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Twelve short masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, vainglorious wars, gargantuan wildfires, and shipwrecksAcross centuries and wildly diverse locations, Shepard holds us in his grip. We witness the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida from multiple points of view, read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boone, NC (“Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets”) and her great love William, on the march in Tennessee (“I can’t write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute”), and in the title story, meet the stubborn Constance, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and “queen of bad influences” as their devotion unfolds in part on the doomed liner Lusitania.With irony, compassion, and withering humor, these stories evoke the terrible ease with which catastrophe, human-engineered or otherwise, can sweep away all we find most precious and expose those limitations we’ve refused to address. At the same time, Shepard raises up what is best in us: the love and friendships that sustain, and the consolations and sacrifices we provide one another on a beleaguered planet. Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal, the PEN/New England Award, The Ribalow Prize, and the Clark Fiction Prize, as well as six story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner. Eight of his stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three for Pushcart Prizes. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lives in Williamstown with his wife, the fiction writer Karen Shepard, and two beagles. Shepard is in conversation with Tania James, the author of four books of fiction. Her most recent novel Loot was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award and the Carol Shields Prize. A 2025 Guggenheim fellow, she is an associate professor of English at George Mason University. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593804414?ic_referral=CBoYUhX_DE1QosQa9jEJHvFa_ExnDW-tIce8QQ4aTQIwMwzChVmSU8BvssjEPfyYZpXv0SBH293romr-6yKFSnB3XJjkw7b-xmlnVIS_0p9c7Q5r2TOvpteBXQs144C2UBIonLE

Perfect for fans of Eat, Pray, Love, this soulful travel memoir blends poetry, global adventure, cultural connection and personal transformation with reflections on race, identity, and belonging.In 2010, twenty-nine-year-old poet Ebony Walden quits her job to go to on an eight-month solo journey across fifteen countries and five continents. Propelled by a sense of purpose and adventure, she moves from teaching English and volunteering in places like Guatemala and India to conducting poetry workshops in Kenya, walking the ruins of Machu Picchu, and paragliding over the Swiss Alps.Along the way, Ebony writes “Where I’m From” poems with the people she meets—intimate reflections that capture family, identity and culture, weaving their voices into her own unfolding journey. But each destination also challenges her in unexpected ways, forcing her to reckon with the hardships of growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s. Through breathtaking landscapes, unexpected setbacks, and profound encounters with strangers, Ebony begins to understand that travel is not just about seeing the world—it is about allowing the world to change you.Part travel memoir, part coming-of-age story, Where I’m From invites readers to take their own journey beyond borders and come home to themselves. Ebony Walden is an author, filmmaker, and speaker who has traveled to nearly fifty countries and all fifty US states. She is the founder of Ebony Walden Consulting, a racial equity–focused consulting firm, and the creator of Black Beyond Borders, a documentary series and podcast exploring culture, creativity, connection, and cuisine across the African diaspora. Ebony also writes Beyond Borders, a weekly Substack newsletter on travel and transformation. She lives in Richmond, Virginia. Walden is in conversation with Robert J. Patterson, a professor of African American Studies and served as the inaugural chair of the Department of African American Studies at Georgetown University (2016-2019). He is the author of Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality (Rutgers University Press, 2019) and Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture (UVA Press, 2013), co-editor of The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2016), and editor of the award-winning Black Cultural Production After Civil Rights (University of Illinois Press, 2019). Currently, he is working on a book titled Black Equity, Black Equality: Reparation and Black Communities and US Slave Narratives: A Very Short Introduction, which is under contract with Oxford University Press.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798896361381?ic_referral=Zbpdg8F-XY9K_pbk8NugPKzX_JGuZF35VwNhaNmIHCowM0w1bRiDlMv2fB-SJhYnKAI0bIQa1ybg0Yq4-6Xuwah9YocbrJ4o92cBQa2MAm1B5nnKkbfO8tUk_Gv5f42Njm9CYpQ

