this new framework, he returned to working with prisoners and clearly saw the cyclical effects of systemic racism that keep Black and brown people locked up and without support in America today. A sweeping narrative, American Imam voices the contemporary concerns of Black Muslim Americans in the shadow of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in the aftermath of 9/11, and in light of the fights for social justice and prison abolition. Abdur-Rahman's story sounds an indelible rallying cry for understanding across race, religion, and cultural divides.

Taymullah Abdur-Rahman (Tyrone Sutton) is a Black Muslim thought leader, social entrepreneur, educator, and prison abolitionist. He holds a certification in Islamic studies from Al Baseerah International Institute and a master's in Global Interreligious Leadership from Andover Newton Theological School. He spent a decade as a prison chaplain and was the first paid Muslim chaplain at Harvard University. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate for Transformational Leadership at Boston University's School of Theology and a senior educator in Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Hebrew College. He is creator and host of the American Muslim Daily podcast and mobile app, and founder of Spentem, a prison abolition and direct sales company for youth. He lives in Massachusetts.

Abdur-Rahman will be in conversation with Paris Alston, a Boston-based multimedia journalist. She is currently co-host of NPR & GBH's Morning Edition and The Wake Up podcast at GBH News, where she also does original, community-based reporting for her series "A Walk Down the Block." Paris previously was a host of the NPR podcast Consider This. She was also the host of GBH’s digital series Keep it Social about social media trends targeted at millennial and Gen-Z audiences. Prior to that, she worked as a producer for WBUR's daily news magazine, Radio Boston, and as a digital production assistant at GBH News. Her storytelling interests surround identity, community and culture, and she has covered stories abroad in Southeast Asia, Morocco, Panama and Brazil. A North Carolina native, Paris graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied media and journalism and global studies. She will earn a Social Impact M.B.A. from Boston University in May 2024, and she is a member of the Boston and National Associations of Black Journalists.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Susan Rubin Suleiman — István Szabó: Filmmaker of Existential Choices — at Conn Ave

Sunday, April 7, 5:00 pm
István Szabó: Filmmaker of Existential Choices (Philosophical Filmmakers) By Susan Rubin Suleiman, Costica Bradatan (Editor) Cover Image
$26.95
ISBN: 9781350181823
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Bloomsbury Academic - February 8th, 2024

István Szabó is one of the few Hungarian filmmakers to have earned a major international reputation over the past half century. This thoughtful and original book is the first examination of Szabó's contribution to contemporary thought, engaging the troubled history of Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries.

István Szabó's importance as a filmmaker lies not only in his attention to film's formal elements but in his deep and ongoing engagement with some of the most urgent ethical and existential questions of our time.

With detailed analyses of István Szabó's major films, from his 1960s works to his Academy Award for Best Foreign Film winner, Mephisto, and on through Szabó's last film in 2020, Final Report, Susan Rubin Suleiman focuses on four important questions pertaining to existential choice: to leave home or to stay in a communist country? To collaborate or not with an authoritarian regime? To affirm or to deny one's Jewishness in the face of antisemitism? To seek or to give up on community in the face of individual or national conflicts? Above all, Suleiman addresses the single most important philosophical question that haunts Szabó's work, as it does that of many other Central European intellectuals and filmmakers of our time. That is, how do individuals attempt, through the life choices they make or that are foisted on them, to create a viable self in extreme historical situations over which they have no control?

Susan Rubin Suleiman was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child with her parents. She graduated from Barnard College and obtained her Ph.D. at Harvard, where she went on to a long and distinguished career as a professor of French and comparative literature. Suleiman has published more than a dozen scholarly books and over a hundred articles in international journals, as well as book reviews in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and other newspapers and magazines. She is also the author of autobiographical works, including the acclaimed memoir Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (1996) and its new sequel, Daughter of History: Traces of an Immigrant Girlhood.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Sharon Malone — Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy - with Jummy Olabanji — at St. Paul's

Sunday, April 7, 7:00 pm
Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy By Sharon Malone, M.D. Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780593593868
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Crown - April 9th, 2024

Click here to purchase tickets for this event.

There's not enough talk around women's health, and what little there is rarely helps. Women are routinely warned, lectured, or threatened about their health. Or they are ignored, dismissed, or shamed. But they are rarely empowered. And empowerment, more than anything, is what women--and women of color, in particular--need.

Grown Woman Talk is for every woman who has felt marginalized or overwhelmed by a healthcare system that has become more impersonal, complex, and difficult to navigate than ever. It's also for any woman who is simply standing at the intersection of aging and health, anxious and wanting solutions.

Part medical handbook, part memoir, and part sister-girl cheerleader, this book is filled with useful resources and real-life stories of victory and defeat. It not only highlights the current data around women's health issues, but it also places that data in a helpful context.

In a tone that is lively and intimate but unflinchingly direct, Dr. Sharon Malone details how to live better, age better, and get better medical treatment, especially when it's most needed. This is not a medical activism book designed to fight the power. This is a book designed to show women that they already have the power--they need only to increase their capacity and willingness to use it.

Most important, Grown Woman Talk seeks to eradicate the silence that surrounds women's health by facilitating discussion between women of all ages and encouraging more accurate and productive medical insights. It is Dr. Sharon's belief that giving women more agency can, literally, give them life.

Sharon Malone, M.D., is a board-certified OB/GYN and a certified menopause practitioner who has practiced medicine in the nation’s capital for more than thirty years. She is the chief medical officer of Alloy Women’s Health and a passionate advocate for improved research and education around women’s health in midlife. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Eric Holder.

