New Mexico 2026 gubernatorial frontrunner, organizer, congresswoman, and former cabinet secretary Deb Haaland shares her story, offering a powerful and personal look at what it means to be “the first.”
Nothing about Deb Haaland’s upbringing or family history set her up for a life of firsts: the first Native American woman elected to chair a state political party in the United States; one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress; the first Native American to serve in a presidential cabinet. Yet Haaland has embraced every opportunity, knowing that each step forward lifts up those who are too often left out of the conversation.
A 35th-generation New Mexican and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland has lived a remarkable life shaped by poverty, alcoholism, and single parenthood. After a late but meteoric rise in politics, she stepped down from her cabinet position as Secretary of the Interior in January 2025 and is now running for Governor of New Mexico in the 2026 election.
In A Voice Like Mine—titled after Haaland’s congressional campaign slogan, “Congress has never heard a voice like mine”—she shares the personal history that shaped her courage to organize, run for office, and lead. She tells the stories that have defined her life in politics and beyond, from her grandfather’s cornfield, where she learned the importance of hard work and care for the earth, to the oak-paneled halls of Washington, D.C. Throughout her journey, Haaland has drawn on her heritage in her activism and service, leading with humility, purpose, and a commitment to “leave the ladder down” for those who follow.

Deb Haaland, a 35th-generation New Mexican who organized for President Obama, led the New Mexico State Democratic Party to victory and made an unprecedented run and win as one of the first Native women to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. She also made history as the first Native American appointed to a U.S. President's cabinet. Drawing on her experience as a military kid, a single mom, and a Pueblo woman, Deb has championed working families, fought to give underserved communities a voice, and taken action to address the climate crisis. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Haaland is in conversation with Jonathan Capehart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is co-host of the morning edition of “The Weekend” on MS NOW (7am - 10am) and the New York Times bestselling author of “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from A Black Man’s Search for Home.” At PBS, Capehart serves as a political analyst on “PBS News Hour” and is featured on the popular Friday segment “Brooks and Capehart.” Capehart is a former Associate Editor at The Washington Post, where he was an opinion writer for 18 years. Capehart was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News (2002-2004) and served on its editorial board (1993-2000). They won the 1999 Pulitzer for Editorial Writing for their campaign to save the Apollo Theater. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250434227?ic_referral=nz1AMR-SbrqAXq-ilN5YuMIKA-u717DKMyFXxZnQqrMwMw5C9mR2iJrS8sFDljeAx8KiDvujEonO5fwcOTMOuCBE3Xu4a-nGF_IQG7C0n3dAPuHzgqxuoArTyutog855awHL8ZE

An extraordinary look at the long and complex relationship between Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who died on the same historic day—July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—and timed to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
In creating the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, Jefferson and Adams collaborated in what Jefferson later called “a perfect coincidence” of thought and action. Exactly fifty years later, in the most perfect coincidence in American history, they died within hours of each other—both former US presidents, both essential architects of the nation.
This book explores those two remarkable coincidences and the fifty-year relationship in between. Thomas Jefferson, a charismatic Southern aristocrat, and John Adams, a cantankerous Yankee, were once close friends, then bitter political enemies. In the last years of their lives, they reconciled and resumed an extraordinary correspondence, totaling some 380 letters that continued until their final months.
Other than the Declaration of Independence, the greatest symbolic gift either man gave his country may have been dying together on that fateful Independence Day in 1826. For many Americans, this moment was viewed as a “visible and palpable” manifestation of “Divine favor”—as one contemporary put it—and fueled the conviction that America was a land of miracles.
Published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the United States—and the 200th anniversary of the men’s deaths—this book is essential reading for anyone interested in presidential biographies, the Revolutionary War era, and the enduring power—yet terrible fragility—of American democracy.

Jim Rasenberger is the author of five books—A Perfect Coincidence; Revolver; The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908; and High Steel—and has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.

Rasenberger is in conversation with Jonathan Horn, an author and former White House presidential speechwriter whose books include Washington’s End and the Robert E. Lee biography The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller. He has written for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Disunion series, New York Post, The Daily Beast, National Review, and POLITICO, and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour. A graduate of Yale, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, two children, and dog. His latest book is The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668003428?ic_referral=4OO5b1ebgbuy8xeewMFSLWevEY1LV9-GDK1Soo8KuMIwM83UO6dk9mEonAp1A_pIJuskyvKyb6-9i-SKhUckZsxWyyJKMT8225P3CPgVK2vP0rWtVU6wf9Gw2BPUzJBwIsIgRTg

In the entertainment world, the spotlight shines on the beautiful— but behind the scenes are those who make the magic happen. Amy Greene is one of them. As head of marketing and public relations at the Cinema Channel, a beloved yet struggling cable network devoted to classic and independent films based in midtown Manhattan, Amy is at the height of her career— but her life is anything but steadfast. Torn between her charismatic boss, Owen Orski, and her husband Jack, Amy’s world schisms with 9/11, the death of her father, and the secrets she’ s kept locked away. The Other Beautiful People is a dazzling cinematic novel about love, loss, and the search for meaning— in work, family, and the spaces in between. It’ s a story that will captivate your heart and stay with you long after the final scene. The Other Beautiful People is a workplace love story unlike any other.

Caroline Bock is the author of THE OTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, a workplace love story, inspired by her two-decade career at AMC, Bravo, IFC, and IFC Films. She is also the author of the young adult novels LIE and Before My Eyes as well as the award-winning short story collection Carry Her Home. A graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied creative writing with Raymond Carver, she also holds an MFA in Fiction from the City College of New York. She is the co-president/prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.

Bock is in conversation with Laura Scalzo, author of two novels, The Speed of Light in Air, Water, and Glass (2018), praised as “lyrical and insightful,” and American Arcadia (2023),“a gorgeous riff of a New York City novel.” Her shorter work has appeared in various literary magazines including Had, Ellipsis Zine, Reflex Fiction, and the Grace & Gravity Series. She was a 2023 Chautauqua Writer-in-Residence and is a 2024, 2025 recipient of a DC Arts Grant. She is a graduate of Syracuse University. Find out more about her at laurascalzo.com.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781646037292?ic_referral=_Xajhhj0XuBmDrLr7OQtWWFwYGGXc2zc1TCoKadwg2cwM-3bUIAD_b6KiB1AJXSEV30f3Nhm12YelJwQ3YDo7olChC33W6v2dEuO25dZIFao9L-yCeEBcL7WV69-uQ4SSm5waXQ

An incisive examination of free speech's global decline and a framework for preserving expression in democratic societies.

The Future of Free Speech confronts a stark truth: the right to speak freely is under siege. Once celebrated as a cornerstone of democratic societies, free expression is now met with growing suspicion and retaliation across the globe. Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff present a panoramic view of how we arrived at this pivotal moment.

The authors examine a century in which speech rights expanded dramatically--including postwar democratic revolutions and the sweeping protections of the First Amendment--only to find those rights unraveling in the face of new political, technological, and cultural pressures. Today, liberal democracies are imposing speech controls, authoritarian regimes are cloaking censorship in democratic language, and digital platforms wield unprecedented power over global discourse. This book examines the backlash against free speech from all sides: governments criminalizing dissent in the name of national security; lawmakers and activists demanding tighter controls on misinformation, hate speech, and offensive content; and AI systems removing speech at a scale and speed that dwarfs historical forms of censorship. At the same time, faith in free speech itself is waning, even in the very societies that once championed it.

The Future of Free Speech argues for a reinvigorated, global commitment to open dialogue. Mchangama and Kosseff advocate nonpartisan, civic-minded solutions that resist both government overreach and corporate silencing. They offer a compelling case for how free speech can meet modern challenges without abandoning its foundational role in sustaining democracy, human rights, and shared understanding.

Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media.

Jeff Kosseff is a nonresident senior legal fellow at The Future of Free Speech and the author of Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation.

Mchangama and Kosseff will be in conversation with Ashkhen Kazaryan, a renowned expert in First Amendment law and technology policy, specializing in digital free speech, artificial intelligence, and the intersection of constitutional rights with emerging technologies. As a Senior Legal Fellow at the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University, she leads initiatives to protect free expression and shape policies that uphold the First Amendment in the digital age.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781421454160?ic_referral=VZjkmlVuNOIQ2RWgduGJUuZZ8BKXcm82KSRxWSwhD4kwM1oHQUcXZy8owjAMRDhlHI8sZJHNpEeNr_5FC7zml4sP_JOg61mh_5nTJELqBcrUtViNOE9bXOqNXCkwpo1AG9fiLdo

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar.

The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner’s story was lost to time—until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.

As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.

Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, always.

Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, the international bestseller that won the 2002 Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar–winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324118138?ic_referral=nNbuIx5f7F62JsCvZjo-0nXQbi0_MwCwtDE804OANgwwM8OksPLecqLumH0dJcGDnrD9j9CXQ3l0jvPAv-P6gatEDPYYC8rsTGHTlY5YhfszOPHLLhgf3M8uSrSvyN0ErvEu6iU

An immigration journalist and her wife trace their family’s intertwined past to unearth a history of how hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews survived Hitler’s Holocaust at the brutal hands of Stalin — a story that sheds light on the enduring power of hope and love.
Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go on parallel odysseys of 5,000 miles to survive the Holocaust – one that would, after a deceitful loyalty test from Stalin, put them on cattle cars to a Soviet Gulag, years in limbo in Central Asia, and would end, after a decade on the run, with new lives built on secrets and lies.
For years, Daniela and Talia simply accepted this painful shared history as a sign that they were b’shert, meant to be. Their families’ refugee past fueled their work: Daniela as an immigration journalist; Talia an immigration attorney. But as Daniela uncovered more, she realized that their grandparents shared this escape path in the Soviet Union with most Polish Jews who survived; a group — sometimes collectively called “the Wanderers” – that is almost entirely absent from popular understanding of World War II. And unlike most Holocaust sagas that focus on the exceptionality of the Nazi genocide, theirs was also a universal story of refugees making impossible decisions when forced to seek safety, protect their children, and find new homes. A story that, to the dismay of the world, remains relevant each time a political upheaval wreaks havoc on individual lives.
Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, part contemporary reporting on war-torn territories, The Wanderers chronicles Daniela’s journey to unearth this past with her wife, and reveal its echoes in still-contested lands from Ukraine to Israel. The Wanderers is a groundbreaking narrative history, and a meditation on how a home left behind and a desperate journey to survive reverberates across borders and through generations.

Daniela Gerson is an award-winning immigration reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, and Los Angeles Times. An associate professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge and editor-at-large at Zocalo Public Square, she previously worked as a community engagement editor at the LA Times and as a staff immigration reporter for the New York Sun. She lives in Los Angeles with her two children and her wife, a nationally recognized immigration attorney.

Gerson is in conversation with Amanda Katz, a writer and editor in Washington, DC who has worked for CNN, the Boston Globe, Bloomsbury Publishing, and most recently the Opinions section of the Washington Post. She runs the newsletter Porch Party (porchpartynews.com). 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780306834301?ic_referral=dlvhtUxk6ImnTUkkxEjkc2D2kGJxjBHaorlGYS7Wd5EwM4V2LyUXchOgnRIkUf4ERRinXCdZiEo8NK-nnWJxrVmcNdg-2SVOUirwqP0YBSFnL3K93JQCz7gM3PSh6A6whgKB6K8

An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care. 
From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.
Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the poor. An unsparing picture of inequities in prenatal care and childbirth in the US, Expecting Inequity reveals that not only are Black people three-to-four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. That is, wealthier Black people are much more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or the postpartum period than their white counterparts. Focusing on a San Francisco obstetrics clinic that caters to the affluent, Khiara Bridges looks at the choices around prenatal care and childbirth that class-privileged, pregnant Black people are making in order to survive what has been called the “Black maternal health crisis.”
Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws upon two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier Black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their Blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism’s reach. Throughout the book, engaging, heartbreaking, infuriating stories of women’s experiences with pregnancy and prenatal care illustrate how race and racism matter regardless of wealth or status.

Khiara M. Bridges is a professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law. Her books include Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization.