The true, inspiring story of the new parents who spearheaded an unlikely climate victory.From the rising climate advocate named to the Time100 Next list, for political junkies and anyone who cares about the environment.They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our times. In The Carbon Wave, Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018 to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021 to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August of 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU by the side of her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too.Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made.Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.“I have said before, and I will probably say again, that Leah Stokes understands the details of our energy policy dilemmas better than anyone.” —Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun Leah C. Stokes is Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara. As a leading climate advocate, she has championed climate policy in the United States at all levels of government and was selected for Time Magazine’s Time100 Next list and Business Insider’s top 30 global climate leaders. A recipient of a Harvard University Radcliffe Fellowship, she is the author of the award-winning Short Circuiting Policy, which was listed as one of the top 5 climate books in 2020 by The New York Times. Stokes is in conversation with Gary Petrella, Maxine Joselow, and Christy Goldfuss.   Gerry Petrella was the Policy Director for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, where he played a central role in legislative planning, negotiating, and executing landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Over the course of his career, he has advised members of Congress, the White House, and companies on issues ranging from technology and environment to infrastructure and health care. Maxine Joselow, a climate policy reporter for The New York Times, where she writes about how governments address climate change. Before joining The Times, she worked at The Washington Post, where she helped launch a daily climate newsletter and then served as the newspaper’s lead climate policy reporter. Before that, she worked for E&E News, an environmental publication owned by Politico.  Christy Goldfuss, the Executive Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Before that, she served as the Center for American Progress's senior vice president for Energy and Environment Policy, where she convened a broad range of stakeholders to develop a climate investment strategy enshrined in the Inflation Reduction Act. She was formerly the managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)..  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780262054775?ic_referral=NNdYjyeJzqUKYjOOXlreAXsXnX7L2U6x4frXDgwGpwcwM5Jd306gbm4n7nVQLUMmqtPszVhJKTR3kM8LERIJowXW0uMfFSNhqLN-ZXJ1F37OwLO1u-0fAMLoV6guZ41M5WcKKoM

For fans of Master Slave Husband Wife and Django Unchained comes the extraordinary forgotten story of an event known in its day as “the first shots of the Civil War,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels.The year, 1851. The place, a Quaker farming community turned Underground Railroad stronghold, where a Maryland enslaver had journeyed in pursuit of four men who’d fled his plantation years before. In a few hours, he’d be dead…and twenty-seven men from the village of Christiana would be rounded up and put on trial. Not for his murder, but for treason—for waging war against the United States, at a time when it was a crime against the government to obstruct an enslaver looking to reclaim his “property.”This is story of what happened in Christiana that September morning—and in the ensuing “trial of the century,” which saw the president himself advise the prosecution on strategy and a sitting congressman serve as lead attorney for the defense. But The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker is also a much larger tale, one spanning decades, following a whole startlingly diverse community of abolitionists in their fight to convince their fellow Americans of the subversive idea that now found itself on trial: that the nation ought to live up the ideals it was founded on, and respect all men as equals.It’s a story that whisks readers from the quiet farmlands of Lancaster County—where a self-emancipated man named William Parker, whom legend had it bullets could not kill, rallied his neighbors to ride out each night to battle the slavecatchers who stalked their countryside—to Philadelphia’s genteel Society Hill, where socialite Harriet Forten Purvis had the ear of the mayor (and a cellar filled with fugitives). It’s stylish, propulsive, intimately human tale of bravery, ingenuity, and hope—and of ordinary people with little in common who came together to stand against injustice…and won. Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Mütter’s Marvels, as well as eight collections of poetry. A seventh generation Pennsylvanian, she lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the novelist Ernest Cline, and their children. Aptowicz is in conversation with Nikki M. Taylor, a professor of history at Howard University. Her research focuses on African-American history in the nineteenth century, particularly in Ohio and Kentucky. Her sub-specialties are in Urban, African American Women, and Intellectual History. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University. She served as the Chair of the Department of History from 2017-2023. Taylor has won several fellowships including Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson. She is also the Principal Investigator of two institutional grants, including the $5 million Mellon Just Futures grant (2021) and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program Grant ($480k in 2017). PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668035931?ic_referral=xFZZpqr-DcAZKetzjP8bf2pOPpCnPqQepH6W_8R7tFowM0xHWqAdnTCCOrCoRxe6n1Z2TaZaJSPreHI7M6gwoit5vR0csJ2s2IyXBoSpoRX5Iad08svOpLU9xSdLdAH8CNGJUg8