Dr. Malone will be in conversation with Jummy Olabanji. Olabanji co-anchors News4 Today, the #1 morning news in Washington, D.C. A native of Fairfax County, Olabanji has spent most of her life in Virginia, graduating from Westfield High School in Chantilly and Virginia Tech. She earned a Master's degree in Communication and Leadership Studies from Gonzaga University. Olabanji started her journalism career as an intern for NBC4. She has also worked for stations in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and New York City. She has been honored for her work with two national Edward R. Murrow Awards for breaking news anchor coverage, two Virginia Associated Press Awards and eight EMMY Awards. Olabanji is an advocate for organ donation and sits on the Board of Directors of the National Kidney Foundation. She is also a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, The Links, Incorporated, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Along with her husband, Olabanji lives in Washington, D.C.

4900 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Earl Swift — Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery — at Conn Ave

Monday, April 8, 7:00 pm
Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery By Earl Swift Cover Image
$32.50
ISBN: 9780063265387
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Mariner Books - April 2nd, 2024

On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.

Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.

By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists--then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair.

The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.

Earl Swift is the author of the New York Times bestseller Chesapeake Requiem, which was named to ten best-of-the-year lists. His other books include Across the Airless Wilds, Auto Biography, The Big Roads, and Where They Lay. A former reporter for the Virginian-Pilot and a contributor to Outside and other publications, he is a fellow of Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia. He lives in the Blue Ridge mountains west of Charlottesville.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating. 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Fred Bowen - Extra Innings - at Conn Ave

Tuesday, April 9, 10:30 am
Extra Innings (Fred Bowen Sports Story Series) By Fred Bowen Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9781682634110
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Peachtree - February 6th, 2024

Soccer Trophy Mystery (Fred Bowen Sports Story Series #24) By Fred Bowen Cover Image
$6.99
ISBN: 9781682630792
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Peachtree - September 7th, 2021

When Mike’s father starts to worry that he is getting too carried away with baseball and not spending time working at after school jobs nor developing a sense of responsibility, Mike’s time as his team’s pitcher may be coming to an end. Can Mike and his father reach a compromise in order to let Mike play the game he loves and help his team win the league championship? 

About the Author:

Fred Bowen was a Little Leaguer who loved to read and is still a lifelong sports fanatic. He is the author of the action-packed Fred Bowen Sports Story series, currently totaling more than twenty titles. For thirteen years, Bowen coached kids' baseball and basketball teams. He wrote a weekly sports column for kids in the Washington Post for more than 20 years.  He was a lawyer for many years before retiring to become a full-time children's book author.  

Ages 7-11  

Please click here to see current mask requirements.

This event is free to attend and open to the public, however, reservations are required for school groups interested in attending. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Kathleen DuVal — Native Nations: A Millennium in North America - with Armand Lione — at Conn Ave

Tuesday, April 9, 7:00 pm
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America By Kathleen DuVal Cover Image
$38.00
ISBN: 9780525511038
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Random House - April 9th, 2024

Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.

A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans showed up in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand—those having developed differently from their own—and whose power they often underestimated.

For centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations, we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch—and influenced global markets—and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to command much of the continent’s land and resources. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.

In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal shows how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant—and will continue far into the future.

Kathleen DuVal is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches early American and American Indian history. Her previous work includes Independence Lost, which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize, and The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. She is a coauthor of Give Me Liberty! and coeditor of Interpreting a Continent: Voices from Colonial America.

DuVal will be in conversation with Armand Lione. Lione began studying the history of the Native people of Washington, DC, after spending time in Australia, where the local Indigenous people are celebrated. Trained as a toxicologist, Dr. Lione has lived and worked in the city for more than forty years, evaluating studies on the possible reproductive effects of thousands of agents. His studies led him to uncover the many sites in Washington where evidence of previous Native occupation has been found. His work has connected him with local Piscataway leaders. In addition to his book, Native American History of Washington DC, brief reports of his findings have previously been published in blogs, on websites and in news stories.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Emily Raboteau — Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "the Apocalypse" - with Dolen Perkins-Valdez — at Conn Ave

Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm
Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse” By Emily Raboteau Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9781250809766
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Henry Holt and Co. - March 12th, 2024

Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises.

With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her previous books are Searching for Zion (2013), winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the cult classic novel, The Professor's Daughter (2005). Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Raboteau's essays have recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Her distinctions include an inaugural Climate Narratives Prize from Arizona State University, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists' New York chapter, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and Yaddo. She serves regularly as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as "the poor man's Harvard." She lives in the Bronx with her husband, the novelist Victor LaValle, and their two children.

Raboteau will be in conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, Balm, and most recently Take My Hand which was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere. Amazon named Take My Hand one of the Top 20 Books of 2022. The novel was awarded a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and Fiction Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It has been longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A three-time nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship, Dolen is widely considered a pre-eminent chronicler of American historical life. She is Associate Professor in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, DC.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

James Rhee — red helicopter—a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math) — at The Wharf

Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm
red helicopter—a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math) By James Rhee Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9780063317147
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: HarperOne - April 9th, 2024

In kindergarten, James Rhee received a toy red helicopter in gratitude for a simple act of kindness--the innocent generosity of sharing his lunch. Nearly four decades later, the true meaning and lesson from this memory helped him overcome indescribable hurdles as both a first time CEO and son to a dying father. Combining the radical common sense of a child with the knowledge of an experienced private equity investor and law school graduate, James led one of the most dramatic reinventions in business history. Partnering with Black women across America, James led Ashley Stewart, a twice-bankrupt retailer with no WiFi, from the jaws of liquidation to a transcendent success that inspired a world seeking a different way. And, in the process, he was able to reconcile his own complicated past and see his mom for who she truly was.