Bridges is in conversation with Akilah Johnson, who joined The Washington Post in 2021 as a national reporter exploring the effect of racism and social inequality on health. In prior roles at ProPublica and the Boston Globe she covered the intersection of health, race, politics and immigration. At ProPublica, she won a George Polk award, National Magazine award and was Pulitzer finalist for examining covid-19's toll on Black Americans. At the Globe, she was part of a team of journalists who shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and she was a Pulitzer finalist as a member of the Spotlight Team investigation into racism in Boston. Her reporting has earned other national awards including NABJ Salute to Excellence Awards, ONA's Knight Award for Public Service and a National Headliner Award for Journalistic Innovation. Before her time at the Globe, Akilah covered education and public safety for the South Florida Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. She is a graduate of the University of Miami and alumna of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780262051552?ic_referral=QT1I-joXSERLFVhQtsQpi6o-plWfuUqg7-ZolftEuIYwM68XoiZrSiw3od3FLYDg0CGHmQofdarh3rz6pKjq-F9hQzrYceqcaPaBx4boBZ5qYUGYeXDSQTTB4kNvvuFD655KjZQ

In time for Apple’s 50th anniversary, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue tells the iconic company’s entire life story: how it was born, nearly died, was born again under Steve Jobs, and became, under CEO Tim Cook, the most valuable company in the world. The book features full-color photos, new facts that correct the record and illuminate its subversive culture, and fresh interviews with the legendary figures who shaped Apple into what it is today.
On April 1, 1976, two scruffy twentysomethings, both named Steve, founded a startup. Their goal: To bring the revolutionary power of computers to everyone.
Over the next five decades, Apple reshaped the technology and cultural landscapes, introducing the public to breakthroughs like the mouse, laser printing, CD-ROM, WiFi, digital video, home networking, touchscreen phones, and tablets. Jobs’s obsessive eye for detail set the stage for products—Mac, iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch—that married advanced technology with beauty, simplicity, and fine design.
Deeply researched and lavishly illustrated, Apple: The First 50 Years includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives. The book busts long-held myths; goes backstage for both the titanic successes (450 million iPods, 700 million iPads, 2.2 billion iPhones) and the instructive failures (Lisa, Apple III, MobileMe); and assesses the forces that challenge Apple’s dominance as it enters its second half century.
Bursting with tales of frenetic all-nighters, engineering genius, and creative rebellion, this book is a true testament to Apple’s unique and innovative vision, and a must read for anyone whose life Apple has touched.

David Pogue is a seven-time Emmy Award winner for his stories on CBS Sunday Morning, a five-time TED speaker, host of  twenty NOVA specials on PBS, and a New York Times bestselling author. He’s written about Apple for his entire career, including thirteen years as a Macworld columnist, thirteen more as tech columnist for The New York Times, and twenty years as the #1 bestselling author of books about Macs and iPhones. He lives with his family in New York.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781982134594?ic_referral=tJjCKDTVd5sQFVxmpxUFPmcFgwsjBJqfSV7EQmOAmccwM2AVU2Z3-Xaxqz_IrEkBIdnZ5MyHSZt2Hx4MfspPgjmpeWg132pQSl9rAvQtRkh_2OxhDqdVXnGFbe-DEXqpknP7Beo

The surprising story of how iconic works of music sparked debate and action in the halls of Congress.

From "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to Rhapsody in Blue and Hamilton, the story of America is written not only in its laws and speeches but also in its music. In On the Record: Music That Changed America, award-winning scholar and storyteller Anna Harwell Celenza reveals how certain songs and compositions didn’t just mirror history—they made it.

Across two centuries of American life, Celenza traces the extraordinary moments when music moved Congress, challenged power, and united people around shared ideals. Billie Holiday’s haunting performance of "Strange Fruit" brought the horror of racial violence into public view. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring offered hope in an age of fear and suspicion. Nina Simone’s "Mississippi Goddam" gave voice to a new generation demanding justice, while Paul Simon’s Graceland reshaped global diplomacy.

Through vivid storytelling and rich historical insight, On the Record reveals how the interplay between art and politics has defined the American experiment. Each chapter connects a groundbreaking musical work to the social and legislative changes it inspired—from civil rights to women’s liberation; environmental protection to digital freedom.

This is not just a history of music—it’s a history of America heard through the songs and compositions that changed its course. Provocative, moving, and deeply original, On the Record reminds us that music doesn’t just reflect who we are. It helps us decide who we want to be.

Anna Harwell Celenza is a professor at Johns Hopkins University, holding a joint appointment at the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences and the Peabody Conservatory. She is also the author of eight children’s books. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324004998?ic_referral=nUPUAYgpvwhwZv9QHtQGgjDehKYjBZSq2yrJpuH_UJ0wM4F5twZHOlvcuKjjerUTtx83uWDznNE-dHmIzSNf0vmytjbXKgPkNZoYqx3ZJyGXDUm9BXPocHMl0kHsv6ZCGucUskM

Life Lines is an ethnographic exploration of elder care as a creative and relational process, centred on the author's journey caring for his aging father. Over five years, these shared moments opened up new understandings of his father's inner world, revealing the social and personal forces that shaped his life, dreams, and disappointments.

Blending personal narrative with ethnographic insight, Life Lines invites readers to reflect on the profound and often challenging journey of caring for an aging parent. As generations age and more families navigate the realities of advanced old age, this book offers a hopeful vision: caregiving can be more than a duty - it can become an opportunity for parents and adult children to forge deeper, more emotionally enriching relationships.

Through art, conversation, and shared discovery, Life Lines shows how we can move beyond care fatigue and disconnection, transforming the later years of life into a time of renewed connection, understanding, and appreciation.

Joshua Hotaka Roth is Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College, author of the award-winning Brokered Homeland, and a leading scholar on migration, mobility, and aging in Japan.

Hotaka Roth is in conversation with Mark Auslander, PhD, a sociocultural and historical anthropologist, who currently teaches at American University in Washington DC.  He has published extensively on art, ritual, race, and the politics of difference. He is author of the award-wining book, “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family” (University of Georgia Press, 2011) and co-editor with Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston of "In Search of Lost Futures: Anthropological Explorations in Multimodality, Deep Interdisciplinarity, and Autoethnography” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).  Mark has served as a curator and museum director, with emphases on natural  science, cultural history, expressive arts, and community engagement. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781487562830?ic_referral=if_sNCiMNjo-9KoUFuLfNKpcNO-Ma6j_4z88HhuXBBgwM2Vezv30ptnpLoAj2Np7gJCODX-M2Zo6TtJ39SDCXWj9N9YJFFOUlVcZj2sccem3JnCelFpGGgij_RMe3GiYhrd5fAY

A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite—and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.
As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?
In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.
We’ll learn what’s working, too: how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won’t change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.
Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.

Emily Galvin Almanza is the co-founder and executive director of Partners for Justice, a nonprofit creating a new collaborative model of public defense designed to empower defenders nationwide. Prior to founding PFJ, Emily fought for clients inside the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office, the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office, and the Bronx Defenders, and with the Stanford Three Strikes Project. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Teen Vogue, and Time, among other publications.

Galvin Almanza is in conversation with Congressman Jamie Raskin, who proudly represents Maryland’s 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The district includes most of Montgomery County and a small part of Prince George's County. Congressman Raskin was sworn into his fifth Term at the start of the 119th Congress on January 6, 2025. Rep. Raskin was chosen by the Democratic Caucus to be the Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary in the 119th Congress. Prior to his time in Congress, Raskin was a three-term State Senator in Maryland, where he also served as the Senate Majority Whip. He was also a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years. He has authored several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People, the highly-acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America’s Students, and the New York Times #1 best-seller Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth and the Trials of American Democracy. Congressman Raskin is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and is a former editor of the Harvard Law Review.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593799116?ic_referral=jEzAVfjYCdmjPpb-R5IIrB2VQjKg8pwcvSNlM0ga8QwwM2OgsWPKk3uhfbRjdMAWfsXzoqoQsT89454gWeeQoyZmQelBfGD7ZL_y9SU9jfoUYNf-UOpyBbkD8la4UnOeNTSEgCQ

Based on extensive inside sources, a revealing account of how the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations transformed both health care and politics in America
 
For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. David Blumenthal and James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.
 
President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself. Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis.

David Blumenthal, professor of public health and health policy at Harvard University,he is former national coordinator for Health Information Technology.

James A. Morone is the John Hazen White Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Public Policy, and Urban Studies at Brown University.

 Blumenthal and Morone are in conversation with Senator Richard Blumenthal. Originally sworn in on January 5, 2011, he is serving his third term as a United States Senator from the State of Connecticut. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he worked as assistant to Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was Assistant to the President of the United States. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserves in 1970, and was honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant in 1976. After graduating law school in 1973, Senator Blumenthal clerked for U.S. District Judge Jon Newman, and then for United States Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. He then transitioned to lead U.S. Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff's staff as an Administrative Assistant (now known as Chief of Staff).

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780300263480?ic_referral=a6Dp3-CWF3-2xUCtuDezgY94Y-eqGXIrFT1mk2wkatQwM-svJaTCA50ZkJeP5aS15-YWtOem-dEb7g3rQJPM4dCEpCzBzOo5sFTe51rQVSQOsosD99e-2DwzCchkDlVFCHfZHic

The dramatic story of the secretive decade–long Pentagon campaign to bring AI–powered targeting systems onto the battlefield.

In 2017, a small crew gathered in a windowless Pentagon room to put AI at the heart of how America makes war. Led by a Marine Corps colonel haunted by the deaths of US troops and prospect of AI–enhanced rivals, the Project Maven team raced to send AI into combat, igniting controversy and forever changing the US military. Summoning the mayhem of a tech startup, the group wrestled Pentagon bureaucrats and each other, enlisted an initially reluctant Silicon Valley, and convinced US forces to deploy little–tested AI systems in hot wars. Maven fielded algorithms to identify targets at speed and scale, developed AI–infused command systems, and learned where AI fails. Today, its lessons are folded into developing autonomous technology set to be on the frontlines of future war. Based on more than 200 interviews with Project Maven insiders and opponents, this compelling narrative explains how AI warfare, once the stuff of apocalyptic science fiction, has become a reality.

Katrina Manson is an award–winning Bloomberg reporter who covers cyber, emerging tech, and national security. Her investigations exposed details of the US military’s AI use and US–China rivalry. She was previously the Financial Times US foreign policy and defense correspondent.

Manson is in conversation with Gary Marcus, a NYU emeritus professor, CEO and co-founder of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber) and author of six books including Taming Silicon Valley.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324123316?ic_referral=IoWnuv3QmzchzAIb3ikRRfkCE7EZun9JbiLcB4EHHfIwM_FS76pXHC6LbGeQhhodIc9ZXZHBB0ZX_P4L8_3XFWSUqTD2bIWooHN5I6ViIBE6HsTltEIK2Wd3ekWM5-u4X9k-Bgg

A moving, harrowing, and compulsively readable portrait of the lives of Iranians across five decades, tracing the promise of the 1979 revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy, and a people’s undying spirit of resistance 
In 1979, a revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fueled by the Iranian people’s dreams of social justice and political freedom. But in the years that followed, the movement’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond imagination the brutality and corruption that had existed under the previous government. In Stolen Revolution, award-winning journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin tell the entwined stories of six Iranians who, together, have lived the arc of modern Iranian history in all its bitter twists and enduring hopes.
We meet Mehdi Karroubi, a devotee of Khomeini, who rose to the heights of power before being cast out of the inner circle. Hila Sedighi, a young activist, gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes and shattered dreams. Amir Moghadam, an ambitious government bureaucrat, witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth. Said Rahmani returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country and encountered a ruthless security state. And Rozhin Yousefzadeh and Kosar Eftekhari, both born in the 1990s, joined a mass movement that confronted a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price. In this vivid and unforgettable narrative, Stolen Revolution centers ordinary Iranians and their destiny, even as it provides a gutting understanding of life in a modern authoritarian state.

Yeganeh Torbati is the Iran correspondent for The New York Times. She has also worked at The Washington Post, ProPublica, Reuters, and The Baltimore Sun, and has covered national security, immigration, and business. She was part of a Reuters team that received the Gerald Loeb Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the European Press Prize. Torbati was born in Oklahoma to Iranian immigrants.
Bozorgmehr Sharafedin began his journalism career in Iran, rising to editor-in-chief of the most popular youth political magazine in the country. In 2008, he left Iran for the BBC in London. He joined Reuters in 2015, where he shared a National Press Club Award. He moved to Washington DC in 2024 and works as the Head of Digital at Persian-language Iran International.

