Spring Member Sale

Spring


Come into Politics and Prose and enjoy the spring the way it deserves to be enjoyed.

What could be better than sitting outside, enjoying the sunlight and reading a wonderful book.

All weekend long, nearly everything currently in the store will be discounted to Politics & Prose Members - and these discounts also apply online! (Some exclusions apply.) The sale offers 20% discounts on nearly all regularly stocked books. Come in early to have the best selection. Or shop online between March 19 and 21 and receive the same benefits!

It's also a great time to join our Membership Program and continue saving throughout the year! Remember to TRY US FIRST! Our website is open 24 hours a day!!! And come in before you go out and enjoy the sun.

Please note: For online orders, selecting "Pay in Store" will obtain the member discount only if the purchase is completed by close of business on Sunday, March 22.

 

Next Event

Lionel Shriver - So Much For That

March 22, 2010 - 7:00pm
March 22, 2010 - 8:00pm
Shriver follows her acclaimed romantic comedy, The Post-Birthday World, with an acute and timely novel about the collision of dreams and reality--and the shortcomings of the American health-care system. Shep Knacker, flush with the profit from selling his business, wants to retire to an island. Instead, he becomes his wife’s caretaker when she develops cancer.

So Much for That (Hardcover)

By Lionel Shriver
$25.99
ISBN-13: 9780061458583
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper, 03/01/2010
Location: 
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave. NWWashington, D.C. 20008

Upcoming Events

Spring Member Sale

Politics & Prose Spring Storewide Member Sale
This coming weekend - all weekend long - nearly everything currently on our shelves is discounted for Politics & Prose members. Most books are 20% off, most CDs and DVDs are 15% off. If you are not yet a member, it's a great time to sign up and take advantage of our discount opportunities.

And if you can't make it into the store, the same discounts will also be applied to members' purchases online at www.politics-prose.com from Friday, March 19, 12:01 a.m. through Sunday, March 21, 11:59 p.m. 

No events are scheduled on Saturday and Sunday.

National Capital Area ACLU’s 2010 Bill of Rights Awards Dinner
Thursday March 18 is the big night when we receive the ACLU’s Edgerton Special Recognition Award for "demonstrating how the Freedoms of Speech and Press contribute to the public good."  In accepting this prestigious award, we will be recounting our early months, which set the course for 25 years devoted to presenting authors who fervently championed these First Amendment freedoms.  One of the first was Herblock, the intrepid political cartoonist from the Washington Post, whose book, Herblock Through the Looking Glass, had just been published.  In our first few years, we also hosted I.F (Izzy) Stone for his contrarian and controversial The Trial of Socrates; Anthony Lukas for Common Ground - his groundbreaking study of court-ordered busing to integrate the Boston public schools, and Marian Wright Edelman for Families in Peril.

During these 25 years, we have quite regularly seen Politics & Prose described both in print and online as a leftist bookstore.  What our critics don’t understand is that our commitment to freedom of speech dictates that we carry books across the entire political spectrum.  And the biggest surprise of all?  Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence, displayed prominently since its arrival in the store last week, is now #8 on our bestseller list!

PASSOVER BEGINS
Passover begins March 29 this year. Click here to see and buy some of our selections of Haggadahs and related books.

 

TICKETS FOR SALE NOW

the bridgeWednesday, April 7, 8:15 p.m.
at the Avalon Theatre
5612 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
(Metro: Friendship Heights)
DAVID REMNICK (in conversation with MICHELE NORRIS of N.P.R.)
THE BRIDGE: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (Knopf, $29.95)
Using interviews and letters, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, has expanded his magazine profile of Obama to tell the 44th president’s life story and trace the remarkable political journey that led to the White House. 

Click here for two free event tickets with purchase of the book or click here for a single $10 ticket each without book purchase.

Yann MartelWednesday, April 14, 7 p.m.
at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
600 I Street, NW
(Metro: Gallery Place - Chinatown)
YANN MARTEL
BEATRICE AND VIRGIL (Spiegel & Grau, $24)
Martel won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for The Life of Pi, his story of a boy and a tiger adrift at sea. His new novel, featuring a donkey, a howler monkey, and an enigmatic taxidermist, is an equally whimsical and philosophical consideration of truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

Click here for two free author event admission tickets with purchase of the $24 book from P&P or click here for a single $12 ticket without book purchase.