Combining the clarity and imagination we had as children with some basic business metrics, Rhee composed a system he calls "Kindness and Math." It's a simple solution to the dissatisfaction and worry so many of us feel, an intuitive response to the gnawing uncertainty we face daily as we meander through our lives and struggle to understand why we might feel so out of control in our professional and personal lives. red helicopter--a parable for our times exposes the root cause for these feelings and encourages us to embrace a few key principles to reorient our lives, organizations, and the world to reflect the best in us. In this remarkable book, Rhee provides the tools we can use to:

  • Embrace agency by identifying the obstacles quietly holding us back
  • Construct a balance sheet of our true assets and liabilities
  • Create and measure "goodwill," the ultimate collective good
  • Lead systems transformation with a framework comprised of small, scalable acts
  • Drive financial profitability with little to no investment of money
  • Unlock the value of difference and the unpredictable...and more

Rhee's fresh thinking emerged from an emotional journey in which both the professional and personal intersected and became one. The financial uncertainty, family tragedy, and soul-searching he endured, after the whole world left him and Ashley Stewart for dead, led him to create a simple and scalable solution to the struggles that ail us all. This quiet and powerful ode to humanity is sorely needed in today's troubled world.

James Rhee is a high school teacher and Harvard Law School graduate turned private equity investor and CEO. James’s leadership story first grabbed global attention during his unlikely seven-year tenure as Chairman and first-time CEO of Ashley Stewart. After his radical and yet intuitive approach fueled a transcendent, unprecedented reinvention story for the company, James concretized his leadership philosophy and operating system—kindness plus a little math—in the form of red helicopter, his media-education platform. Rhee teaches at Howard University, where he serves as the Johnson Chair of Entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Duke Law School. His TED Talk and Dare to Lead interview with Brené Brown have captured the imagination of millions. He composes systems that bridge peoples, industries, and ideas. He is the author of red helicopter (HarperOne; April 9, 2024). He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

610 Water Street, SW
Washington, DC 20024

Christine Calella - The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray - in Conversation with Lillie Lainoff at Conn Ave

Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm
The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray By Christine Calella Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9781645678724
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Page Street YA - April 9th, 2024

About the Book: 

In The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray, half-sisters Ophelia and Betsy Young could not be more different. After a lifetime of paying for the sins of her mother, a notorious pirate queen, Ophelia yearns for an honorable life in the Navy. Betsy, a quiet and anxious girl, dreams of getting married and spending her days safe at home with her family. When an unexpected tragedy forces both girls off their chosen paths, a high-stakes, seafaring adventure ensues. Separated for the first time, Ophelia and Betsy must first find themselves to find each other. Filled with pirates, mutiny and a pinch of magic, this debut novel will have you on the edge of your seat.

About the Author:

Christine Calella lives in a place she refers to as “New York City–adjacent.” She spends her spare time singing show tunes in the shower, drinking more chai lattes than is strictly necessary, and either over- or under-watering an unfortunate string of houseplants named after sitcom characters. The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray is her debut novel. 

In conversation with:

Lillie Lainoff received her B.A. in English from Yale University, where she was a varsity fencer and one of the first physically disabled athletes to individually qualify for any NCAA Championship event. She has also won the 2019 LA Review Literary Award for Short Fiction, was a featured Rooted in Rights disability activist, and is the founder of Disabled Kidlit Writers on Facebook. She is currently an MA candidate in Creative Writing Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, and lives in Washington, D.C. One for All is her first novel.

 

Ages 14+

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Daniel de Visé — The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic — at Union Market

Thursday, April 11, 7:00 pm
The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic By Daniel de Visé Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780802160980
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Atlantic Monthly Press - March 19th, 2024

“They’re not going to catch us,” Dan Aykroyd as Elwood Blues tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. “We’re on a mission from God.” So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theatres on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage; but Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists—Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles—made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Late and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to tepid reviews at best. However, in the 44 years since it has been acknowledged a classic: inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance; even declared a “Catholic classic” by the Church itself; and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century.

The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard’s Lampoon and Chicago’s Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and of course the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to SNL creator Lorne Michaels and Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers vividly portrays the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.

Daniel de Visé is the author of King of the Blues: The Rise and Reign of B.B. KingThe Comeback: Greg LeMond, The True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de FranceAndy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, and coauthor of I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and has worked at the Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other newspapers. He lives in Maryland.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Tim Kaine — Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outside — at Conn Ave

Thursday, April 11, 7:00 pm
Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outside By Tim Kaine Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9781400339457
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Harper Horizon - April 9th, 2024

A compelling account of one man’s journey across hundreds of miles of Virginia wilderness and a moving testament to the optimistic spirit of America, fueled by three journeys undertaken by Senator Tim Kaine, Walk Ride Paddle provides an unseen glimpse into a life outside.

In 2019, Tim Kaine—Virginia Senator and former Democratic vice presidential candidate—commemorated both his sixtieth birthday and his twenty-fifth year in public office by undertaking a three-part journey across the Virginia landscape as he hiked, cycled, and canoed across the state. His chronicle of the journey became an organic reflection of the extraordinary events occurring across America during that time, including impeachment trials, a global pandemic, growing racial protests, the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and more.

During weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine—over a period of several years—hikes the 559 miles of the Appalachian Trail that cross Virginia from Harpers Ferry to the Tennessee border; bikes 321 miles along the crest of the Virginia Blue Ridge on the beautiful parkways built during the Great Depression to create jobs and give everyday people on the East Coast an accessible place to vacation; and canoes the entire James River—348 miles from its headwaters in the Allegheny Mountains to its entrance into the Chesapeake Bay. Along the way, Kaine reflects on the monumental events that have shaped both his life and the world around him, sharing his deep love for the natural world and the importance of preserving it for future generations in a fascinating memoir that blends adventure, reflection, and political insight.

Written during the journey and with immediacy and honesty, Kaine pulls back the curtain to reveal his inner thoughts during such monumental times. Kaine's storytelling gift and wise observations offer a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a seasoned politician and outdoor enthusiast.

Walk Ride Paddle is a captivating and compelling memoir of one mans physical journey through the Virginia wilderness—but it is also a unique and ultimately optimistic perspective on these pivotal moments in history, offering inspiration, wisdom, and hope

Tim Kaine has served people throughout his life as a teacher, civil rights lawyer, and elected official. He is one of only thirty people in American history to be a mayor, governor, and United States senator.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Dr. R. Jisung Park — Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World — at Conn Ave

Friday, April 12, 7:00 pm
Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World By Robert Jisung Park Cover Image
$29.95
ISBN: 9780691221038
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Princeton University Press - April 9th, 2024

It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change, especially if we think of it as an impending planetary catastrophe. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in a theoretical future, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now.