Torbati & Sharafedin are in conversation with David Sanger, the White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times and the bestselling author of The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, and The Perfect Weapon. He has been a member of three teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, including in 2017 for international reporting about Russia's effort to manipulate the presidential election. A contributor to CNN, he also teaches national security policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Sanger's new book, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West, is out now.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780385550314?ic_referral=AGmGaepqpsHvNPOtlpoc4zBNR5O1Ud02_rjK3sawT9cwM3q_W8Sg1IpSq_v7txRgrh4xp2DWwqNWviJD_ucwMKK-j8KFyh940Cz5M-G853tLWtQUP1aJAMuGHBd0j7TRkIuMD1g

Something darker than the devil stalks the North Carolina woods in Wolf Worm, a new gothic masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher
“I saw the devil in these woods.”
Sonia Wilson is a talented scientific illustrator—but she is only able to follow her dream because of her father’s reputation as a renowned scientist. Such is the lot in life for a woman in science in 1899. And after his death, she is left without work, prospects, or hope.
So when the reclusive Dr. Halder offers her a position illustrating his vast collection of insects, Sonia jumps at the chance to move to his North Carolina manor house and put her talents to use.
Once there though, she encounters dark happenings in the Carolina woods, and even darker questions come to light, like what happened to her predecessor? Why are animals acting so strangely, and what is behind the peculiar local whispers about “blood thiefs?”
With the aid of the housekeeper and a local healer, Sonia discovers that Halder’s entomological studies have taken him down a twisted road. His ground-breaking discoveries come with a cost—one that Halder is paying with human flesh.
If Sonia can’t find a way to stop the monstrosity, she may be next under the knife.

T. Kingfisher (she/her) writes fantasy, horror, and occasional oddities, including Nettle & Bone, What Moves the Dead, Thornhedge, A House with Good Bones, and A Sorceress Comes to Call. Under a pen name, she also writes bestselling children's books. She lives in New Mexico with her husband. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250829825?ic_referral=oirRMVL0ibuGq03qMc1FofQweVW3LK8oxxiK0SIthWMwM_cqTlLHG60Ie0PhuiAS19fVzZpCwd6Tz6mhNcNtJdUlGN2cM8oggEtvV3S5JBH_2J-IOgZckj07NImFPQ0j47q1pvM

Fast-paced and funny. Scientific and tender. A literary thriller featuring Auks. As if Hilary Mantel’s The Giant, O’Brien met Robinson Crusoe, here is a story of one man’s growing humanity amidst famine and extinction.
Told in the vernacular of the day, this novel-as-notebook features a 19th-century ornithologist on a remote Irish island—from the author of indie favorite The Gospel of Orla.
Written in the form of a 19th-century notebook of ornithological observations, Field Notes from an Extinction follows the life and work of one Ignatius Green, a fictitious English scientist dispatched by the Royal Society to the remote island of Tor Mor off the northern Irish coast. Green, a widower, is single-minded and self-righteous, brilliant and bumbling. He is determined to set the scientific record straight on the mating rituals, feeding and care of hatchlings and other minutiae he can gather about the Great Auk (pinguinus impennis).
Green’s world is shattered when his monthly goods delivery arrives ravaged by the local Irish townsmen. His fury at their impertinence is matched only by his dismay at finding a small child amid the shipment--dirty, abandoned, mute, and utterly feral and unmanageable. Worse, the locals are growing restless and hungry. And there is talk sweeping the land of a terrifying woman with unnatural power.
Green fights for his survival against brigands and hunger and, most fearsome, the resolve of a fierce and angry child. And, perhaps, for a wider understanding of family amidst roiling societal unrest.]

Eoghan Walls is a Northern Irish poet. He has lived and worked in Ireland, Britain, Germany and Rwanda. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2006, and his poetry has been shortlisted for multiple international awards, including the Bridport Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize and the Piggott Prize. He has published the first major translation of Heidegger’s poetical works and currently teaches Creative Writing at Lancaster University. The Gospel of Orla (Seven Stories Press; 2023), his debut novel, was an IndieNext and a Library Reads selection, and was called "utterly convincing and fresh and original" by Colm Tóibín. His new novel is Field Notes from an Extinction.

Walls is in conversation with Leeya Mehta, whose novel, Extinction, is forthcoming with Simon and Schuster, India (October 6 2026). She is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, podcaster and essayist, widely published in the US, India, UK, and Austria, including in the Times of India, Poetry London, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets and in Red Hen Press’s Future Work. Her poetry chapbook A Story of the World Before the Fence “is a lush, lyrical study of memory and history,” writes Tim Seibles. She graduated from Oxford and Georgetown, and is currently the Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University, where she was honored with Faculty Member of the Year (2025), and the Faculty Civic Excellence Award (2024). Her collaborative project received American graphic design awards for their 13-month long Baldwin100 project, celebrating James Baldwin’s centennial. Socials: https://leeyamehta.com/ @LeeyaMehta

PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781644215340?ic_referral=hSz8LUeXbpJVTwLouVauKkyecM-FCuPu96zgdXxmJYEwM8rjkFFWt6-ogGg2hFj9c75eEAYCIrZnMAzuHes7YzB5QHPORQtGHhs3Gz0QcOBC-n0U1VL_J1crhsNGwFCzzVWOUak

Some cities feed on secrets. Naples is ravenous.
A peaceful evening mass at the historic Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo is shattered when a young au pair is killed in one of the cathedral’s quiet chapels. The daughter of the US Ambassador sees it happen—but she'll speak only to one person: Nikki Serafino.
Shaken by betrayal in her last high-profile case, Nikki has retreated from the relentless vigilance that once defined her work as liaison between Italian police and the US military. Withdrawn and mistrustful, she works her shifts, cares for her aging family, teaches self-defense classes, and avoids entanglement. But this case threatens her self-imposed invisibility—drawing her into a web of lies and resurfacing old wounds and buried loyalties. The murder investigation leads Nikki and her friend, Naples officer Valerio Alfieri, into a shadow architecture of power: built to protect the guilty and hide their secrets at any cost.
Can she and Valerio—each carrying dangerous debts—resist the undertow of corruption that swallows truth whole?
Set against the chaos of modern Naples—the city of Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend—where grace and corruption share the same narrow streets, Nikki and Valerio navigate a landscape where even the most principled must confront the cost of survival.

Elizabeth Heider is the author of May the Wolf Die, named a New York Times Best Crime Novel, a Washington Post Best Mystery, and one of Publishers Weekly’s best books of the year. Her short fiction has been recognized by the Santa Fe Writers Project and New Century Writer Awards. She holds a PhD in physics and most recently worked as a program manager for Microsoft’s AI4Science and as a scientist in the European Space Agency’s human spaceflight program. She's authored original scientific research, a patent, analytical reports for the US government and military, and coauthored a journal article with astronaut Thomas Pesquet. She lived and worked in Naples, Italy, as a civilian analyst embedded with the US Navy’s mission in Africa, where she deployed aboard US and European naval ships. Originally from Utah, she now lives in The Hague, where she's working on the next Nikki Serafino novel.

Heider is in conversation with I.S. Berry, she spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA, serving in wartime Baghdad and elsewhere. She has lived and worked throughout Europe and the Middle East, including two years in Bahrain during the Arab Spring. Her debut spy novel, The Peacock and the Sparrow, was named The Times (London) Thriller of the Year; a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and NPR; and won the Edgar Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, and International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel. The Times calls Berry one of “the top spy novelists of the 21st century,” and Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mission, calls her “the best spy novelist of her generation.” She’s been featured in The Washington Post, The Times, and WAMU. Berry is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and Haverford College, and lives in Virginia with her husband and son.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780143138198?ic_referral=HW8XYajKaFvSf98xKw6bCBV0mApqDQk6XU3Ivx4C3IIwMx45rTUFcrR4ACYb7Lz0aO_rR9ymiw7YzqWgpXIspAgpBmts1l_zYYBBNCZNUxXPD430fvjNguPIhEL5enlf59W7E2s

How the Internet lost its way--and how to fix it

Recovering the Internet is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm--from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency.
With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Recovering the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time--what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere.

Olivier Sylvain is a professor of law at Fordham University, a former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, and a Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. An expert in communications, administrative, and internet law, his work focuses on platform accountability, consumer protection, and the intersection of technology, speech, and democracy.

Sylvain is in conversation with Nancy Scola, a veteran Washington D.C.-based reporter and journalist whose work often focuses on the intersections of technology, economics, politics, and policy for publications like New York, Wired, The Information, and The Atlantic. She is a contributing writer at both POLITICO Magazine and Washingtonian Magazine. Nancy also teaches about the history, theory, and practice of journalism, including as a lecturer at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Earlier in her career, Nancy was a senior technology reporter at POLITICO and a staff writer at the Washington Post. Before going into journalism, Nancy worked in politics and government, including as a professional staffer member on the House Committee on Government Reform.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781967190126?ic_referral=aMdPEGq7lGenNEG0Q9msTt-fjF8_UXqLEqnQTyn7F6UwM4fphlerf4WHrK7E-iBk_W9YEEc5m5vT-l-SI7DOGJUPxZeUJFpaox80wVnB1pFH0JsDWf6y7xEHmwrB4jOBwnvTt8M

From the creator of AdviceWithErin, the definitive book on how to use the right words at work—so you can build the career you deserve
We’ve all been there: you’re sweating, sitting in front of your laptop, and the interviewer on the screen says, “Tell me about yourself.” You freeze. Is that even a question? What are they expecting from you? What do you say?
If that paragraph made your heart beat a little faster, TikTok star, career educator, and “the internet’s big sister” Erin McGoff is here to help. In The Secret Language of Work, McGoff shares her best, customizable scripts for how to communicate in the professional world—word-for-word, exactly what to say during interviews, while negotiating salaries, when you need to set boundaries with co-workers, as you advocate for yourself, and in any sticky situation at the office. With McGoff’s advice, you will master the unwritten rules of work speak that are key to career advancement.
Learning how to say the right words, in the right order, in the right way, at the right time, is an art that too few people are taught. Stellar communication is probably the most valuable skill you can possess—and once you know the secret language of work, you will be able to confidently tackle anything your sure-to-be outstanding career presents to you.

Erin McGoff is an award-winning filmmaker and content creator—known as the “internet’s big sister" through her AdviceWithErin branding. McGoff has built a significant online presence with millions of followers, delivering candid career and life advice for Gen Z and Millennials. She received a Pulitzer Fellowship in 2017 and was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient in 2025. Her impact has been recognized by publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, and others, and she is currently a contributor to CNBC. McGoff lives in Washington, D.C., with an occasional trip up to her cabin in the Catskills she custom-built, with her husband, Michael, and dog, Olive.

McGoff is in conversation with Hannah Williams, a social activist and former data analyst tackling a major issue: salary transparency. After discovering she was underpaid, Hannah created Salary Transparent Street in 2022, a viral series that interviews strangers about their pay to normalize pay transparency and expose workers’ real wages. Her interviews have encouraged international shifts in how companies and governments approach pay transparency, culminating in invitations to testify in support of pay transparency bills in Virginia, Maryland, and DC, with the latter two passing into law. In 2024, she made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and in 2025, she was named to the inaugural TIME100 Most Influential Creators list

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217046416?ic_referral=TO1Y26h_biwFIW7-VyJGFHINquQPqdpgKcW1aedWLJswM82yEaURn5NapuetjjjWL5hNZcrH9pwTwPh591wk-Ubw03-SpLlR8vaF0O9OPmmCb-DBE6bkK-cCljAfITrOPcyGUQg

From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, a mesmerizing and powerful account of six Syrians fighting for a better world, in the tradition of classic works by Philip Gourevitch and Katherine Boo.
In 2011, in a northern Syrian city, a small group of men and women began a movement that overthrew one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. For the next eighteen months, citizens of Manbij carried out one of the most remarkable experiments in democracy in modern times.
Days of Love and Rage details the powerfully intimate narratives of men and women who led this struggle, and who experience the highs of camaraderie and the lows of betrayal: a pair of best friends torn apart by political polarization, a mother who stands up to male dominance, a worker who risks everything for the dream of equality.
Anand Gopal immerses you in the world of a single city in the throes of revolution, and lays bare the danger that inequality poses to democracy. But this book transcends the particulars of one terrible conflict to tell the sweeping story of democracy and rising authoritarianism in our times. It is, above all, an account of the best and worst of humanity. Both tragic and inspiring, Days of Love and Rage is a story of our enduring human need for freedom, security, dignity, community, love, and hope.