The definitive history of go-go music and culture Go-go is the heart and soul of Washington, DC's African American culture--a source of resilience for the community and a way to celebrate Black lives. As the soundtrack of the District since the mid-1970s, go-go was designated the official music of Washington in 2020, and it has been incorporated into music genres such as hip-hop and R&B for decades. Crankin offers a rich narrative packed with photos that highlight go-go's key figures, bands, and moments--spanning fifty years from its beginnings all the way to its central role in the #BLM protests in 2020 and the #DontMuteDC and Moechella movements. This sweeping history of go-go music culture details the life of Chuck Brown, the "godfather of go-go," and documents the history of the genre's early pioneers, Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, and Experience Unlimited (EU). The book also covers EU's 1988 number one hit, "Da Butt," go-go's gospel and grown 'n' sexy subgenres, go-go's international impact, the bouncebeat sound, go-go lifestyles, activism, and, finally, the homecoming as go-go artists brought Chuck Brown's African-inspired beat to Africa. Crankin will entertain and inform fans of go-go as well as African American and American-created music; musicologists; scholars of American culture and subcultures; and readers interested in DC history. Alona Wartofsky is a former culture editor and reporter for The Washington Post. She has been reporting about go-go since the mid-'80s, and her stories about go-go culture have appeared in The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, the Village Voice, Spin magazine, and LA Weekly.  Charles C. Stephenson Jr. is the coauthor of The Beat: Go-Go Music from Washington, DC, the original manager for Experience Unlimited, and former chairman of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Kato Hammond is a go-go musician, author, publisher, and journalist. He is the owner and creator of Take Me Out To The Go-Go, Inc. (TMOTTGoGo)--the first website, magazine, and online radio station covering the go-go music culture. Wartofsky, Stephenson, and Hammond are in conversation with Natalie Hopkinson. PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781647127367?ic_referral=fYdGRS02Vb3JfOLXxqoTbGbNEBJiSkim1XqT4OXP3xMwM2eOiszilhJDkd5gZhu1FGxujMcg_PQVptGs0LSBk60IosdT5U2tUFKFzHK-l28bQLuR_tgYRBVlyaEeNvQcl2Dmn3g

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare. One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution. In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s. Marlon James is the Booker Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James’s novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. In 2019, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Born in Jamaica, James lives in New York City. James is in conversation with Lily Meyer. Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novels The End of Romance (Viking, 2026) and Short War (Deep Vellum, 2024). She is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her stories and translations can be found in The Dial, The Drift, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals. PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593717202?ic_referral=OQwG3SYX3GexNIaKumt6uedFQwLpbchSB7011UfgtH0wMxDxa-SmSvsCsnLBWXKC3Nvk9G8T6hmcKj9XrqIFajsyr-M1nUqyvMFBavYRzQhjyUF0FkV-WQ_C1sH3hvNe-9W1jGA

New tech is changing the contours of geopolitical stability—America must act now, or risk losing its global standing forever.Technology has always driven political competition. For decades, the US set the international rules on innovation, standards, and export regulations, using soft power and federal funding to both develop cutting edge tech and prevent its rivals from acquiring it. But in the digital era, major breakthroughs in everything from AI systems to autonomous drones now come from private companies, not government labs. It is already too late for superpowers to stop the outward flow of research and expertise. The fallout from this shift could dramatically reshape our world, and America is running out of time to act.Bytes and Bullets is an analytically rich account of how technology is upending global competition. Through engaging stories and original research, Carnegie Endowment senior fellow Steve Feldstein explains how America's primacy is being undercut at every turn by commercialization, China's growing capabilities, and new regional powers building their own spheres of influence. He offers eye-opening insights from modern conflicts and proposes concrete strategies that democracies must adopt to shape the future. Steven Feldstein is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. An international expert on technology, democracy, and national security, he previously served as a senior official at the State Department and USAID. His first book, The Rise of Digital Repression, won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He has appeared on CNBC, CSPAN, NPR, and BBC, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Lawfare, among others. Feldstein is in conversation with Marcus Weisgerber, a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where he covers the Pentagon and defense industry. For nearly two decades, Marcus’ reporting has focused on the intersection of business and national security. He spent nine years as the business editor of Defense One, where in 2018 he won a Jesse H. Neal Award for his coverage of the Pentagon and defense industry. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250394088?ic_referral=9_Eoc_u1Zk05ugADc6srQkqMMkHFjxPasq3XzQETAagwM-OHjZS00WeVodPb8xZAlEwgziRlHkcZpXhJiUFaTFhmYTF5ySLdZNs1jn5ldSyCKFSUefx0dE4JxSjyJzG9_faUM00