Drawing on a wealth of new data and cutting-edge economics, Park shows how climate change headlines often miss some of the most important costs. When wildfires blaze, what happens to people downwind of the smoke? When natural disasters destroy buildings and bridges, what happens to educational outcomes? Park explains how climate change operates as the silent accumulation of a thousand tiny conflagrations: imperceptibly elevated health risks spread across billions of people; pennies off the dollar of productivity; fewer opportunities for upward mobility.

By investigating how the physical phenomenon of climate change interacts with social and economic institutions, Park illustrates how climate change already affects everyone, and may act as an amplifier of inequality. Wealthier households and corporations may adapt quickly, but, without targeted interventions, less advantaged communities may not.

Viewing climate change as a slow and unequal burn comes with an important silver lining. It puts dollars and cents behind the case for aggressive emissions cuts and helps identify concrete steps that can be taken to better manage its adverse effects. We can begin to overcome our climate anxiety, Park shows us, when we begin to tackle these problems locally.

R. Jisung Park is assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds appointments in the School of Social Policy and Practice and the Wharton School of Business. An environmental and labor economist, he has been investigating and writing about the economics of climate change for more than a decade. He has advised organizations that range from the World Bank to the New York City Departments of Education and Health.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Anne Lamott — Somehow - with Marion Winik at St. Paul's

Friday, April 12, 7:00 pm
Somehow: Thoughts on Love By Anne Lamott Cover Image
$22.00
ISBN: 9780593714416
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Riverhead Books - April 9th, 2024

Click here to purchase tickets to this event

In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won't be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our very atmosphere” and lies at the heart of who we are. We are, Lamott says, creatures of love.

In each chapter of Somehow, Lamott refracts all the colors of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life. The bruised (and bruising) love for a child who disappoints, even frightens. The sustaining love among a group of sinners, for a community in transition, in the wider world. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energizes, sustains as it surprises.

Somehow is Anne Lamott’s twentieth book, and in it she draws from her own life and experience to delineate the intimate and elemental ways that love buttresses us in the face of despair as it galvanizes us to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. Full of the compassion and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Somehow is classic Anne Lamott: funny, warm, and wise.

Anne Lamott is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Dusk, Night, Dawn; Almost Everything; Hallelujah Anyway; Small Victories; Stitches; Help, Thanks, Wow; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; and Traveling Mercies, as well as several novels. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

“Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.”

Lamott will be in conversation with University of Baltimore professor, Marion Winik. Winik is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, First Comes Love, Above Us Only Sky and many other books of memoir and personal essay. Her award-winning Bohemian Rhapsody column appears monthly at BaltimoreFishbowl.com, and her essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and elsewhere. She writes book reviews for People, Newsday, the Washington Post, and Kirkus Reviews, and hosts the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. She was a commentator on All Things Considered for fifteen years. Her honors include an NEA Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction and the 2019 Towson Prize for Literature. More info at marionwinik.com.

4900 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Nikkolas Smith - The Artivist - in partnership with DCPL at the MLK Library

Saturday, April 13, 10:00 am
The Artivist By Nikkolas Smith Cover Image
$18.99
ISBN: 9780593619650
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Kokila - September 5th, 2023

Free 

The event is in person and at MLK Library.

Politics and Prose is delighted to partner with the DC Public Library and the DC Public Library Foundation to discuss The Artivist with author-illustrator Nikkolas Smith. 

A limited number of complimentary copies of The Artivist will be available for families to add to their home library courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation. Copies will be available first come, first serve at the event only, books will not be available for pick up before or after the event on April 13th.

About the book:
 
Some people are artists. Others are activists. But when combined, they become The Artivist, like Nikkolas Smith. As he paints through his problems, a young boy combines these two loves in this stunning, powerful book. You can meet the artivist himself! 
 
About the Author:

Nikkolas Smith is an Artivist, children's book creator, and Hollywood film illustrator. He is the author/illustrator of several picture books: the USA TODAY Bestselling The Artivist, the NAACP Image Award nominated The Golden Girls of Rio, and My Hair Is Poofy And That's Okay. Nikkolas is the illustrator of the #1 NYT Bestselller The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, I Am Ruby Bridges, Black Panther Wakanda Forever: The Courage To Dream and the award winning That Flag. As an illustrator of color, Nikkolas is focused on creating captivating art that can spark important conversations in today's world and inspire meaningful change towards social justice and equity. Many of his viral and globally published sketches are included in his book Sunday Sketch: The Art of Nikkolas. Born in Houston, Texas, Nikkolas lives in Los Angeles, California.

 

 

 

901 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20001

Isaac Arnsdorf — Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy — at Conn Ave

Saturday, April 13, 3:00 pm
Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy By Isaac Arnsdorf Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780316497510
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Little, Brown and Company - April 9th, 2024

Inspired by Donald Trump’s election lies, a growing movement of grassroots activists mobilized around the country to pick up where the insurrection left off, laying the groundwork to succeed next time where Trump had failed to keep himself in power. But their own success in taking over and purging the Republican Party became their undoing as it drove away moderates and supplied the Democrats with a winning message in the 2022 midterms. Still, the MAGA Republicans proved uninterested in learning from that defeat, only becoming more extreme, divisive, and dead set on returning Trump to power. 
 
Washington Post national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf has spent years at the forefront of reporting on this growing movement. Drawing on extensive, exclusive on-the-ground reporting around the country, and deepened by historical context, Arnsdorf has produced the defining journalistic account of the origins, evolution and future of the MAGA movement. Combining critical and rigorous reporting with the intimacy and complexity of a novel, this book is unlike any other in the decade since Donald Trump convulsed and transformed American politics.
 