Anand Gopal is a writer for The New Yorker. He is the author of No Good Men Among the Living and writes about democracy, inequality, and conflict.

Gopal is in conversation with Victor Blue, a New York based photojournalist whose work is most often concerned with the legacy of armed conflict, human rights and the protection of civilian populations, and unequal outcomes resulting from policy and politics. He has worked in Central America since 2002, concentrating on social conflict in Guatemala, and since 2009 has photographed the Counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan. He practices a deeply reported, character driven documentary photography that tries to both inform viewers intellectually and move them emotionally, and communicate something universal from the particular circumstances of individual lives and struggles. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668062173?ic_referral=s3ktvNuJIVPdh9sbkSoa2k1UpDIkbQ_FiixA44YALiUwM1enWVeel4jDThW-mYL0V47A9yz80T5VcdvipaaQfGqIvpy_yDLwFRNutnvdykirK7YcGUABnusPVtJrCo_Tpe0xAH8

The Drama of War and Postwar Italy Through the Life of One of Its Most Celebrated Icons
When people think of fashion designer Emilio Pucci, it is of his bright, swirling colors and easy, freeing fabrics, and everyone from Sophia Loren to Jackie Kennedy donning the eye-catching dresses that personify La Dolce Vita. What few know about Pucci, however, is that before creating his world-famous fashions, he played a critical role in the war against the Nazis, risking his life to smuggle out to the Allies one of the most important documents of World War II.
The authors bring to life Italy’s darkest and brightest days, with the extraordinary Emilio Pucci at its center. Italy at the end of the war was broken, and Florence, which the Pucci family had called home for seven centuries, lay in ruins. Pucci returned home bruised in body and soul, having endured trials that would have broken many, but, like Italy itself, rose from the ashes, and went on to design some of the most exuberant fashion of all time. He helped usher in a new era of creativity in Italy, which again became a mecca of fashion, art, design, film, and more.
A host of supporting characters—including Mussolini’s daughter and Allen Dulles, and, most importantly, the timeless city of Florence and the mythic island of Capri—enrich this compelling narrative that will draw readers of all kinds, from war and history buffs, to fashionistas and fans of espionage thrillers along with the millions of readers who devour books about Italy and her many charms.

Terence Ward is the author of Searching for Hassan: A Journey to the Heart of Iran and The Guardian of Mercy: How an Extraordinary Painting by Caravaggio Changed an Ordinary Life. 
Idanna Pucci is the author of The Lady of Sing Sing and The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince. Idanna grew up in the Pucci palace, eyewitness to her uncle's extraordinary work. She and Terence have had far flung lives, from Iran to Indonesia. They live in Florence.

Ward and Pucci are in conversation with Sara Gay Forden, is a bestselling author and veteran journalist known for her book The House of Gucci, adapted into a major film, and her extensive reporting on the Italian fashion industry and tech giants for Bloomberg News, where she currently leads the legal team in D.C.; she covered fashion in Milan for years before moving to Washington, D.C. to focus on big tech like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. https://www.saragayforden.com/about

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250289674?ic_referral=q4-db_E4ndRn78KEziaox5CsnurHCLMHRoLzaYDBCLcwM9M1-RmeU5gep6A2Lx8PRSmkKQ5Mh84KkHTo1PS0jPVkbPspSsIi3Fb0Ko26DDFEXHW78G5F027GTNoiGkzLFM8mFa0

A movie censor murdered, a leading lady vanished—the glamour, romance, and intrigue of the beginnings of Bollywood come to vivid life in the thrilling new installment of the Perveen Mistry historical mystery series.
India, 1922: Perveen Mistry, the only female lawyer in Bombay, has secured her biggest client yet: Champa Films, a movie studio run by director Subhas Ghoshal and his wife, Rochana, the biggest name in Indian cinema. In the public eye, Rochana is notorious for her beauty and her daring stunts—behind the scenes, she has recently left the studio in Calcutta that made her famous, and the studio owner is enraged by what he claims is a breach of contract. Rochana needs Perveen’s legal help to extricate Champa Films from the impending controversy.
To study Rochana’s glamorous world, Perveen attends a special screening and brings her film fanatic best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones. But in the aftermath of the event, one of the guests is found dead, and to make matters worse, Rochana has disappeared.
To protect her clients, Perveen begins to investigate the developing murder case, peeling back the glitz to reveal a salacious web of blackmail, deceit, and romantic affairs. For the first time in their friendship, Alice seems to be keeping a secret from Perveen. Is she hiding key information about the night of the murder? Will Perveen be able to detangle the truth from lies while protecting herself—and her closest friend?

Sujata Massey was born in England to parents from India and Germany, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She was a features reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun before becoming a full-time novelist. The first Perveen Mistry novel, The Widows of Malabar Hill, was an international bestseller and won the Agatha, Macavity, and Mary Higgins Clark Awards. Visit her website at sujatamassey.com.

Massey is in conversation with Vera Kurian, a writer and scientist based in Washington DC. Her debut novel, NEVER SAW ME COMING (Park Row Books, 2021) was an Edgar Award nominee, was named one of the New York Times’ Best Thrillers of 2021, and has sold in 15 countries. Her second novel. A STEP PAST DARKNESS, was published in 2024. She regularly writes on Substack.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781641295093?ic_referral=ciDNXibXnt8RuL5jIjhzIQuCmbC5b7ms8o32MgUEY0kwM9BnWjKDrYULFP3948LXnBaEu2PPuw125ZyJzug6nesCuPWXxYtCeNaSal35ERCUA2N04YClQp_sbjjH9IP9mvN0HRA

A new collection of evocative personal essays from one of America’s most beloved nonfiction writers, Anne Fadiman. 
In Frog, Anne Fadiman returns to her favorite genre, the essay, of which she is one of our most celebrated practitioners. Ranging in subject matter from her deceased frog, to archaic printer technology, to the fraught relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his son Hartley, these essays unlock a whole world—one overflowing with mundanity and oddity—through sly observation and brilliant wit.
The diverse subjects of Frog are bound together by the quality of Fadiman’s attention, and subtly, they come to form a slantwise portrait of the artist, a writer dedicated to chronicling the world as it changes around her, in ways small and large, as time passes.

Anne Fadiman is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Frog (2026). Her first book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Salon Book Award. In 2017, she published The Wine Lover’s Daughter, a memoir about her father. Fadiman has also written two essay collections, Ex Libris and At Large and At Small, and edited Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love. She is Professor in the Practice of English and Francis Writer in Residence at Yale.

Fadiman is in conversation with Isaac Arnsdorf, who covers the White House for The Washington Post. His work has received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting, the 2024 Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism, the 2019 Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, and honorable mentions for the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting in 2019 and 2022. He is the author of Finish What We Started, about the MAGA movement since January 6, and coauthor of 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.  

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374608743?ic_referral=4liJASul5ddn9BK1jdeUYyqiGk_ALtH8miGuAgruiTowM21K9vj5GEXEchAGDZzE1GpjTAOMywHAO3JPTy0lgkz-8m54wLvxGKBcy8q9A8rr--2nYqw4-IaUQER53Cy5PxeyeBg

A warm and witty memoir about the ever-changing relationships between mothers, mothers-in-law, and daughters that traverses two continents and multiple generations of two disparate yet connected families.
Janice Page hails from Braintree, Massachusetts and a large Catholic brood. Her parents had a complicated marriage. Her five siblings each have their own sagas, and there is a destructive genetic force within the family’s blood lines that causes much heartbreak.
And then there is the large Chinese family of Janice’s husband, James, equally cinematic and sweeping with a rich and complex history of its own. There is a daring wartime escape, a lost child, immigration to a new world, and a bittersweet reunion after decades of separation.
Janice first met James fresh out of college while waitressing at Mandarin Garden, the only Chinese restaurant of its kind in Braintree. He had just arrived in America from Taiwan. As they work to bridge the divide between them—emotionally, culturally, and geographically—they begin to build their lives together. From Taiwan to Los Angeles, from her mother's bipolar disorder to the language barrier with her mother-in-law, Janice finds herself constantly searching for the feeling of home. Janice believes she can close the circle when she embarks on her own journey to become a mother. Like so many journeys, Janice’s own journey to motherhood is filled with twists, turns, and surprises, leading to a baby girl from James’s ancestral region of China. Janice and James might finally close a circle that had been open for generations on both sides and find home at last.
Filled with humor and heart, wisdom and healing, Year of the Water Horse is a profound and compelling story with a deeply satisfying ending that will resonate long after the final page.

Janice Page edits arts, film, and culture at The Washington Post. Prior to that, Page was a deputy managing editor at The Boston Globe, where she oversaw publication of books done in partnership with The Globe, including The New York Times best-sellers Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy and Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice and multiple championship sports books on the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox, and Bruins. She has also been on staff at The Los Angeles Times, The Providence Journal-Bulletin and written for The New York Times and MSN. A Boston-area native, Janice graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude from Rutgers University and was named the 2023 recipient of the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residency at Yaddo, where she worked on Year of the Water Horse.

Page is in conversation with A.M. Homes, the author of thirteen books, including May We Be Forgiven, which won the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction and the internationally bestselling memoir, The Mistress's Daughter. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages. She is Professor of the Practice and Acting Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University and lives in New York City. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9798897100095?ic_referral=pLEDYafMCYglObk2gQHbjKaj1zV7sy-5E5tpTEhU-vkwM2LHgJDqhqojWS9k-kIHY1SVjf9WDvl0EIf27fCMy86dwJT4d9auWMb5ja7h7ycFTVAm-g75ChLdhKQFo4ZGGlrXM5U

In the tradition of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, a terse and piercing look at a critical episode in the Ukraine War, from the award-winning author of They Will Have to Die Now.
In March of 2022, three weeks after invading Ukraine, Russian forces bombed the shelter housed in the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater, in the city of Mariupol. The bombing stands, to this day, as the single worst act of mass civilian killing of the war. This book tells the story of the group of ordinary Ukrainians—workers, teachers, actors—who built that shelter, giving succor to thousands of their countrypeople, before it was destroyed. Their audacity and humor and humanity in the midst the siege of Mariupol, against impossible odds, will leave readers inspired, amused, and devastated. Their story is the story of a young republic and its struggle to survive.

James Verini writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and National Geographic, among other publications. His journalism has received a National Magazine Award and a George Polk Award. He is the author of They Will Have to Die Now, about the battle that brought down ISIS.

Verini is in in conversation with Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr., a distinguished American diplomat and former U.S. Army officer, known for his work in foreign policy, specifically in Ukraine, the Middle East, and former Soviet states. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (2006–2009) and later as Chargé d'Affaires in Kyiv (2019–2020)

Verini and Taylor Jr. are introduced by Kateryna Smagliy, Ph.D., who has been serving as a Counselor for Political Affairs and Public Diplomacy at the Embassy of Ukraine in the USA since February 2022. Prior to her arrival to Washington DC, Kateryna served at Political Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and led the International Cooperation Department at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine.  Smagliy is a Fulbright scholar and a graduate of The McCain Institute Next Generation Leaders program.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668062203?ic_referral=46AIO-TRCtAGBGqQxNV8EEc-n59OEwIfbCtmk67lGLQwM2sSGf-XI7hnjxT7Z-XLp0pMne3rVGicogUkJiLA_AJKMfoFeCPhX_N-PVvllWWoNZk6ar4cGcIDS1urT6QUys4yywI

Why fifty years of changemaking and reform haven't fixed Congress--and what that reveals about American democracy.

Congress, the central democratic institution in the United States, is hanging on by a thread. On January 6, 2021, a violent attack on the Capitol Building left five people dead, and threats and attacks against politicians are on the rise. In Stuck, Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years and documents the mounting forces that have kept their reforms from creating meaningful change.

The "Watergate babies" of 1974, the Contract with America conservatives of 1994, and the historic 2018 class fueled by backlash to Donald Trump all represent younger, more diverse, and less entrenched members who arrived in Washington energized and idealistic. Kornberg reveals the ways Congress has become increasingly inhospitable to change. Political violence, astronomical campaign costs, relentless fundraising demands, shrinking staff, and centralized party leadership all constrain the ability of new members to legislate and represent their constituents. Social media, while offering new platforms for political expression, has also heightened harassment and fed a performative culture that rewards spectacle over substance.