From the leading political advisor and best-selling author, a revelatory account of how power is built and a blueprint for Democrats in 2026 and beyond. Supermajorities used to be the norm in American politics, yet today it seems unimaginable that our nation could break hard for one party or the other. But as Adam Jentleson demonstrates in Supermajority, his follow up to the “truly excellent” (Ezra Klein) Kill Switch, periods of stasis almost always break and give way to dominant one-party rule. For most of the twentieth century, Democrats held overwhelming control of Congress—supermajorities so commanding that Republicans could do little more than mimic Democratic positions. These supermajorities didn’t just enable sweeping legislation, such as Social Security, but also made that legislation stick. Jentleson argues that today’s Democrats let interest groups and activists hold them back from building a supermajority, and that they forget that politicians need to be attentive to public opinion even as they seek to shape it. He shows that the party must learn the correct lessons from the successes of FDR, LBJ, and Barack Obama if they hope to usher in a new liberal realignment and forge lasting change. Adam Jentleson is the former chief of staff to Senator John Fetterman, a former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid, and founder and president of the Searchlight Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to sparking a realignment through innovative policy ideas. A frequent contributor to the New York Times and political commentator on MSNBC, he is the author of Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland. Jentleson is in conversation with Jerusalem Demsas, CEO, founder, and editor-in-chief of The Argument, a new magazine revitalizing liberalism through evidence-driven journalism and debate. The Argument covers politics, policy, and culture with original polling, and rigorous analysis. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, a policy journalist at Vox, and author of On the Housing Crisis. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324092193?ic_referral=ATG3KJWSijG_DnDzmgnDcKx3XkrpJIf39AuLOy22kGwwM73GLtT5GcgAAsyU0iGbsUaILURtwRsO9M6G03FKfSLt2BzxX2SPdW3wFPKcw6tDIaiG_ytryRIOZRNHyb3TgcnY0H0

An inside account of the extraordinary effort by The New York Times to evacuate more than 200 Afghans after the fall of Kabul, highlighting four exceptional young women as they forge a new life in America. Kabul; August 15, 2021: The Taliban were coming.  The world watched in shock: After the longest war in American history, the Taliban swept into Kabul in a morning. Desperation reigned as the US pulled out. Some clung to the wheels of departing airplanes, only to fall to certain death. Reprisal was near-certain for anyone who had worked with Americans. Marwa, the 21-year-old sister of a Times reporter, was in the vanguard of a fast-modernizing Afghanistan. That morning, she had ironed her pink dress for the first day of medical school. Instead, she had 30 minutes to pack her life into a backpack and flee. Across the world, Rebecca Blumenstein, a top Times editor, and a determined team scrambled to evacuate Kabul bureau’s Afghan employees and families. After a harrowing two-week ordeal, the FIRST WAVE OF refugees landed in Houston, and became part of the largest wave of refugees since the Vietnam War.THE LAST FREE WOMEN is an intimate portrait of the journey of four brave young women as they seek to rebuild their lives. Marwa, Maryam, Mursal and Samira try to make the most of their precious freedom in America. They start over -- learning English, repeating college and forging identities – while back home, the Taliban bans the education of girls past sixth grade and women from leaving their homes alone. “Why is it always about the women?” Mursal despairs. Their gripping account wrestles with women’s rights to basic freedoms and aspirations. It is also a meditation on duty – what we owe to those who work with Americans abroad, those who seek freedom, and the humanity that links us all. Rebecca Blumenstein spent 22 years at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, rising to Deputy Editor-in-Chief, before joining THE NEW YORK TIMES in 2017 as Deputy Managing Editor. She served as deputy editor, Publisher’s Office, from February 2021 to May 2022, working closely with NEW YORK TIMES Publisher A.G. Sulzberger to support the paper’s rapidly growing journalism operations. In 2023, she moved to NBC, where she is President, Editorial, of NBC News. She was named chair of the board of the Columbia Journalism Review in August 2022, and also serves on the board of the Wallace House/Center for Journalists at The University of Michigan and as a final judge of the Gerald Loeb Awards. She led the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and received the New York Newswomen’s Award in 1993, the Gerald Loeb Award in 2003, and was named to the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship for 2009. More information is available here: https://www.nbcuniversal.com/leadership/rebecca-blumenstein. Diana Kapp is a journalist who writes frequently about the intersection of women and modern culture, and has traveled in Afghanistan to report on the education of girls in the country’s rural northern provinces. Blumenstein & Kapp are joined in conversation with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News’ Chief Washington and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent. A veteran political correspondent, Mitchell has covered every presidential campaign since 1980 as well as reporting on national security issues across all NBC News platforms. From 2008 to 2025, Mitchell hosted Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC. Mursal Rahim is a Cornell MPA graduate with a concentration in Human Rights and Social Justice and a bachelor’s degree in law from Afghanistan. She works in Immigration and Refugee Services. Her work focuses on human rights, refugee protection, and advocacy for Afghan women and girls.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538779002?ic_referral=HvC14qDJC3jn1oDXLitzajJyXlaiflsDfygkX_7E3cswM9s5ILeaiiVSYSPvDrJEfss68MapyB97Ww5-GKKUtjNosj5tZmqtNbPJinJ4OtaEwIGilxiVLugS8vWH7Iy_zsq9nnc