Finish What We Started tells the story of the ordinary Americans driving this change, who they are and where they came from, what motivates them, and what their movement means for the survival of American democracy.

Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter for The Washington Post who covers former president Donald Trump, the “Make America Great Again” political movement, and the elected officials, activists, donors and media figures on the right who are powering the Republican Party. He was previously an investigative reporter covering national politics at ProPublica and a money-in-politics reporter at Politico. His reporting on President Trump's agenda for veterans won the Sidney Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award and the National Press Club's Sandy Hume Award. Finish What We Started is his first book. 

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Nell Freudenberger — The Limits - with Dolen Perkins-Valdez — at Union Market

Saturday, April 13, 5:00 pm
The Limits: A novel By Nell Freudenberger Cover Image
$29.00
ISBN: 9780593448885
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Knopf - April 9th, 2024

From Mo’orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist obsessed with saving Polynesia’s imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband in New York. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen’s luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new, younger wife, Kate, she has been shuttled between her parents’ disparate lives—her father’s consuming work as a surgeon at an overwhelmed New York hospital, her mother’s relentless drive against a ticking ecological clock—for most of her life. Fluent in French, intellectually precocious, moving between cultures with seeming ease, Pia arrives in New York poised for a rebellion, just as COVID sends her and her stepmother together into near total isolation. 

A New York City schoolteacher, Kate struggles to connect with a teenager whose capacity for destruction seems exceeded only by her privilege. Even as Kate fails to parent Pia—and questions her own ability to become a mother—one of her sixteen-year-old students is already caring for a toddler full time. Athyna’s love for her nephew, Marcus, is a burden that becomes heavier as she struggles to finish her senior year online. Juggling her manifold responsibilities, Athyna finds herself more and more anxious every time she leaves the house. Just as her fear of what is waiting for her outside her Staten Island community feels insupportable, an incident at home makes her desperate to leave.

When their lives collide, Pia and Athyna spiral toward parallel but inescapably different tragedies. Moving from a South Pacific “paradise,” where rage still simmers against the colonial government and its devastating nuclear tests, to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York City, The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family. Heart-wrenching and humane, a profound work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted novelists.

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and WantedThe Newlyweds, and The Dissident, and of the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Storyand the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in New York, NY.

Freudenberger will be in conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench (2010), Balm (2015), and most recently Take My Hand (2022) which was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere. Amazon named Take My Hand one of the Top 20 Books of 2022. The novel was awarded a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and Fiction Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It has been longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A three-time nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship, Dolen is widely considered a pre-eminent chronicler of American historical life. She is Associate Professor in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, DC.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

Robin Sharma — The Wealth Money Can't Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life — at Conn Ave

Saturday, April 13, 5:00 pm
The Wealth Money Can't Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest Life By Robin Sharma Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593798492
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Crown Currency - April 9th, 2024

Real wealth is so much more than cash in the bank, flashy cars in the driveway and luxury vacations on exotic islands. Too many financially prosperous people are surprisingly poor when it comes to the things that truly matter for a life of happiness, vitality, and serenity.

Society has sold us a version of success that has left too many people feeling empty, frustrated, and filled with regret. Fortunately, there is a much better way to live.

In The Wealth Money Can't Buy, you will discover a life-altering system that will help you lead your richest life before it's too late. You will learn a framework based on the eight hidden habits used by authentically rich people and gain a methodology to master your destiny. Open this book and allow a trusted mentor to offer you valuable insights, including:

- how to become a "perfect moment" creator
- why your choice of mate is 90% of your joy
- the power of "The 10,000 Dinners Question"
- hidden habits of authentically wealthy people
- the brilliance of "going ghost" for a year

Legendary personal growth expert Robin Sharma has mentored billionaires, superstar athletes, and heads of state, teaching them The 8 Forms of Wealth Model with transformational results. Now, you will learn it, too, and create the lifetime of your highest dreams.

Full of practical tools and transformational tactics, The Wealth Money Can't Buy offers a life-changing philosophy and methodology for enjoying a genuinely rich life--filled with personal power, unusual authenticity, exceptionally fulfilling work, and a lifestyle that will make you feel that fortune has finally smiled on you.

Robin Sharma is a globally respected humanitarian who, for over a quarter of a century, has been devoted to helping human beings realize their native gifts. One of the top leadership and personal mastery experts in the world, he advises organizations such as Nike, FedEx, Microsoft, Unilever, GE, HP, Starbucks, and PwC. His #1 international bestsellers, including The 5AM Club, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, and The Leader Who Had No Title, have sold millions of copies in more than ninety-two languages and dialects, making him one of the most widely read authors alive.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

 

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Mellissa Fung — Between Good and Evil: The Stolen Girls of Boko Haram - with Bay Fang — at Conn Ave

Sunday, April 14, 5:00 pm
Between Good and Evil: The Stolen Girls of Boko Haram By Mellissa Fung Cover Image
$17.50
ISBN: 9781443456104
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: HarperCollins Publishers - April 16th, 2024

In April 2014, the world awoke to the shocking news that the terrorist group Boko Haram had kidnapped nearly 300 school-aged girls and taken them deep into the forests of Nigeria. When veteran journalist Mellissa Fung travelled to Nigeria, she discovered that the scope of the kidnappings had been vastly under-reported. Hundreds--possibly thousands--more girls had been taken against their will and forced to become child brides to soldiers and leaders of Boko Haram. Some of the captives escaped and returned to their villages, many with children in tow. Most of these girls, still children themselves, were shunned by their former friends and family. Other girls have never been seen again.