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Carla Comments

Bernhard Schlink

Carla CommentGUILT ABOUT THE PAST (House of Anansi, $15.95), composed of six lucid essays by Bernhard Schlink, landed on my desk, and I am most grateful for the gift.  I found this short book to be a provocative and lively set of arguments.  Those who missed Schlink’s amazingly successful novel THE READER (Vintage, $13.95) - and even those familiar with it - may not know that Schlink is a lawyer and a judge.  One essay is indeed devoted to law as an instrument, and the last is about the role and importance of fiction.

The second essay, "The Presence of the Past," is full of nuggets.  "Whatever course of action they follow, it is not for us Germans to raise objections or feel indignation."  On the other hand, "Whoever remembers wants the right to forget."  In the new generation, the literature of the Holocaust can give up some of its prominence, and it is important to administer the Jewish sites in a way that never seems patronizing.

In another essay called "Forgiveness and Reconciliation," Schlink distinguishes between forgetting, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  Read these essays for clarity about difficult issues.  Read them also for their beautiful writing.

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Barbara's Byline

C-SPAN on the Internet

C-Span

 

One of the most under-reported events of this week is C-Span’s online unveiling of a media extravaganza, 25 years of archived programming.  For political junkies, there’s the pure nirvana of reliving on video such dramatic moments as the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas or Oliver North’s testimony in the Senate’s Iran-Contra hearings.  For booklovers, there’s ecstasy to be found in the some 9000 programs of author talks about their books now made accessible at will and at no cost.  Some are timely, like T.R. Reid’s interview about his book, The Healing of America, in which he samples the cost and quality health care around the globe.  Others are memorable, like Robert Caro’s 1990 author talk about Means of Ascent, the second volume in his biography of Lyndon Johnson.  

As many of you know, a Book TV crew is here to record author talks many times in a month since we both inhabit the same city. Until recently, if you missed an event or its scheduled airing, the author's talk became past history, but with this seismic digital-media unveiling, all author events filmed by Book TV anywhere will be immortalized in cyberspace.

To access either of these new treasures, click the above links or visit www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/.

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Bestsellers and New Paperbacks

Bestsellers

P&P members always save 20% on our top twelve FICTION and NON-FICTION hardcover bestsellers. To purchase these books, click the titles.

#1 FICTION:  MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND by Helen Simonson

# 2 The Surrendered  by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead ,$26.95)
# 3The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25)
# 4 The Things They Carried: 20th Anniversary Ed. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24) by Tim O'Brien
# 5 The Help (Amy Einhorn ,$24.95) by Kathryn Stockett
# 6  Wolf Hall (Henry Holt, $27) by Hilary Mantel
# 7 The Man from Beijing (Knopf, $25.95) by Henning Mankell
# 8 The Lacuna (Harper, $26.99) by Barbara Kingsolver
# 9 Wolf Hall (Henry Holt, $27) by Hilary Mantel
# 10 The Postmistress (Amy Einhorn, $25.95) by Sarah Blake
# 11 The Ask (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25) by Sam Lipsyte
# 12 A Week in December (Doubleday, $27.95) by Sebastian Faulks

NF Bestsellers

#1 NONFICTION: GAME CHANGE (Harper, $27.99) by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

# 2 The Journal Keeper: A Memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press, $24) by Phyllis Theroux
# 3 The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change (Free Press, $26) by Annie Leonard
# 4 Saving Henry: A Mother's Journey (Hyperion, $22.99) by Laurie Strongin
# 5 Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir (Pantheon, $24.95) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
# 6 Making Toast (Ecco, $21.99) by Roger Rosenblatt
# 7 Country Driving (HarperCollins, $27.99) by Peter Hessler
# 8 Courage and Consequence (Threshold Editions, $30) by Karl Rove
# 9 Zeitoun (McSweeney's, $24) by Dave Eggers
# 10 Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation (Ecco, $26.99) by Ellen Fitzpatrick
#11 Citizens of London (Random House, $28) by Lynne Olson
#12 Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court (W. W. Norton & Company, $27.95) by Jeff Shesol

Next Offsite Event

BARBARA GREENSPAN - SHAIMAN LIVE YOUR LEGACY NOW!