From two acclaimed legal scholars, a new history of the Supreme Court that overturns our most basic assumptions about its role in our democracy, showing how it seized the power it now wields. The Supreme Court claims the extraordinary power to strike down laws passed by Congress—and for more than a century now, it has used this power to undermine democracy. But does the Constitution force us to live under the rule of nine robed lawyers? In this remarkable work, Harvard Law professors Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan dismantle “judicial supremacy,” the myth that the Court should have the final say on what the Constitution means. Far from an eternal principle, judicial supremacy gained prominence only in response to Reconstruction, when the Court took it upon itself to safeguard the interests of capital and white supremacy. Bowie and Renan trace how this distorted vision of constitutional authority has remade the country. Along the way, they challenge how liberals understand the Court’s most celebrated rulings, showing that the left has unwittingly subscribed to the very ideology that now threatens it. Recovering a lost constitutional tradition—one forged by abolitionists, labor leaders, and civil rights pioneers—Supremacy calls for power to be returned to where the Constitution put it: Congress. Nikolas Bowie is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former clerk to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.Daphna Renan is the Peter B. Munroe and Mary J. Munroe Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Bowie and Renan are in conversation with Sherrilyn Ifill. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324092803?ic_referral=j9PKF-nkcLDsNrDqkaZVpbl83udGansm7O2T5gU-TtMwM2t3_AGH_cXImEsMxv9AGE61SEpccxGDzIxO_nreiQtXSY0mwwwj-oxjy8TrwMFfUKAlio6WpDMfFFmovo-fx3o-3g8

A scathing investigation into the apocalyptic thinking of the Christian nationalists, tech-bro reactionaries, and populist survivalists who increasingly define the contemporary right—and a recipe for how to fight them. As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their scathing assessment of the contemporary scene, the celebrated activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: they are united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they will be among the saved on the other side.“End Times Fascism” is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout—whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics—rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and the bestselling author of Doppelganger, No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and other classic books, which have been translated into thirty-five languages. She is an associate professor of geography and a codirector of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, and she writes a regular column for The Guardian. Doppelganger won the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and was named one of the ten best books of the year by New York, Slate, and Time. Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist, and documentarian, and a co-founder of the Debt Collective. She is the author of The People’s Platform, which won the American Book Award; Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone; and The Age of Insecurity. Taylor regularly writes for publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times. Taylor toured with the band Neutral Milk Hotel and was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer. Klein and Taylor will be in conversation with Wajahat Ali, a tired, middle aged father of 3 kids who drives an Honda Odyssey Minivan and is now a Costco Executive Member. Previously, when he had hair, he was a contributor to The New York Times and CNN, author of the play The Domestic Crusaders, and co-host of "The Stream" on Al Jazeera America. Now, he edits The Left Hook Substack and writes a column for The Progressive. PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374621384?ic_referral=YxX1Y1GFc7PPyUOJ1Buiqd8eHDPatQj7oifMIZduci8wM2xxr6jmvKQTIJ8n5b0eQTKkcm90Ufe_bb8X4CJjedilSQeTYKSHkfNoLApp-FHC-UTKMrunl0jjQWsJtGt4xTXJ_hw