Bolstered by dozens of interviews, congressional records, and the voices of lawmakers past and present--including Henry Waxman, Toby Moffett, Phil English, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Lauren Underwood--Stuck offers a sobering portrait of a legislative body paralyzed by its own internal dynamics. Kornberg outlines tangible reforms that could restore Congress's capacity to function and amplify the power of its newest members. At a time when Americans are losing faith in democracy's most representative institution, Stuck makes the case for how it could be saved.

Maya L. Kornberg is a senior research fellow at NYU Law's Brennan Center for Justice and the author of Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in Lawmaking.

Kornberg is in conversation with Angela Greiling Keane, CNBC's senior editor for politics. She’s covered the intersection of politics, business and policy for more than 25 years and is based in Washington. She’s previously been a senior newsroom leader at Bloomberg and Politico, and she earned a bachelor’s in journalism at the University of Missouri. She has served as president of the National Press Club, National Press Club Journalism Institute and Journalism & Women Symposium.

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Let the Great World Spin meets The White Lotus when three passengers from wildly different backgrounds board a cruise ship bound for Bermuda shortly after 9/11 and learn en route that they can’t outrun their regrets about the risks not taken.
It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Though they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it is surreal—even wrong—to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise.
Also on board is Doug, an aging actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat–style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, a now sober Doug has reluctantly joined his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise during the height of recruitment season. Lucy’s impulsive decision reflects her growing ambivalence about the tech companies that are trying to hire her, including a new one with a strange-sounding name, Google.
All the World Can Hold beautifully explores how we balance our needs and our wants, as well as the regrets we live with and the chances to set them right. And though it’s not a 9/11 novel, it does remind us that while the great world spins, the interpersonal dramas don’t cease, even as more dire ones play out in the larger world.

Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. She received her MFA in English and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of O Beautiful, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a New York Times Group Read, and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year. Her debut novel, Shelter, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.

Yun is in conversation with Lauren Francis-Sharma, the Pushcart nominated author of the critically acclaimed novel, Casualties of Truth, finalist for the 2025 Caricon Prize, which was inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings in 1996. She is also the author of Book of the Little Axe, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and 'Til the Well Runs Dry, winner of the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She serves as Chair of the Awards Committee for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668200599?ic_referral=D7MFGPrRg51g93t0D06RGUWvnuS3yqMvzS4W9FP5jrcwM_0BfLGCd4flBDawkhd0Gx0LgSyvugF1bSs0PbV9N-hxTq0cdGFWdC8fROuecZAwrUXWvNOkprm203dv6rgeQNgYMiE

A devastating critique of our failure to prepare students for citizenship—and a roadmap to a better way.

America’s Founders placed great confidence in schools, which they believed would teach young people to understand our political system and to engage in reasoned political debate as adults. Yet today, when virtually all Americans graduate from high school, we remain stunningly ignorant of history and government. In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 13 percent of students scored a “proficient” level in history. Adults do no better: only 40 percent can name the three branches of government.

In The Cradle of Citizenship, James Traub chronicles his year of observing public schools across the country, talking to teachers, scholars, and curriculum designers. He finds teachers in Florida who are afraid of discussing topics that might be seen as “woke”; a red-blue war incarnated in the 1619 Project and 1776 Report; a profound disagreement over what exactly civic education means; and, most dismayingly, ever-diminishing expectations of students with ever-dwindling attention spans.

Yet The Cradle of Citizenship also finds sources of hope. Traub learns that, despite endless right-wing critiques, virtually all social studies teachers keep their personal views to themselves and encourage students to develop views of their own. He describes the extraordinary collaboration between liberal and conservative scholars that led to the creation of “Educating for American Democracy,” a roadmap for the teaching of civics. Finally, Traub describes the “classical school,” a traditional model based on the study of great books and the conscious molding of character, which is derided as reactionary in progressive circles yet prompts students to discuss books and ideas with depth. Shedding light on one of the most divisive issues of our time, The Cradle of Citizenship upholds a vision of civics education as it could be.

James Traub has written extensively for America’s leading publications, including The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s Quest for a More Just America, was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in New York.

Traub is in conversation with Valerie Strauss, a former education writer at The Washington Post, where she worked for more than 30 years. At the Post, she covered a variety of education beats — both local and national — and authored an education blog called The Answer Sheet.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324079514?ic_referral=kskwfzPcxgILR74mKYf8aWzXpceie-v-vze7QmcWi-0wM2tf2Cs_xoqN2UPTFPYabZ0KvYWtqi7JyiV9AesTvNmIFhz3DtjuvzzGDkXjB7q_cMt5LLOujMWpGcxRXL4tUTCPGi0

In New York Times bestselling author Lindy West’s ambitious memoir, she brings readers along on an uproarious cross-country road trip as she unpacks her last few tumultuous years, rediscovers herself, and reinvents her marriage in the process. 
 
Through Shrill—the book and then the Hulu series—Lindy West became an inspiration. To this day she is stopped on the street and hailed as a beacon of empowerment by women who felt badly for not conforming to a narrow set of societal norms—thin, straight, compliant. But behind the scenes, Lindy never felt like she was the self-actualized woman fans made her out to be. When she found herself in the throes of a deep depression, with her marriage and sense of self-worth hanging in the balance, she knew she needed to make a change.  
 
In Adult Braces, Lindy shares the story of her rock bottom, and of the journey she took to claw her way out of it. With her trademark candor and sense of humor, she examines her post-Shrill emotional implosion, her shifting feelings about traditional marriage, and her search for her long-lost self. She also tracks the highs and lows of her journey, from eye-opening natural wonders and kitschy roadside attractions to lackluster tourist traps and campground epiphanies.
 
The result is an engaging and laugh-out-loud narrative of becoming as Lindy transforms from a passenger into the active navigator of her own life.

Lindy West is the author of three books: the New York Times bestselling memoir Shrill as well as the essay collections The Witches Are Coming and Shit, Actually. Lindy is a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and her work has appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel, and others. She is the co-host of the comedy podcast Text Me Back and the author of the e-mail newsletter Butt News. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir, and she co-wrote and produced the independent feature film Thin Skin. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in rural Washington state.

West is in conversation with Ronald Young Jr., an audio producer, storyteller and host based in Alexandria, VA. He created and produces the podcast Weight For It, A narrative show about navigating the world as a fat person. An official Tribeca Selection in 2023 Weight For It has received accolades from Vulture, Vogue, and The New York Times.  Weight For It was also awarded a historic three Podcast Academy Awards in 2024 including Best Society and Culture Podcast, Best Indie Podcast and Best Indie Podcast Host, and another in 2025 for Best Podcast Host. His newest project Heartbreaker is a live storytelling show in which he tells the story of his journey to finding love.  It premieres in Washington DC at the Miracle Theater on February 21st 2026.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780306831836?ic_referral=-4V2yAV8j8xIeCII9jlDkoXcEkg-B_pmKCbHrV4rjGYwMymEnpIzLU6tDpYIVDIEkfExwbrFnk-56zI35ZvvFuDpuFwrEANrRjHgEVdcJsf5vKCp9_gRkpxnTaUh9NzKDypttCs

Germany once felt the world's wrath for crimes committed during the Nazi regime. More recently, it received extravagant praise for facing up to the atrocities. The country now boasts of new Jewish museums, Holocaust memorials, restored synagogues, and classroom lessons designed to honor its Jewish heritage and teach tolerance.

This effort was led not by politicians or historians, but by local citizen activists, few of them Jewish, almost all of them born after World War II. They could have shrugged off responsibility for evils done before they were born. Instead, they pushed past denials and threats to get at the truth, pressing their parents, grandparents, and neighbors--many of them perpetrators, collaborators, or bystanders to genocide--to find out what really happened in their hometowns during the Nazi era.

The activists' work connected them with descendants of Germany's former Jewish communities, now scattered around the globe. One of those descendants, American author Jeffrey L. Katz, provides perspectives on the emotional journey of returning to his ancestral homeland with Germans as his guides.

Much of what's been written about the remembrance movement focuses on the memorials and museums as acts of contrition, as if these alone could heal old wounds. Unsettled Ground goes deeper. It explores the background and motives of memory activists, recognizes that some of their actions are performative, and points out the movement's limitations. The country still contends with antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism.

Unsettled Ground considers the place that the Holocaust holds in our memories as successive generations grapple with an appropriate response, tolerating differences among peoples becomes more tenuous, and the U.S. struggles to fully address its own painful past.

Veteran journalist Jeffrey L. Katz traveled to Germany several times to explore his family’s roots and meet with local members of the country’s remembrance movement. He has written and spoken frequently about Germany’s reconciliation efforts and his connections to a new generation there. His stories about these experiences have been featured by NPR, Moment Magazine, and various newspapers. For more than four decades, Katz reported, edited and managed at local and national news organizations in print, broadcast and online. His editing experience included 15 years at NPR. He also worked as a reporter and staff writer at Congressional Quarterly and Governing magazines, and The Milwaukee Journal and The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal newspapers. More recently, Katz has indulged his love of books by working as a part-time bookseller. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. He and his wife Mollie have two grown children. Learn more at jeffreykatzauthor.com

Katz is in conversation with Michelle Brafman, the author of Washing the Dead, Bertrand Court: Stories, and Swimming with Ghosts, the companion novel to Draw Near to Me. Her work has appeared in Oprah Daily, O Quarterly, Slate, LitHub, Tablet, The Forward, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction writing in the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing Program and spoken about her work and the creative process at more than 200 venues, including book stores, literary festivals, classrooms, synagogues, and myriad book groups. Learn more at michellebrafman.com.

PURCHASE:

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An accessible and entertaining biography of our nation’s greatest public servant and original political maverick John Quincy Adams, from the bassist of the Grammy-nominated band the Avett Brothers.
During the tumultuous period between the era of the Founding Fathers and the disunion of the Civil War, John Quincy Adams was the man standing in the breach. After an unsuccessful presidential reelection campaign, he was left reckoning with his political legacy. But Adams would be dragged back into the fray in ways he never expected, pitting him against the slavocracy and Southern congressmen and solidifying him as a key ally to the antislavery cause.
America’s Founding Son tells the tale of Adams’s turbulent government career and his evolving views on slavery. Adams, along with lesser-known abolitionists Benjamin Lundy and Theodore Weld, found himself at the center of the coalition that leveled the first blow against slave power in the United States. The battles they fought would be foundational in the push for emancipation to follow. An entertaining deep dive into an under explored period in American history, America’s Founding Son shows how John Quincy Adams and the grassroots activism of the 1830s and ’40s shifted American politics forever.

Bob Crawford is the bassist for the Grammy-nominated band The Avett Brothers, and creator of the iHeart Curiosity podcast series, Founding Son: John Quincy’s America and The SiriusXM Volume Channel Docuseries Concerts of Change: The Soundtrack of Human Rights. He’s also co-host of the Road to Now history podcast. However, Bob does not just play a historian—in 2020 he earned a master’s degree in history from Arizona State University.

Crawford is in conversation with Robert Costa. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781638932604?ic_referral=KFYqHEPl-_I-SLcoBIGbmR1mywfpnl8Sz5ICrZeyM9cwMwHGbE5TFe1k-3YlVucXdfP7vTWPCS1kWBX4aLXkAqmxqquBafzHSKvz8nyW8i3KPD8IazcCOa24qxOztfYmPR7sMVw

All over the world, people are questioning the separation of powers. They want a strong man, able to do what must be done. But James Madison was right to say this: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
In this essential and immensely timely book, Separation of Powers, Cass R. Sunstein explains why the separation of powers is necessary for both freedom and self-government. He shows that freedom from fear is a central goal of the system of separation of powers. He also explains why the executive branch is the most dangerous branch, why the idea of presidential immunity is a terrible one, and why an independent judiciary is crucial.
Drawing on his extensive experience in the White House, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security, the author also argues that the separation of powers is, in fact, six separations of powers: (1) The legislature may not exercise the executive power. (2) The legislature may not exercise the judicial power. (3) The executive may not exercise the legislative power. (4) The executive may not exercise the judicial power. (5) The judiciary may not exercise the legislative power. (6) The judiciary may not exercise the executive power. Each of these is essential to liberty under law.