A former captive herself, Mellissa Fung has great empathy for the kidnapped girls. Taken by Taliban sympathizers in Afghanistan, Fung shared her experience in her number-one-bestselling book, Under an Afghan Sky: A Memoir of Captivity. During several visits to Nigeria over four years, she sat down with the girls and their families and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews, listening to horrific stories of capture, rape and torture, as well as escapes and excommunications. Fung tells the stories of Gambo, Asma'u, Zara and other girls taken by Boko Haram. She also portrays strong women fighting against the terrorist group in their own powerful ways: Aisha the Hunter, who moves stealthily into the forest, taking out Boko Haram with her faithful followers, and Mama Boko Haram, an Igbo woman who knows the fighters and those haunted by their experiences and fights to empty the forests of fighters and captives alike. This is raw, honest and heartbreaking storytelling at its best.

Mellissa Fung is a veteran journalist, bestselling author and filmmaker. In 2008, as a field correspondent covering Afghanistan for the CBC, she was taken hostage, an experience that led to her #1 bestselling book Under an Afghan Sky. Her story, and those of three Nigerian girls, were the subject of her first feature documentary, Captive, which premiered in 2021 and has been nominated for several major awards. Since leaving the network, Fung has focused on human rights reporting. Her work has been featured in the Globe and Mail, the Huffington Post, the Walrus and the Toronto Star, and on Al Jazeera, CNN, PBS and in other media. She has received numerous awards, including the Gracie Award, a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award and the New York Festivals Gold and Silver Awards. Fung holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Fung will be in conversation with Bay Fang. Fang is President and CEO of Radio Free Asia, where she oversees award-winning journalism with the mission of bringing free press to closed societies in Asia. She spent most of her career in print journalism, as the Beijing Bureau Chief and covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for US News and World Report, and later as the Diplomatic Correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. She served in government during the Obama Administration as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Press and Public Diplomacy. Ms. Fang earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard University, was a visiting fellow at Oxford University and a Fulbright scholar in Hong Kong. She trained as a French chef at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and holds a brown belt in kung fu.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

[SOLD OUT]Joan Nathan — My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories - with Kara Swisher — at Buck's Fishing & Camping

Sunday, April 14, 6:00 pm
My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories By Joan Nathan Cover Image
$45.00
ISBN: 9780525658986
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Knopf - April 9th, 2024

Click here to purchase tickets to this event.

Politics & Prose and Buck’s Fishing & Camping invite you to gather with Joan Nathan and Kara Swisher to eat, drink, celebrate and discuss their new books.

This intimate, private, ticketed event -- a “Shabbat” foodie dinner and drinks --will include a buffet of dishes inspired by Joan’s life, and by her new book. Dishes will be prepared by her chef friends including Amy Brandwein, Chef Owner of Centrolina; Ryan Garsiek of Buck’s Fishing & Camping; Mark Furstenberg, owner of Breadfurst, and more.

My Life in Recipes: Food Family, and Memories

A new cookbook from the best-selling and award-winning author, Joan Nathan, that uses recipes to look back at her life and family history—and at her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the world.

And

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

From the award-winning journalist, host of “On with Kara Swisher,” and cohost of “Pivot” comes Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, a history and an accounting of the tech industry and its most powerful players who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

Guests will join in a discussion with Joan Nathan & Kara Swisher.

All inclusive of food, drinks & service.

Books are not included in the ticket price and will be available for purchase and signed by the authors.

5031 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Adelle Waldman — Help Wanted — at Conn Ave

Monday, April 15, 7:00 pm
Help Wanted: A Novel By Adelle Waldman Cover Image
$28.99
ISBN: 9781324020448
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 5th, 2024

Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day's truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn't schedule them for enough hours--most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement--including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her "cool kid" status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path--band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.

Adelle Waldman's debut novel was a breakout sensation, lauded by the Los Angeles Times as an "exacting character study" with "excellent and witty prose" and described as "incisive and very funny" by the Economist and "brilliant" by both NPR's Fresh Air and the Washington Post. In her long-awaited follow-up, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today's economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

Adelle Waldman is the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, Economist, NPR, Elle, and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She lives in New York State.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

DéLana R. A. Dameron — Redwood Court with Glory Edim — at Union Market

Monday, April 15, 7:00 pm
Redwood Court (Reese's Book Club): Fiction By DéLana R. A. Dameron Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593447024
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: The Dial Press - February 6th, 2024

"Mika, you sit at our feet all these hours and days, hearing us tell our tales. You have all these stories inside you: all the stories everyone in our family knows and all the stories everyone in our family tells. You write 'em in your books and show everyone who we are."

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron's debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs while still making sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who in a house filled with Motown would rather listen to Alanis Morrisette; her retired grandparents, children of Jim Crow, who realized their own vision of success when they bought their house on the Court in the 1960s, imagining it filled with future generations; and the many neighbors who hold tight to the community they've built, committed to fostering joy and love in an America so insistent on seeing Black people stumble and fall.

With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

DéLana R. A. Dameron is an artist whose primary medium is storytelling. She is a graduate of New York University's MFA program in poetry and holds a BA degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her debut poetry collection, How God Ends Us, was selected by Elizabeth Alexander for the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, and her second collection, Weary Kingdom, was chosen by Nikky Finney for the Palmetto Poetry Series. Dameron is also the founder of Saloma Acres, an equestrian and cultural space in her hometown in South Carolina, where she resides.

Dameron will be in discussion with Glory Edim. Glory Edim is the Director of Marketing at Politics & Prose and founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a book club and digital platform that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood. She edited the Well-Read Black Girl anthology, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and named a best book of the year by Library Journal. The winner of the Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Edim worked as a creative strategist for over ten years and serves on the board of New York City’s Housing Works Bookstore.

This event is free with first come, first serve seating.

 

1324 4th St NE
Washington, DC 20002

David Diop — Beyond the Door of No Return, translated by Sam Taylor and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux — at Conn Ave

Tuesday, April 16, 7:00 pm
Beyond the Door of No Return: A Novel By David Diop, Sam Taylor (Translated by) Cover Image
By David Diop, Sam Taylor (Translated by)
$27.00
ISBN: 9780374606770
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux - September 19th, 2023

This event is a part of Villa Albertine’s Authors on Tour program. David Diop’s 2024 US tour is made possible by Villa Albertine.