Grief, the transformative power of art, the meaning of family, and housing affordability are the subjects of this story about a young theater director returning to her childhood home after her mother's unexpected death. Gwen Rivlin, 27, wants to keep the big, shabby house with a turret in which she and her mother both grew up, but everyone tells her it's crazy: too expensive and too suburban for her. Her schemes to stay in the house keep running up against single-family zoning laws and the disapproval of the neighbors. To help the town wrestle with the way it's changing, and to assuage her grief, Gwen stages a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard--a play about a family struggling to hold onto its own real estate--in the turret house, casting friends, coworkers from the local coffee shop, and various community members, including her estranged-best-friend's mother. Through the creation of this beautiful and transitory work of art, Gwen heals old breaches, reevaluates her relationship with her difficult mother, and weaves a new, non-traditional family for herself. Rachel Pastan's novel, In the Field, based on the life of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, won the inaugural Science + Literature award from the National Book Foundation in 2022. She has also published three other novels: Alena, Lady of the Snakes, and This Side of Married. She is the literary director of Celia Bookshop in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and former chair of Swarthmore's housing affordability task force. Pastan is in conversation with Matthew Klam, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Bingham/PEN Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts. His first book, Sam The Cat and Other Stories, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year in the category of first fiction, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, Esquire Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Kansas City Star, and by the Borders for their New Voices series. His second book, Who Is Rich?, was selected as Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, was nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named a best book of the year by Vogue. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, GQ Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. He currently teaches at Stony Brook University, and in the New Directions Program in Washington, DC. He’s taught creative writing in many places including Johns Hopkins University, St. Albans School, American University, and Stockholm University in Sweden.   PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781953002778?ic_referral=SCJvu8PiePi1gGmh-Ft9IdrXiktWl1XXkLtNcKUZR50wMzxDTeyZ_KMPwZQx4DGa2KeQueCuG7Dr7_boT82xvVMVL95GZ7IdZNcaTxwECphXQfECOtJruAvvHzMOb-lMIUA3wi0

Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore. Former economics major Matilda is moving back to her hometown of Washington D.C. to care for her ailing mother, and she’s desperate for money. She takes a job at her neighborhood bookstore and tries, in vain, to make sense of illogical business of books. To make things worse, she’s forced to team up with a new hire—the enigmatic, flaky, larger-than-life, Sage—who shows up on her first day of work with zero administrative skills and her tiny, puffy, incessantly urinating dog that resembles an underfed rat.  Something in the chaos begins to remind Matilda of her long-neglected creative side, and she starts to rediscover the person she once was before so much got in the way. But things get even more unmanageable when Matilda and Sage are tasked with putting together an event for the reclusive and controversial Dr. Jordan Rutabaga, a windbag of a public intellectual with a cult following that includes a number of people who would like to literally and figuratively see him dead. Rutabaga has a long list of alleged misdeeds, from plagiarism to failure to pay child support to stiffing the nanny.  As the event date approaches, Matilda and Sage discover that Sage and Rutabaga have their own not uncomplicated past, adding yet another person to list of people who do not wish him well. Add in a lawsuit and an impending snowstorm along with the potentially sinister presence of Rutabaga himself, and Matilda is about to come undone.  Bestselling author Susan Coll’s gastric, bookish, laugh-out-loud comedy of manners reminds us that sometimes things have to completely fall apart for them to perfectly come together.  Susan Coll is the best-selling author of eight novels, including The Literati, Real Life and Other Fictions, Bookish People, and The Stager, a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice. Her novel Acceptance was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com. She is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore. Coll is in conversation with Tope Folarin, a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC, who 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. Tope serves as a board member of the Avalon Theater in Washington DC, the Pen/Faulkner Foundation, and as a member of the President’s Council of Pathfinder. In addition, he will serve as the inaugural critic-at-large for The Georgia Review in 2025. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781400346684?ic_referral=Bl_rco1uvTKCAP5mnM0vOZHPRXqFk6lQ-NIevQNaAfMwM6Qm89Xb01XD1KaY77KTa9eJbEX_xfz1uNDobY0yaah1qekq7KeyOUju8bGDvjskbZZHxhbk4MoMehUU5L4PnWXDwss