Cass R. Sunstein is Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. Former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he is the author of The Cost-Benefit Revolution, How Change Happens, Too Much Information, Sludge, Climate Justice, On Liberalism (all published by the MIT Press), Nudge (with Richard H. Thaler), and other books. In 2024, he was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Department of Homeland Security’s highest civilian honor.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780262051774?ic_referral=PHaK7D6ay9vCm7wBb2q1Ht6TbvvTZoKEFwzWZIK61WowM8yKCISS_i8hyWKlwUXqcKa5ioHpvENxZnrgoW6m6SF9PPoCoBFJ5CTLljov5AtutJUEAurjgfeFsHEom9uk-ujpUbE

A sweeping chronicle placing race at the center of Native American U.S. history, from the award-winning author of This Land Is Their Land.
When the colonial era began, Europeans did not consider themselves as “Whites,” and Native Americans did not think of themselves as “Indians.” Yet as a genocidal struggle for America unfolded over the course of generations, all that changed. Euro-Americans developed a sense of racial identity, superiority, and national mission-of being chosen. They contended that Indians were damned to disappear so Whites could spread Christian civilization. Native people countered that the Great Spirit had created Indians and Whites separately and intended America to belong to Indians alone.
In The Chosen and the Damned, acclaimed historian David J. Silverman traces Indian-White racial arguments across four centuries, from the bloody colonial wars for territory to the national wars of extermination justified as “Manifest Destiny"; from the creation of reservations and boarding schools to the rise of the Red Power movement and beyond. In this transformative retelling, Silverman shows how White identity, defined against Indians, became central to American nationhood. He also reveals how Indian identity contributed to Native Americans' resistance and resilience as modern tribal people, even as it has sometimes pit them against one another on the basis of race.
The epochal story of race in America is typically understood as a Black and White issue. The Chosen and the Damned restores the defining role Native people have played, and continue to play, in our national history.

David J. Silverman is Professor of History at George Washington University. He is the author of the award-winning This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and Troubled History of Thanksgiving (Bloomsbury, 2019), as well as Thundersticks, Ninigret, Red Brethren, and Faith and Boundaries. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, National Geographic, and the Daily Beast. He lives in Washington, D.C.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781635578386?ic_referral=bzaj23swn6KAbcpkcjBp6tGh-f2c57BTqxQqFWoU0wgwM0zgMSbmBKcBJboB6FgAD1LFVOqsB-CmZ12kPN41k2vnqXC7GdYtKqsNPLmcwTRvRkXYJ-syvgNyqowo4Q7xP2_ozYw

Traces the rise of Black empowerment politics in the United States and Africa 

On a cold January day in 1964, civil rights minister turned entrepreneur Rev. Leon Howard Sullivan declared to a group of supporters gathered to witness the launch of Sullivan's latest venture, Opportunities Industrialization Centers, Inc., "The day has come when we must do more than protest--we must now also PREPARE and PRODUCE " Occasionally linked with the movement for Black Power, Sullivan and others, including Coca-Cola vice president Carl Ware and Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, were in fact architects of Black empowerment--an intellectual and political movement that championed private enterprise as the key to Black people's prosperity.

Jessica Ann Levy traces Black empowerment's rise in American politics--from early twentieth-century influences including Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey to the cities of postwar America into corporate boardrooms and government offices--and across the Atlantic Ocean to Africa. Civil rights leaders, Black entrepreneurs, white corporate executives, and government officials all championed Black empowerment as a means to address multiple crises in US cities and to blunt some of the more radical aspects of the Black Power movement. Black empowerment politics likewise found application overseas in various Cold War efforts to promote American-style free enterprise in Africa. This was especially the case in South Africa, where US corporate executives and government officials wielded Black empowerment politics to oppose apartheid and divestment.

By the early twenty-first century, the idea that private enterprise, including small-scale entrepreneurs and large multinational corporations, should play a leading role in combating racial inequality and empowering Black and other marginalized people featured prominently in various policies and programs at the local, national, and international level. By tracing Black empowerment politics' evolution, Black Power, Inc. explains its popularity, championed by leaders from Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela, while also revealing its role in expanding US corporate power, locally and globally.

Jessica Ann Levy is Assistant Professor of History at Purchase College, State University of New York. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including from the Library of Congress Kluge Center, Jefferson Scholars Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Levy has written for The Washington Post, Black Perspectives, and Public Seminar, among other venues.

Levy is in conversation with Marcia Chatelain, the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and a leading public voice on the history of race, education, and food culture. The author of South Side Girls and Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Chatelain is based in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781512828573?ic_referral=Iu7xgaZbRft2D_UZK4B1rl7xzpp_idwvopQ7Dk6TZQYwMyUQ1lqthCbHHUV4MJg15AR06i2G5xDSo_WqIvbwyf29FplomDSYEbf4CxLwPcjsn1tq2E6xW5RuS_PuJ5sirWZZOZo

We must speak the word ancestor. We must call their names. We must see them at work.

The hand of ancestors in our affairs is undeniable. They exist all around us, motivating individuals and cultures. And yet, the United States is a nation that does not often use the word ancestor. But ancestors are as active here as they are in cultures that center ancestral presence--maybe more so. By failing to name the ancestors who bless us--as well as the ones that dehumanize us--we harm ourselves, our communities, our country.

As the pastor of one of the oldest Black churches in Washington, DC, William H. Lamar IV has a deep connection to his own ancestors and the ancestral legacy of his church in a city built of ancestral political voices and their ideologies. Drawing on this experience, he offers readers a new perspective on the role that our ancestors play in shaping our lives and communities, for without acknowledging their importance, we cannot move forward morally, ethically, spiritually, or politically.

Lamar examines family ancestors, political leaders, and voices of Scripture, and draws from African and African American historical ancestors to show how they shape our identities and moral compasses. By choosing our ancestors, we choose the stories we tell about ourselves and choose the kind of humans we want to be. This is more than a feel-good notion; Lamar writes, "This is a matter of life. This is a matter of death."

Challenging the dominant, white-led theology that cloaks its own ancestor veneration, while seeking to keep others from the liberation that could come from their own, Lamar deconstructs the religious myths that restrict wise voices of life-giving influence. For when we integrate the voices we call on for ethics, strength, moral courage, justice, and community, we transform our personal and national narratives.

Rev. William H. Lamar IV is a writer and pastor of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. A leading voice on the intersection of faith, culture, and politics, Lamar has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The ReidOut with Joy Reid, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton. Lamar received his MDiv from Duke University and extends the ancestral legacy of worship, liberation, and service that has animated the Black church for nearly two centuries.

Lamar is in conversation with Dana A. Williams, Professor of African American Literature and the Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is the author of Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship, which was an NPR Spring Pick, and has edited several books. Her work has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. She co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities.

Lamar is also in conversation with Michael Eric Dyson, an award-winning author, Georgetown professor, political analyst, and ordained Baptist minister. His memoir Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America was one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books About Being Black in America, and his recent book, Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote, was called “a balm for our democracy” by the Reverend Al Sharpton. Having authored 19 books, Dyson is a sought-after public speaker, known to both secular and religious audiences.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781506482217?ic_referral=DGp01nKzihi8lAaNVrGrc9uIxPkhITpxxESztfD6wYAwMyFmovDoeY2-utYozawq0LwgxDrr_N2MeWbHADbJVZ98VJTjv354Mrn1MLiSuLOgq-xiZZufv-Wnez92uJ2k9Y91BRU

An inspiring portrait of the men and women who serve in our nation's military that captures their courage and profound sacrifice, by the Emmy Award–winning ABC News anchor, Martha Raddatz. 
For twenty-five years Martha Raddatz has witnessed the grit and resilience of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have been fighting America’s wars since 9/11. What motivates them to do such impossible things? How do they find the courage to put their lives on the line, or the strength to start over when things don’t go as planned?
The Hero Next Door offers a dozen portraits of servicemen and women who are every bit as inspiring as those of the Greatest Generation. Every one of them has shown awe-inspiring strength of character, creativity, and drive, faced daunting odds, and come out stronger.
Take Kevin Shaeffer, a naval officer working at the Pentagon on 9/11, whose life-changing experience on that day fueled his determination to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Or Mark Little, who made it his mission, after an IED blew up his convoy in Iraq, to help veterans rebuild their lives when they were down. Or Josh Webster, who dangled by a rope under enemy fire to rescue a fallen officer in the mountains of Afghanistan. Or Rocco Armonda, a highly skilled surgeon who pioneered a new way of treating traumatic brain injury in Iraq. Or Danielle “Purple” Thiriot and Charles “Wingnut” Wickware, who, once they started flying, knew exactly what their mission was. Or Derek Herrera, who gives new meaning to transformative second acts.
Life can turn on a moment, and who’s to say what we’ll do? That, we learn, is when you spot the real heroes: when no one is watching. “Individually, their stories are deeply inspiring,” Raddatz writes. “Together, they offer something beyond inspiration: insight into what it means to live with a life-defining courage and sense of purpose.”

Martha Raddatz has been covering America’s wars for ABC since September 11, as chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of This Week. She is the author of The Long Road Home, a New York Times bestseller made into a National Geographic miniseries. Raddatz was part of the team that won a Peabody Award for coverage of September 11 and an Emmy for coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden. She has won seven Emmys. She was also awarded the George C. Marshall Medal for sustained commitment to the men and women of America’s armed forces.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668093801?ic_referral=ib1m-tJHCv3TVlE3mR3UDZJiRDR9Oaw7eU6wGhcbaq0wM01yYydPyU4suQnqb2NWo0vpYptQnDnB8PYH6inWOQv9QxRqylTDrl1PUIIg6ClfxhiOp3JPlrMIO9oZX7S6WpstanU

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Part memoir, part cultural criticism, Stock Photo mines the significance of the stock photo in our everyday lives, from the ads and websites we browse, to the menus and memes that we consume. Through interviews with stock photography experts, photographers, models, consumers, and other stakeholders, Simona Supekar explores the evolution of the industry by tracing the creation of a stock photo from concept to usage while highlighting significant historical moments.

Supekar weaves in her own experiences as a keyworder for a stock photography company while reckoning with her Asian American/South Asian identity in a post-9/11 world. Stock Photo also addresses how these images have the power to shape our perceptions about race, class/caste, gender, ability, and more, thus underscoring the importance of representation even in something as innocuous as a stock photo.

Simona Supekar is Assistant Professor of English at Pasadena City College in California, USA. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and she was a 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction finalist for her novel manuscript.

Ballot examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot during one of the most tumultuous political eras in US history, and recounts the astonishing events leading up to the 2024 presidential election.

Enjeti lays out the growing challenges for voters in battleground states, where rightwing legislatures have introduced staggering numbers of voter suppression bills and redrawn district lines, all to disenfranchise as many Black and other marginalized voters as possible. As her account of the history and stakes of election integrity shows, the aftershocks of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 have manifested most egregiously on the four corners of the ballot.

Anjali Enjeti is the award-winning author of The Parted Earth and Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change. Her third book, Ballot, describes voting and voting rights from her perspective as a Georgia voter, poll worker, and electoral organizer, who has volunteered for the campaigns of Jon Ossoff, Stacey Abrams, Reverend Raphael Warnock, and others. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Harper's Bazaar, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia.

Supekar and Enjeti are in conversation with Sunu P. Chandy, a social justice activist including through her work as a poet and a civil rights attorney.  She’s the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and lives in Washington, D.C. with her family.  Her award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House. Sunu is also a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. 

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The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office.
“Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.”
—President John F. Kennedy on Jeannette Rankin
Born on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But, most of all, she knew how to talk to people and unite them around a shared vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her to become the first woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. As her first act, Rankin put forth the legislation that would become the Nineteenth Amendment. 
During her two terms, beginning in 1917 and in 1941, she introduced and lobbied for legislation strengthening women’s rights, protecting workers, supporting democratic electoral reform, and promoting peace through disarmament. As Congress’s fiercest pacifist, she used her vote to oppose the declaration of war against the German Empire in 1917 and the Japanese Empire in 1941, holding fast to her belief that “you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” 
A suffragist, peace activist, workers’ rights advocate, and champion of democratic reform who ran as a Republican, Rankin remained ever faithful to her beliefs, no matter the price she had to pay personally. Despite overcoming the entrenched boys’ club of oligarchic capitalists and career politicians to make enormous strides for women in politics, Rankin has been largely overlooked. In Winning the Earthquake, Lorissa Rinehart expertly recovers the compelling history behind this singular American hero, bringing her story back to life.