Paris, 1806. The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram.

The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal, concealed in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers. Therein lies a story as fantastical as it is tragic: Maram, it turns out, is none other than the fabled revenant. A young woman of noble birth from the kingdom of Waalo, Maram was sold into slavery but managed to escape from the Island of Gorée--a major embarkation point of the transatlantic slave trade--to a small village hidden in the forest. While on a research expedition in West Africa as a young man, Adanson hears the story of the revenant and becomes obsessed with finding her. Accompanied by his guide, he ventures deep into the Senegalese bush on a journey that reveals not only the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.

Written with sensitivity and narrative flair, David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return is a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal's oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order.

David Diop was born in Paris and was raised in Senegal. He is the head of the Arts, Languages, and Literature Department at the University of Pau, where his research includes such topics as eighteenth-century French literature and European representations of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His second novel, At Night All Blood Is Black, was awarded the International Booker Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Fareed Zakaria — Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present - with Tom Friedman — at St. Paul's

Wednesday, April 17, 7:00 pm
Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present By Fareed Zakaria Cover Image
$29.99
ISBN: 9780393239232
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company - March 26th, 2024

Click here to purchase tickets to this event.

Populist rage, ideological fracture, economic and technological shocks, war, and an international system studded with catastrophic risk--the early decades of the twenty-first century may be the most revolutionary period in modern history. But it is not the first. Humans have lived, and thrived, through more than one great realignment. What are these revolutions, and how can they help us to understand our fraught world?

In this major work, Fareed Zakaria masterfully investigates the eras and movements that have shaken norms while shaping the modern world. Three such periods hold profound lessons for today. First, in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, a fascinating series of transformations made that tiny land the richest in the world--and created politics as we know it today. Next, the French Revolution, an explosive era that devoured its ideological children and left a bloody legacy that haunts us today. Finally, the mother of all revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, which catapulted Great Britain and the US to global dominance and created the modern world.

Alongside these paradigm-shifting historical events, Zakaria probes four present-day revolutions: globalization, technology, identity, and geopolitics. For all their benefits, the globalization and technology revolutions have produced profound disruptions and pervasive anxiety and our identity. And increasingly, identity is the battlefield on which the twenty-first century's polarized politics are fought. All this is set against a geopolitical revolution as great as the one that catapulted the United States to world power in the late nineteenth century. Now we are entering a world in which the US is no longer the dominant power. As we find ourselves at the nexus of four seismic revolutions, we can easily imagine a dark future. But Zakaria proves that pessimism is premature. If we act wisely, the liberal international order can be revived and populism relegated to the ash heap of history.

As few public intellectuals can, Zakaria combines intellectual range, deep historical insight, and uncanny prescience to once again reframe and illuminate our turbulent present. His bold, compelling arguments make this book essential reading in our age of revolutions.

Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN's flagship international affairs show, Fareed Zakaria GPS, as well as weekly columnist for the Washington Post. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including his last one, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World. He lives in New York City.

Zakaria will be in conversation with Thomas L. Friedman. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and, columnist. He is the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes – two for international reporting from the Middle East and a third for his columns written about 9/11. He is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers — From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes, The World Is Flat, Hot Flat and Crowded, That Used To Be Us (with Michael Mandelbaum) and, most recently, Thank You For Being Late.

4900 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Lowell E. Baier — Earth's Emergency Room: Saving Species as the Planet and Politics Get Hotter — at The Wharf

Wednesday, April 17, 7:00 pm
Earth's Emergency Room: Saving Species as the Planet and Politics Get Hotter By Lowell E. Baier Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781538194133
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers - April 16th, 2024

In Earth's Emergency Room, author, attorney, and environmental historian Lowell E. Baier celebrates 50 years of the landmark Endangered Species Act of 1973, a bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon. Baier provides an insightful and entertaining history of the ESA's dramatic highs and lows. His own work with the ESA from its inception to the present, and with the key figures who shaped its history, from field biologists to Presidents of the United States, give the book a unique, human element. He looks back at a lifetime of environmental advocacy and tackles one of today's leading challenges: the unprecedented decline in species due to climate change. Drawing from his extensive experience as a negotiator and activist, Baier argues that the ESA is flexible enough to ameliorate the biodiversity crisis while still respecting landowners, states, and industries. He ultimately calls on all Americans to embrace a spirit of bipartisanship and conservation to strengthen the law that has been Earth's emergency room for half a century.

Lowell E. Baier is an attorney as well as a legal and environmental historian and author. He has worked in Washington, D.C., throughout his 60-year career as a tireless advocate for natural resources and wildlife conservation. He holds five doctorate degrees. Baier was recognized as the Conservationist of the Year by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in 2008, by Outdoor Life Magazine in 2010, and by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies in 2013. In 2016, the National Wildlife Federation awarded him their highest honor, the Jay N. "Ding" Darling Conservation Award for a lifetime of conservation service.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

610 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024

Caoilinn Hughes & Megan Nolan — The Alternatives & Ordinary Human Failings - with Angie Kim — at Conn Ave

Wednesday, April 17, 7:00 pm
The Alternatives: A Novel By Caoilinn Hughes Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9780593545003
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Riverhead Books - April 16th, 2024

Ordinary Human Failings: A Novel By Megan Nolan Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9780316567787
Availability: In Stock—Click for Locations
Published: Little, Brown and Company - February 6th, 2024

This event is in partnership with Solas Nua.

The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties--all single, all with PhDs--they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London's Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth's future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search of a sister who doesn't want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, confronting both old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland's most gifted storytellers.

Caoilinn Hughes is the author of Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She was recently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is now a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library.

