Politics and Prose Presents

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 Withdrawn and mistrustful, she works her shifts, cares for her aging family, teaches self-defense classes, and avoids entanglement.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 itRecovering 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 deserveWe’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 listPURCHASE: 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 IconsWhen 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/aboutPURCHASE: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

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.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781421454580?ic_referral=KRPtXoptP3Qc4ELBjAMlQ_l1MmxDUaOMSpCMobTfgzAwMxIOXneVBT2S9p_g4pVAwNZBN3aKBTPG6xJr0zGWLQmJEHKHfLZh5FS5UI0hM4T6QqkGI0h48ptpUicIqcl_Wk26n6o

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.PURCHASE: 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.PURCHASE: 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.comKatz 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:https://politics-prose.com/book/9798891388093?ic_referral=-_1qDDiB555sH36K5k0zu_EBgQpP3dPJktB8iZxY_pIwM9xEz7FKA-OolBAkPoS5oGcuihzOf3JUquraSTpE4lS17qnqLFJ_zIRY3DHl4HzmnXD_oSNpQkUABqgTC7wxZK-vCA0

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

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. PURCHASE BOOKS HERE: https://politics-prose.com/simona-supekar-anjali-enjeti-030926

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 RankinBorn 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