Lorissa Rinehart is a women’s historian, author, and speaker who brings the past to life with fresh urgency. Her work dives into the powerful crossroads of women’s history, politics, and war, uncovering the stories that have too often been left out of the spotlight. She’s the author of First to the Front and Winning the Earthquake. Each week on her Substack and podcast, The Female Body Politic, Lorissa unpacks today’s headlines through the lens of 250 years of women’s political power in America. She holds an MA in Experimental Humanities from NYU and a BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz, and is passionate about making history feel prescient, inclusive, and impossible to ignore.

Rinehart is in conversation with Cynthia Richie Terrell, the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States. Terrell and her husband Rob Richie helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a more representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women's representation, democracy, and voting system reform in the United States and has worked to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women’s representation and leadership.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250353047?ic_referral=AeCrAbYyGmC5h43-T0Q_nuwva03TQopHravwjFvvpJMwMy8NifiriTZVNv0gP0OQ1VcokQzgjkLC-KXLpRnwWVt7KPA1dAHfuIkzSHtQ_4b21CBCOU4kpv_nAm28cY1Nd5k8UiI

A beloved schoolteacher chronicles the meteoric rise of his most dazzling student in this ambitious, big-hearted work of literary fiction, perfect for fans of Nathan Hill, Susan Choi, and Tess Gunty.  
Mr. Keating is an extraordinary teacher: brilliant, dedicated, and possibly a few pages ahead in a book no one else is reading.  He’s a magician able to enchant fourteen-year-olds into a love of writing and literature.  Yet no student has lived up to the promise of their potential more than Clara Hightower.  Over the course of three decades, Clara is a kindergarten thief, a high school genius, a Silicon Valley celebrity, and an animal rights activist turned terrorist.
To tell Clara’s story, Mr. Keating must tell his own, including his courtship and marriage, his dreams of writing and comedy, his days in the classroom in lower Manhattan along with the rivalry and friendship with his Head of School, and his eventual stroke and the isolation that follows.
The Optimists is a love story, a joke book, and a meditation on the meaning of life and death. But mostly it’s a fiercely original novel for anyone who has ever had a teacher or student profoundly affect their life. 

Brian Platzer was the education columnist for The Atlantic and has written frequently for the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and many other publications.  He currently teaches and lives with his family in Brooklyn and Paris. The Optimists is his latest novel.

Platzer is in conversation with Matthew Yglesias, New York Times opinion contributing writer and the author of the Slow Boring newsletter.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9780316607599?ic_referral=ivTTvZ2BbWffBOLv5oq_PuHLaA2uE1_ow-P2nNnFurMwMxYLU6VjbFYTb6qYYVtTg8KwnJJtM_KZL8BqGb4ATidpR9fW9Y-2qQudBiVJZE_o6E6XeG02S3ecEdzKcOPrAlJ43FA

An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress—by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist—offering lessons from the rest of the world.
What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness, Dr. Khameer Kidia re-evaluates the Western approach to mental health, which medicates symptoms instead of changing the structures that harm the human psyche. A physician and researcher whose own family suffers from the psychological effects of colonialism, Kidia highlights the limitations of the Western mental health model by reporting from the front lines of mental health crises at home, in the clinic, and during a decade of fieldwork.
Clear-eyed and openhearted, Kidia asks the nuanced questions unaddressed by our current mental health model: How do history, culture, and politics shape mental distress? Are hoarding and burnout medical diagnoses or social problems? Why are schizophrenia outcomes sometimes better in poor countries without antipsychotics? Can a traditional healer treat mental illness better than a Western-trained clinician? For those living in poverty, can cash replace pills?
With rigorous research, cutting analysis, and illuminating prose, Kidia invites us to reimagine mental health as a global idea where our wellbeing is mutual and everyone’s voice—patients, caregivers, and healthcare workers alike—matters.

Khameer Kidia is a writer, physician, and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School and University of Zimbabwe. A Rhodes Scholar and 2023 New America Fellow, Kidia has worked on global mental health research, practice, and advocacy for the last decade. His writing has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Psychiatry, The New York Times, Slate, Yale Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Born in Zimbabwe, Kidia lives between Harare and Washington, D.C.

Kidia is in conversation Bina Venkataraman, an executive leader, journalist, and science & innovation policy strategist who has led mission-driven teams at The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT, and in The White House. She is the author of The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age (Riverhead, 2019), named a top business book by The Financial Times and a best book of the year by National Public Radio.  Her work has been motivated by a deep commitment to public service and an ethic to mentor and uplift talented people around her. She has also taught in the program on science, technology, and society at MIT and at Harvard. An alumna of Brown University and the Harvard Kennedy School, Venkataraman grew up in a small town in Ohio and has since lived on three continents.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593594285?ic_referral=bSTUiHiQZ8HKsHcDU4sBNwi7BbM-T6vGuAdCybOBfgAwMx2qF9MzvtnsYcUQPmNdMU99dAP3L7ZvEcGPmvh6aQSxQ5zwFJ9SpF1QgxCkbQb56ftiM8NtSqR7CWbeK3XTzL-BraU

A moving and inspiring memoir from a former Obama White House staffer, about his rural Maryland family’s untold history, the merger of three churches—one Black, two white—and how a radical embrace of community became their salvation, and his.
Jason G. Green was raised on fellowship—literally. Fellowship Lane, the once unpaved road he grew up on, served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher’s kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to the people in a different way—through public service. After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, he spent four and a half years working in the White House as special assistant to President Obama.
However, Green’s government career was cut short by a devastating call that it appeared his ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her presumptive deathbed. At her side, he listened while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that no longer exists. He was preoccupied with disbelief; how could he have never known the true legacy of his tiny community? How could a whole town’s existence be erased but for the memory of a few surviving elders? Green’s historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about the determination of his newly freed ancestors to build an African American house of worship, and how generations later, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, their progeny would be at the center of a brave decision to create an integrated church. Quince Orchard’s lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family.
Fueled by a new understanding of where he comes from, Green traces one family through a century of life in a single community, asking deeply personal questions about belonging and finding answers from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebears.

Jason G. Green is a Maryland-born community organizer turned attorney, tech entrepreneur, public speaker, and film director. Green previously served as special assistant to the president, and associate White House counsel to President Obama, where he provided legal counsel on economic and domestic policy matters. Green serves as a trustee for the Pleasant View Historic Association supporting its fundraising campaign to preserve the Pleasant View Historic Site and is a founding commissioner and former chair of the Montgomery County Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation. His award-winning documentary Finding Fellowship, available on PBS, explores the rich history of Quince Orchard. He currently serves as CEO of EverGreen Labs, is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Research to Action Lab and is the co-founder of the pioneering economic impact measurement company SkillSmart.

Green is in conversation with Joshua DuBois, a nationally recognized strategist, entrepreneur, and cultural leader working at the intersection of values, community, media, and influence. He is the Founder and CEO of Values Partnerships, a social impact and cultural strategy firm that helps leading brands, institutions, and storytellers engage communities with authenticity, trust, and purpose. He is also the Co-Founder of Gauge, an AI-powered consumer insights platform that blends ethnography, cultural intelligence, and artificial intelligence to help organizations understand how people actually think and decide.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593731710?ic_referral=oRJcsG64N23zH1onabI5KuNiKPjZoKz0Us_nNYQxbFcwM9EvYWnwRBgCLCInnJ1ZgPTeYPaRqwZdi_vHMe8zco1-ZtOEF35aiygk9ybtGfCSvkJ2RyNBadLDjRnr0AZyCjJleKc

In this part-memoir, part-manifesto, an acclaimed poet interprets Black radical literary traditions to reimagine freedom through refusal.
Over the past decade, Camonghne Felix has been at the center of American politics, working in strategy, communications, and as a speechwriter. Throughout it all, she has maintained her unwavering belief in language’s foundational revolutionary potential, outside of its deployment for legislative and political ends. In this groundbreaking work of nonfiction, she argues that Black radical poetic traditions model an ethical code and overcome entrenched structures of patriarchy and paternalism, inventing a new form that examines the historical and legislative, and the personal and poetic.
Felix draws on stories from her life in campaigns and the decisions she has had to make: preparing speeches for candidates, responding to harassment, recruiting staff. She recounts her moving personal history—accompanying her mother, a lawyer, to court, and her father, a participant in the Grenadian revolution of 1983, to protests—as well as her coming-of-age being schooled in a wider tradition of Black radical thinkers, from Gwendolyn Brooks to Audre Lorde.
Through rupture, rhythm, and a refusal of politics as usual, Let the Poets Govern encourages us to hold ourselves to the standards of our highest ideals and embraces our shared humanity.

Camonghne Felix, poet, essayist and former political communications strategist, is the author of Dyscalculia (One World) and Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books), which was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review, Poetry Magazine, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and elsewhere.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593242148?ic_referral=W5ojRPgGpgv2PKQq1VtGtOGtwAQVu_2DYbbnXVsoNtwwM1Ji_Y0ApzoD80azT5Q04MfeqTiYoJTRmBF2otWfh4KF3q5AJabVZBEdOz5yIx3i5cq_nN1IWdZJ11oz3WkmAbNoeFs

"A powerful story of faith, perseverance, and resilience." — Anthony Fauci, M.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author and former Director of the NIAID

Faith Over Fear isn’t just Michael Leach’s story; it’s yours too. Each decision leads to victory or regret. What will you choose?

Michael Leach—the first-ever Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of the White House, former League Office official at NFL headquarters, and former Assistant to Head Coach for the Chicago Bears—unpacks the defining choice of our time: to shrink in fear or rise in faith.

Faith Over Fear is more than one man’s story. It’s a wake-up call, a roadmap, and a rally cry for a generation seeking clarity, courage, and conviction in a world full of uncertainty. With sharp insight and spiritual depth, Leach illuminates the gap between what we aspire to and what we often settle for—as individuals, institutions, and a nation. He sheds light on the hidden dynamics of power, purpose, and privilege, and reimagines leadership as an act rooted not in ego, but in empathy and integrity.

Whether you're navigating life’s uncertainties or leading others through them, this book will meet you where you are—equipping you with the clarity, strength, and hope to move forward—more resilient than ever before, and ready for whatever comes next.

Michael Leach is a seasoned leader with a unique background in both the NFL and the White House. With a decade of NFL experience, he served as Assistant to the Head Coach for the Chicago Bears and managed Labor Operations at NFL Headquarters. His journey took a bold turn into the world of politics, where he shaped historic initiatives as the Chief People Officer and Head of DEI for a successful Presidential Campaign in 2020, later making history as the first-ever Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for the White House. Now, as the founder and CEO of BridgeTrust Partners, a pioneering consulting firm specializing in tailored advisory services, strategic relationship development, and public speaking, Michael is also entering the media and entertainment industry as a creator and the literary world as an author, aiming to impact, empower, and inspire people through speaking, content creation, and storytelling.

Leach is in conversation with Marcus Goodwin, a Senior Vice President at Walton Global, where he leads real estate acquisitions and development across the Mid-Atlantic region. With a background spanning real estate investment, development, and advisory roles at firms including Cushman & Wakefield, Redbrick, JBG, and Morgan Stanley, Marcus brings a deep understanding of leadership, strategy, and execution across complex public- and private-sector environments. Based in Washington, DC, he is actively involved in civic and nonprofit work and is a trusted voice among the city’s business, creative, and policy-adjacent communities. Marcus holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063442962?ic_referral=GW-z_FkDWsSWlcEkBIuwW8OeNXfxuDcIkOR3HXetYYQwM1hCF2Ml_EaK-KW55il-_xLEmsU7v7YF41IHWjasZAXNIEZkvumiIhTN-YnyS9eV6-hfxeBudT5hvxUzIRCZImyBBtw

From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban gardening: nurturing health, hope, and community.

This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned.

Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, too: in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership.

Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid past and present, archive and experience, showing how down–to–earth gardeners can reap abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement.

Kate Brown is Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at MIT and author of four previous prize-winning books, including A Manual for Survival, an NBCC Award finalist. She currently plants her gardens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont.