In Ordinary Human Failings, it's 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the "peasants" -- ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star seems set to rise when he stumbles across a sensational scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents beloved across the neighborhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and "bad apples" the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life - and love - got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there's nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays and reviews have been published by the New York Times, White Review, Guardian and Frieze amongst others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Hughes and Nolan will be in conversation with Angie Kim. Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, Miracle Creek, won the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award, and was named one of the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time by Time, and one of the best books of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the Today show. Happiness Falls, her second novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a book club pick for Good Morning America, Barnes & Noble, Belletrist, and Book of the Month Club. She lives in northern Virginia with her family.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Ieva Jusionyte — Exit Wounds: How America's Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border - with Adam Isacson — at Conn Ave

Thursday, April 18, 7:00 pm
Exit Wounds: How America's Guns Fuel Violence across the Border (California Series in Public Anthropology #57) By Ieva Jusionyte Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9780520395954
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: University of California Press - April 16th, 2024

American guns have entangled the lives of people on both sides of the US-Mexico border in a vicious circle of violence. After treating wounded migrants and refugees seeking safety in the United States, anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte boldly embarked on a journey in the opposite direction--following the guns from dealers in Arizona and Texas to crime scenes in Mexico.

An expert work of narrative nonfiction, Exit Wounds provides a rare, intimate look into the world of firearms trafficking and urges us to understand the effects of lax US gun laws abroad. Jusionyte masterfully weaves together the gripping stories of people who live and work with guns north and south of the border: a Mexican businessman who smuggles guns for protection, a teenage girl turned trained assassin, two US federal agents trying to stop gun traffickers, and a journalist who risks his life to report on organized crime. Based on years of fieldwork, Exit Wounds expands current debates about guns in America, grappling with US complicity in violence on both sides of the border.

Ieva Jusionyte is an anthropologist and associate professor at Brown University. A former paramedic and Harvard Radcliffe and Fulbright fellow, she is the author of the award-winning Threshold: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border.

Jusionyte will be in conversation with Adam Isacson, Senior Associate for Regional Security Policy and Director of Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Valerie Bauman — Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-The-Grid Insemination, and Unconventional Family Planning — at Union Market

Thursday, April 18, 7:00 pm
Inconceivable: Super Sperm Donors, Off-The-Grid Insemination, and Unconventional Family Planning By Valerie Bauman Cover Image
$27.99
ISBN: 9781454951438
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Union Square & Co. - April 16th, 2024

Inconceivable combines memoir and investigative reporting to reveal an underground community of sperm donors and recipients who have chosen to circumvent traditional fertility avenues and meet up on their own terms. As an active participant in this community, Valerie Bauman uses her own story as a lens into this movement of people attempting to dodge the costly and often discriminatory world of sperm banks and fertility clinics. Inconceivable is a window into the unfair legal, financial, and medical entanglements that compel many single women and LGBTQ+ couples to take their fertility into their own hands.

Valerie Bauman is an award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience. She is currently an investigative reporter at Newsweek. Previously, she was a senior investigative reporter and senior legal reporter at Bloomberg Law, where she covered the pharmaceutical litigation beat. Bauman has also worked at Newsday and The Associated Press, where she covered Hurricane Katrina from the Mississippi bureau, and later the New York State legislature as a political reporter.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

1324 4th St. NE
Washington, DC 20002

Paul Yamazaki — Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale — at Conn Ave

Friday, April 19, 7:00 pm
Reading the Room: A Bookseller's Tale By Paul Yamazaki, Rick Simonson (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Paul Yamazaki, Rick Simonson (Foreword by)
$13.95
ISBN: 9781958846698
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: Ode Books - May 8th, 2024

Reading the Room is Paul Yamazaki's love letter to the work of bookselling and an engaged life of the mind. Over twenty-four hours, Yamazaki leads us through the stacks of storied City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco; the care and prowess of his approach to book buying; his upbringing in a Japanese American family in Southern California and moving to San Francisco at the height of revolutionary foment; working with legendary figures in the book publishing industry like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sonny Mehta, and others; and his vision for the future of bookselling. Navigating building trust with readers and nurturing relationships across the literary industry, Yamazaki testifies to the value of generosity, sharing knowledge, and dialogue in a life devoted to books.  

Paul Yamazaki has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers, the legendary San Francisco bookstore and publisher founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, for more than 50 years. A champion for national and global literature, writers, publishers, and independent bookstores, Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. He has mentored generations of booksellers across America.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008

Damon Tweedy, M.D. — Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine - with Dinah Miller — at The Wharf

Friday, April 19, 7:00 pm
Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine By Damon Tweedy, M.D. Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9781250284891
Availability: Coming Soon—Pre-Order Now
Published: St. Martin's Press - April 9th, 2024

As much as we all might wish that mental health problems, with their elusive causes and unsettling behaviors, simply did not exist, millions of people suffer from them, sometimes to an extreme extent. Many others face addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as overdose and suicide deaths abound. Yet the vast majority of doctors receive minimal instruction in treating these conditions during their lengthy medical training. This mismatch ignores the clear overlap between physical and mental distress, and too-often puts psychiatrists on the outside looking in as the medical system continues to fail many patients.

In Facing The Unseen, bestselling author, professor of psychiatry, and practicing physician Damon Tweedy guides us through his days working in outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals as he meets people from all walks of life who are grappling with physical and psychological illnesses. In powerful, compassionate, and eloquent prose, Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach where people with mental illness have a health care system that places their full well-being front and center.

Damon Tweedy, MD is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Durham Veteran Affairs Health System. His first book, Black Man in a White Coat, was a New York Times Bestseller, selected by TIME magazine as one of the Top 10 Non-fiction books of that year. He has also published articles about race, medicine, and mental health in medical journals and print publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Tweedy will be in conversation with Dinah Miller, a psychiatrist and writer in Baltimore, Maryland.  She has been a long-time blogger, a columnist for Clinical Psychiatry News and Medscape, and is the co-author of two nonfiction books: Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work and Committed: The Battle Over Involuntary Psychiatric Care. She is a former president of the Maryland Psychiatric Society and is on faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

This event is free with first come, first served seating.

610 Water St SW
Washington, DC 20024

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