Promotional Period: 
Mar 23 2010

Tuesday, March 23, 6:30-9 p.m.   

BARBARA GREENSPAN SHAIMANOne Washington Circle Hotel
One Washington Circle, N.W.
The Transition Networks  (TTN) presents
BARBARA GREENSPAN SHAIMAN
LIVE YOUR LEGACY NOW! Ten Simple Steps to Find Your Passion and Change the World (iUniverse, $16.95)
Barbara Shaiman will lead participants on their own unique discovery of “what’s next” and how to find more meaning and fulfilment in our lives. Click here for more information and to purchase $38 tickets ($30 TTN Members) or email nikros@verizon.net.

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Children and Teens

Children's Books of the Week

WALTER MOSTLY

CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK
(20% off through 03/24/2010)

From the cockerel’s first crow to the rooks’ returning to roost, welcome spring by COUNTING BIRDS (Tate Publishing, $14.50).  Follow a variety of birds throughout the day, counting as they grow in number from one to twenty.  Alice Melvin’s rhyme is simple and appealing, and readers will find something new in her engaging artwork every time they open this unique book.  How many birds hold a number in their beaks?  See if you can count how many birds are made of fabric or another material.  Which birds are your favorites?  Ages 3-7.  Heidi Powell

Read about - and buy - more of our favorite books for children by clicking here.

Lisa Chaplin-Hobbs hosts story time for young children every Monday morning at 10:30 a.m.

For upcoming events and more from the Children and Teens' Department, click here.

Music

Theo Bleckmann, Brad Mehldau, Light in the Piazza & The Nose

music

Click here for more reviews and news. Please call us at 202-364-1919 to order these CDs.

Remaindered or Markdown Books

Newly Arrived Remainders

Upcoming Bookgroups

A Rumor of Angels, by Peter L. Berger

Spirituality Book Group
Sunday, March 21, 6 p.m.
Promotional Period: 
Mar 21 2010

A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (Paperback)

By Peter L. Berger
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780385066303
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Anchor, 01/01/1970
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New Classes

poets

Tuesdays, April 6 - May 11, 3 - 4:30 p.m.
Come celebrate spring with our poetry group as we read two straight-talking contemporary women poets from the United Kingdom and Ireland.  Born in Glasgow, Carol Ann Duffy is the first female British poet laureate.  She writes wry, witty poems that often inhabit the voices of others in a sharply contemporary idiom.  Eavan Boland is generally acknowledged to be the foremost woman writing in Ireland today.  Her mature work shares with Duffy the aim of re-interpreting history from a female point of view. 

This is an appreciation group, not a critical studies class, so no prior experience is necessary - just a love of words and pleasure in the company of others.  Taught by Gigi Bradford, former NEA Literature Director and Chair of the Folger Poetry Board.

Six Tuesdays: April 6 - May 11, 2010, 3:00 - 4:30 PM.  $80 Members, $100 Non-members.

Please Include Email With Your Sign-Up Information.

Syllabus: (click the book titles to purchase)
Selected Poems, Carol Ann Duffy
New Collected Poems, Eavan Boland

Click here to register online.

Bookseller Recommendation Of the Week


BERLIN NOIRBERLIN NOIR (Penguin, $20), by Philip Kerr

I spent the summer lost in Philip Kerr's brilliant evocation of 1930s Berlin, a city caught in the tightening vise of fascism, repression and fear. With unprecedented numbers of disappearances, it's ripe terrain for a private investigator. Enter the smart, shrewd Bernie Gunther, an ex-cop who never lets his private disgust for the Nazis stand in the way of a few deutschemarks. Bernie's moral ambiguity makes him the perfect Virgil into Berlin's underworld, a place where no one is a hero and everyone complicit, in some way, in Hitler's crimes. His cases bring us from the seediest dens to the Third Reich's most secret branches, from the 1936 Olympics to Kristallnacht in 1938. Kerr's outstanding postwar follow-ups to Berlin Noir are every bit as gripping and sophisticated, as a haunted Bernie roams Germany's ravaged Occupied Zones and uncovers a fugitive Nazi colony in Peronist Argentina. - Elizabeth Sher

Click here for more of Liz's recommendations.

Modern Times Coffeehouse

From the Cafe