Brown is in conversation with Tom Philpott, a senior research associate at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University. He worked for nearly 30 years in journalism, most recently as the former food and agriculture correspondent for Mother Jones (2011-2022). Back in 2006, the environmental magazine Grist became the first national publication to assign a regular staffer to the food politics beat when it hired Tom as a columnist. His work has won numerous awards, including a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. His 2020 book Perilous Bounty was named an “editor’s pick” by the New York Times Book Review and shortlisted for a New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. It came out in paperback in June 2022. Perilous Bounty has received in-depth reviews in the New York Times Book Review and The New York Review of Books. Over the decades, Tom has held jobs as a janitor, a dishwasher, a steakhouse grill cook, a teacher of remedial math and writing at a community college, a community gardener, and a farmer—experiences that shape his view of the food system to this day. 

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https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324105831?ic_referral=U4rXnxQFV0EcwfwcxuIh_2eaNfJSGB5XaJCPTvgW-dowM3JyM_tPBSG5Ec5CkiRVgrcedcRC7nRTxlIBcXV73tY86dZe6htbU85OdAtCpLRT6jb7JvXhzCjJLfAqM5hUQz8gJdA

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy. 
Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country’s history and in his life. 
Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community; though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man’s coming-of-age.

Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. His novel Dog Days received the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire. He is also the author of Mount Pleasant (FSG, 2016), When the Plums Are Ripe (FSG, 2019), and A Trail of Crab Tracks (FSG, 2022). He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University in New York.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374614515?ic_referral=d9PIAO31sd0ZN-QcqrhJwFsgtr5rc6gpifHLkOo42LkwMwJGIQHrf3VVVQas_XMi9SKstkOe0udnGYer9VBoBf8PfX8NncdreNxA3TzjRwKT436ctc6pWQPGvuO5sLEsZm8fuTo

A page-turning suspense debut about a woman infamous for escaping a cult as a teenager, whose future is threatened when dangerous secrets come back to haunt her—perfect for fans of Jessica Knoll and The Girls.

Lucy Golden is a true-crime icon, infamous for the murder she committed while escaping a California cult twenty years ago. But as everyone in Los Angeles knows, fame is fleeting, and Lucy and her story are always just one news cycle away from obscurity. Not to mention, she’s fending off a stalker and moderating an icy feud between her acclaimed photographer mother and her scandalous rock star sister. Worst of all, online trolls are asking increasingly threatening questions about the legendary crime. Questions that could tear her life apart.

So when a hotshot documentarian makes her case the subject of his next film, Lucy sees a chance to silence any doubters once and for all. But as filming begins, she must return to the California desert and come face-to-face with a cast of players from her torrid history. Of course, the past is never what it seems, and long-buried secrets soon collide with present-day threats. Can Lucy stop her doubters from digging up the truth before it’s too late? And how far will she go to protect the story she’s been telling—and selling—all along?

Told in a narrative split between the present day and Lucy’s hit memoir about her fated summer in the cult, Paper Cut combines psychological suspense with coming-of-age Californian cult noir and a sharp examination of the true-crime phenomenon. As incisive as it is propulsive, this mesmerizing debut will keep readers hooked until the last page.

Rachel Taff is an author and television producer. Most recently, Rachel was the Director of Development at Dynamic Television, known for Ginny and Georgia, where she sold projects to Amazon and Hallmark. Previously, Rachel worked for Emmy-winning director Thomas Schlamme’s Shoe Money Productions, where she developed projects for FX and managed a production slate including Snowfall and The Plot Against America. Additional credits include SMILF, American Dad, and Fresh Off the Boat. Rachel earned a Media Arts & Entertainment degree at Elon University. After a decade in Los Angeles, she now lives in Atlanta with her husband and their Portuguese water dog. Paper Cut is her first novel.

Taff is in conversation with Brittany Kerfoot, she received a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Currently, she manages events for Planned Parenthood, teaches virtual classes for Politics and Prose, and co-produces a storytelling series for women and non-binary people called Generation Women DC. She is also on the advisory board for the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center. She is at work on her first novel.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063380394?ic_referral=2ygdq2-xM8F4pe8_dwbu_dODPZP0YdsfujBeFyM8WQ8wM6Jyg4UM13iozflXqRhUAgO4Fzk-GD09ofWdbPWHGTcDjd7iZMwtw__xDyExiz1kj2D_kV6VXBKS0nTC9XwsV0NzM7s

In their acclaimed book The Water Defenders, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh told the story of activists in San Isidro, El Salvador, who fought multinational mining corporation OceanaGold and won—protecting their drinking water and environment from irreparable harm—despite great personal danger. Now, Jon Sack’s captivating graphic adaptation brings the story to new audiences and with new urgency, as environmental progress and human rights remain under assault around the world. The book is also updated to address Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele's ascent and the subsequent arrests of five water defenders.
Initially excited by the company’s promises of jobs and prosperity, farmer Vidalina Morales, brothers Marcelo and Miguel Rivera, and others soon realized that the trade-off was catastrophic contamination of El Salvador’s main source of fresh water. Facing corporate machinations and violence, the ordinary people of San Isidro and surrounding communities built a transnational coalition that prevailed over powerful adversaries to score an environmental victory with worldwide repercussions.
Broad and Cavanagh draw on over a decade of research, interviews, and experience as allies and experts in international development to recount the harrowing saga. A blueprint for civic bravery and local-to-global activism, as well as a rich history of Central America’s political conflicts and people’s fights against environmental and economic exploitation, this story will inspire anyone who feels helpless against corporate malfeasance.

Robin Broad is a two-time MacArthur fellow and won a Guggenheim fellowship for her work surrounding mining in El Salvador. A research professor at American University, she served as an international economist in the US Department of the Treasury, in the US Congress, and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Broad and her husband, John Cavanagh, helped build the network of global allies that spearheaded the fight against mining in El Salvador. They have coauthored several books together.

John Cavanagh is senior advisor for and former director of the Washington, DC–based Institute for Policy Studies, an organization that collaborates with the Poor People’s Campaign and other dynamic social movements to turn ideas into action for peace, justice, and the environment. Previously, he worked with the United Nations to research corporate power. Cavanagh and his wife, Robin Broad, helped build the network of global allies that spearheaded the fight against mining in El Salvador. They have coauthored several books together. Jon Sack (Illustrator) Jon Sack is a US- and UK-based artist and writer. His comic books include La Lucha, which is about violence in Juárez and the lawyers working to combat it, and Iraqi Oil for Beginners, about the complicated history of oil in Iraq, as well as My Fairy Godfather and Windows on the World.

Broad and Cavanagh are in conversation with Tope Folarin, a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, D.C. He serves as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University. He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Whiting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. His debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, was published by Simon & Schuster.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780814259689?ic_referral=EIX6IdwkvUutYHxga1dADe106Vq71zL4UREZmFSDefIwM6oyb8bkpNXSn2ii0MXL-zc6vAb6Y6vmeO16nnf3eyRcsYyBBEw83JAw7UyP7GtGkyoAAarflK6OpGD2S7IljIsi2Yw

The early days and inexorable rise of the young Bernie Sanders, the one-of-a-kind visionary who changed American politics forever, told by a son of the People’s Republic of Burlington, Vermont.
In this symphonic origin story of an era-defining politician, Dan Chiasson, a Burlington native who had a ringside seat to Bernie Sanders’s development, reconstructs the rise of an American icon. With in-depth reporting and remarkable remembered scenes, Chiasson tracks a faint political signal that traveled from the Vermont communes, hardluck neighborhoods, traditional businesses, and county fairs to the town meetings and ballot boxes of his home state, and finally to Washington, D.C., to transform our national political landscape.
Sanders, insisting on a socialist platform that hasn’t changed to this day, defied a corrupt Democratic machine to find his coalition among Burlington’s often feuding communities: the conservative French-Canadian Catholics whose grandparents and great-grandparents—including Chiasson’s own—had worked in the mills; the puppeteers, hippies, and NYC transplants who’d moved to Vermont to find land and authenticity; the anti-nukers, activist nuns, baseball fans, developers, cops, and small businessmen like Ben and Jerry, who became Ben & Jerry’s right there in town. Bernie captivated them all, running on the slogan “Burlington Is Not for Sale” to become the modern era’s first socialist mayor, one who got the streets plowed but also boasted a foreign policy and a bullhorn to speak directly to Ronald Reagan.
In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas’s Common Ground, this people’s epic shows us an American city transformed one diner coffee and one neighborhood door-knock at a time, even as the analog era wanes and a new digital politics appears on the horizon. Full of Sanders himself, reflecting and raging, hitting his themes, Bernie for Burlington is a mesmerizing portrait of a politician, a place, and a movement that would change America.

DAN CHIASSON is the author of five books of poetry, including Bicentennial (2014) and The Math Campers (2020), and a book of literary criticism. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Chiasson is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English and chair of the English Department at Wellesley College.

Chiasson is in conversation with Kevin Ellis, who is a communications consultant, writer, radio host, and podcaster working at the nexus of politics, journalism, and culture. He explores all of this on his Conflict of Interest podcast, Substack, and a live radio show Vermont Viewpoint - in Vermont.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593317495?ic_referral=vhamFT0eiL_SP0o9fbWCZ-txtvttcTMYsD7i2CODhGkwM7oh1bfRYbY65hzxoyo9zXWZ7CXH-iccGujw37nHphuOa_BSOjLR3BFYGNow1TKwI-aZ-hFI4LhF0oAgk4AmYT2JaVY

An intimate and captivating exploration of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artistic journey, revealing how the creator of the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights found his unique voice through bold collaborations, redefining the world of musical theater.
How did Lin-Manuel Miranda, the sweet, sensitive son of Puerto Rican parents from an immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan, rise to become the preeminent musical storyteller of the 21st century? Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist is his incredible story as never told before, tracing Miranda’s path from an often isolated child to the winner of multiple Tonys and Grammys for his Broadway hits Hamilton and In the Heights; a global chart-topping sensation for his songs in Disney’s Moana and Encanto; and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Miranda’s journey is a testament to the power of creativity, collaboration, and cultural synthesis. He was not a musical prodigy, but an insatiable drive to create art and learn from those around him propelled him to fuse his Latino heritage with pop, hip-hop, and the musical styles of Broadway. His was a new way of telling American stories, and of speaking to new audiences.
Drawing on interviews with Miranda’s family, friends, and mentors—and many conversations with Miranda himself—Daniel Pollack-Pelzner delves into the formative experiences that shaped Miranda as an artist, from his early musicals in high school and college to the creation of his Broadway and Hollywood triumphs. With full access to Miranda’s inner circle, this behind-the-scenes origin story is sure to captivate his legions of fans and beyond.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner has written about theater and contemporary culture for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Born and raised in Oregon, he teaches theater history at Portland State University and is the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project. He lives in Portland with his wife, whom he met in a fifth-grade production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and their two children.

Pollack-Pelzner is in conversation with Stephen Fishbach, a Pushcart Prize–winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by more than ten million fans), he’s worked on the network side as a vice president at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honors from Yale and received an MFA in fiction at NYU. In 2009 he was named one of People magazine’s hottest bachelors. His short story “To Sharks”—an excerpt from Escape!—was published by One Story and garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668014707?ic_referral=IBEt9NsjHqOALgUhPsmLvRyEB6z9DEUs1cB40ikQ7owwM_5d31ATwOkM9NXsXtgxH8ai7tV8mDSGJEV3VBg2QzQsslfqCW6H5MFtt3h_QP2AMPO2cUQl8psbbbBTF0kmlrkn9Mw

An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams? 
Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.

Marisa Kashino was a journalist for 17 years, most recently at The Washington Post. She spent the bulk of her career at Washingtonian magazine, writing long-form features and overseeing the real estate and home design coverage. She grew up near Seattle, graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism and political science. She lives in the DC area with her husband, two dogs, and two cats. Best Offer Wins is her first novel.

Kashino is in conversation with Rachel Kurzius, a features reporter who covers homes and how people interact in them. She also writes about books and discusses them on NPR. She won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting and was a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists’ D.C. Dateline Awards. For two lovely years, she was fortunate to have Marisa Kashino as her editor at the Washington Post. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250400543?ic_referral=HsQSZ_QYHRxG1OYcGUTTxjtUq6GzCljbaHmTYllMRUkwM8ut0_OVhqkl-McvPtUizNiYCwxBRD2kgE_H5whE5-01SynY3gcnsaUfeQvY8eu2VaHXA7ZXkAhk07t808a8h9oUkPs