Not long ago, celebrated journalist Allison Aubrey was having breakfast with her youngest child, who suddenly turned to her and said: Stop looking at me. In that moment, as her daughter signaled a need for independence, Aubrey felt a sting, like she’d been fired. She reminded herself: teenager, individuation. It’s her job to separate. But…ouch!That moment was a microcosm of what felt like a crisis of both identity and purpose. Many women come upon such moments of bewilderment at midlife: Beyond being a mother, beyond work, who am I? After years of striving, how do we broaden our horizons past parenting and a paycheck? What else is out there, now that the badges of achievement have started to feel less important?Aubrey had watched colleagues retire, leaving behind the frenetic pace and excitement of work life, only to flail from a lack of purpose and connection. If the smartest people she knew were struggling, who was thriving? Who was getting it right? To find the answers, she took a sabbatical and set out on a curiosity tour. She tuned her searchlight toward people oozing with energy and adventure. Deep within, she feared she wouldn’t find them, or that she would be disappointed. Maybe the best years are behind us?What she discovered “changed my life,” Aubrey says. The result is her first book, Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love, which answers the question What’s next? with an electrifying message and a winning and deeply practical road map to reimagine your life.Aubrey presents a captivating collection of women, ages 45 to 105, who centered creativity, connection, and joy showing how it's possible to find meaning and momentum in midlife. She takes what she’s learned, from scores of fascinating women she met both on this journey and in her decades of reporting as a journalist, to give readers a playbook for what could be next. She weaves together incredibly powerful tools of rediscovery to help you reignite your passions and hit your stride in midlife and beyond.She curates all the best tools to help readers answer a key question: Who am I now? She walks us through strategies to excavate our passions and rediscover what lights us up. She cuts through the clutter of health and self-improvement advice and offers readers indispensable, evidence-backed strategies to thrive. A kind of What Color Is Your Parachute? for middle age, this book provides us surprisingly simple yet specific steps we can take now to make the most of our third turns.Aubrey combines the rigor her audiences have come to expect with the attunement, curiosity, and sense of service that have made so many of her health stories go viral. This book is for everyone seeking meaning and momentum. It is the new blueprint for your midlife reawakening, with an empowering, essential message for women: the best time of your life starts now. Allison Aubrey is an award-winning science and health correspondent for NPR and a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning. Her stories can be heard on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She is a founding host of Life Kit and the creator of the How to Thrive as You Age project. Aubrey is the winner of two James Beard Broadcast Media Awards, a National Press Club award for consumer reporting, and a New York Press Club Award for Excellence in Journalism. Aubrey will be joined in conversation with NPR's Rachel Martin, the co-creator and host of Wild Card, an interview game show about life's biggest questions. She invites notable guests to play a card game that lets them open up about the memories, insights, and beliefs that have shaped their lives. PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668207253?ic_referral=Vb0ycifFALyXk99c-7kdvo4U-JzO5Fo8zRISKJw3IY4wMxusJl8wKdV8-dA_YpK6TKE8VxonUnVpvC1ckeiecapHS1V8ZkubLx7FhReOWeSTWu0jEqACRnvg880rYfddjpvhKVI

From Congressman Jared Huffman, a behind-the-scenes look at the shocking extent of Christian nationalism’s reach in our government—and the fight to defend church-state separation. Sinclair Lewis is said to have predicted, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” Democratic congressman Jared Huffman witnessed something eerily like that vision on January 6, 2021. That was his wake-up call to the shocking power of Christian nationalism. No Prophets argues that Christian nationalism is now America’s most dangerous political movement. Huffman uncovers the landscape of this movement—who they are, what they want, and how they plan to get it—and reveals how it has destabilized our nation more than most recognize. Blending deep research with untold stories from inside our government, he examines how this violent confederation of religious extremists is undermining science, education, foreign policy, and the very architecture of our democracy. But, Huffman argues, it’s not too late. Provocative and clear-eyed, No Prophets exposes an existential threat to our democracy and compels us to reclaim the values core to our secular republic. Jared Huffman is a US congressman representing California’s 2nd District and the only elected official in either house of Congress to admit that he does not believe in God. He founded the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which he cochairs with Congressman Jamie Raskin, to promote sound public policy based on reason, science, and moral values. He lives in San Rafael, California. Huffman 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 BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324130482?ic_referral=Y1VYuJV0dGrwg3-a2v62YPF4UFyawvbl8XZGvKYFKSYwM_KA6KFDorIckVx8HXXQ0ygsB19bYfI3wBMMPNu7t6dJKzlJJpFFYMPgPfEcgMUdLJPIm5k-mib4oQjdVwMZ-IhE59o