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The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why? In this groundbreaking book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the American “peculiarity”—how the world’s wealthiest country came to suffer from a problem typically only seen in the world’s poorest countries. Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches the American paradox through a series of stories. What can we learn from the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington, D.C.? How have the legal troubles of a seventeenth-century English knight influenced American attempts at gun control? Why would a European police chief be baffled by the graduation ceremony at any American police academy? In a sweeping narrative, Gladwell travels from a shooting range in North Carolina, to the South Side of Chicago, to an old plantation house in Alabama, painting a picture of a country that does not understand its most pressing social problem, and as result, does not understand how to fix it. Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of eight New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point, Outliers, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers, and The Bomber Mafia. He is the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, where he hosts the hit podcast Revisionist History. Gladwell is in conversation with Jerusalem Demsas. Demsas is 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/9780316603782?ic_referral=6vHZVdCxLQshyrMV85xtKtk8z1qBsm6fdxpwypevPVgwM0oYNyhZTxQqR3vw8zEKOGtjFXWEESEyXIaGMeTM5SuwHOLq-qAEMqtwdXatAHWSdvdQ8ePDSfrR-jnPcVoQhx8jAhc

Eleven stories of people across Europe who became unlikely Human Rights Defenders. Across Europe, rising repression is reshaping daily life. Local people helping others are targeted and criminalized for exposing corruption, helping refugees and acting out of kindness. In today’s climate of increasing fear and intimidation, some refuse to look away. Award-winning activist Brian Dooley presents eleven true stories of people who chose courage over safety: a former violinist in Ukraine driving an ambulance at the eastern front of the war on Ukraine; a family in eastern Poland secretly sheltering migrants hunted in the border forest; and a Turkish scientist risking prison to expose toxic contamination threatening children’s health. In the Czech Republic, a woman transforming how sexual violence is understood and prosecuted, while volunteers in Italy treat and assist refugees arriving along the Balkan route. Communities in Bosnia and Northern Ireland resist environmentally destructive mining projects. Polish activists expose homophobia, and anonymous Baltic volunteers counter Russian propaganda, while in England, a lawyer spends decades challenging wrongful terrorism convictions. None of these people set out to become activists. They were musicians, scientists, and neighbors who saw injustice and acted to stop it. Drawing on decades of frontline reporting, Dooley details how imagination, persistence, and moral clarity can defy repression and change people’s lives. Defiant reminds us that the defense of human rights begins not with institutions, but with what ordinary people can achieve when they choose to stand up for one another. Brian Dooley is a longtime human rights activist specializing in supporting Human Rights Defenders working amid revolutions, armed conflict, and severe repression. He is an Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast, a Visiting Scholar at University College London, and a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First. From 2020 to 2023, Dooley served as Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. In 2025, he received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award. He is the author of several books on civil rights and the Northern Ireland conflict. His latest book, DEFIANT: Profiles of Resistance, will be published by Humanitas Media in October 2026. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781967494026?ic_referral=V56ucVblspJ7M0Zo2TazwonHWWJyXC3iv2fsb2ibn5MwM67GZarLnaDmTX0bCXh1XOukEHdiPvFsv8oSKscfSxni78znkVuYbts_c12rWCwYo0q8vmoLV-t2pYwaT5VoQCF3nsc

From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, tall tale of a debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself.Rich Milford is dead. At last.We find ourselves in Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. Now, on the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford is an infamous moonshiner and womanizer and, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with no one but his women to mourn him but a question remains: who killed him, and why?Top suspects are his four “wives,” Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. But as their stories burst to light in a volley of competing narratives, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes.In an electric follow-up to her beloved and critically acclaimed debut collection, Nafissa Thompson-Spires once again serves up a brilliant distillation of front-of-mind happenings—think, cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and rampant societal distrust—this time magicked into taut historical fiction structured as a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the new-fangled in this genre-bending, gob-smackingly excellent debut. Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of Heads of the Colored People, which won the PEN Open Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her collection was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and several other prizes, including an NAACP Image Award. She is also the recipient of a Whiting Award. She earned a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Illinois. With dark humor and covering topics from identity to chronic illness, her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review’s “The Daily,” New York magazine’s “The Cut,” The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019, and The 1619 Project, among other publications. New writing appears in Fourteen Days, edited by Margaret Atwood. She is the recipient of a United States Artists Grant. Her young adult debut is forthcoming with Make Me a World. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford is her debut novel. Thompson-Spires is joined in conversation with Nic Stone, the author of many novels, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Dear Martin, its New York Times bestselling sequel Dear Justyce, and the final national bestselling installment Dear Manny, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection and a CBC Kids Top Ten Favorite in the 9th–12th grade category. She also penned the young adult titles Odd One Out, an NPR Best Book and an ALA Rainbow Book Top Ten; Jackpot, the YALSA Quick Pick selection that takes a searing look at economic inequality; and Chaos Theory, a Southern Book Prize finalist and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection. Her middle-grade novels include Clean Getaway, a New York Times bestseller, and Fast Pitch, a YALSA Quick Pick selection. Nic lives in Atlanta and will continue to write the books she feels are missing. PURHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781501168048?ic_referral=uZ3O586ffndPM30MTJ68GHpOxemr0kRhq8eUeiF9B6MwM62e9c-GIH4hLQnx02BGkzYc1H8uPR8YdtRJgsNNoebAoH7dfM31UPCjWK25X-3zWWH2A3ck3FkK--cT8rX7g3K3M0U

A vivid, intimate biography of Ethel Kennedy written by her daughter Kerry Kennedy, who takes us inside the life of an American icon through her firsthand memories and exclusive access to her mother's unpublished writings. When her husband Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Ethel Skakel Kennedy—then pregnant with their eleventh child—drew national attention for her grace, dignity, and resolute commitment to furthering his work in human rights, even in her grief. But as no one knows better than her daughter, Kerry, Ethel was so much more than a dutiful wife and keeper of Robert's extraordinary legacy of service. She was extraordinary in her own right: courageous, curious, compassionate, and witty, always guided by faith and an instinct for speaking truth to power.At once a deeply-researched biography and an intimate tribute, Ethel tells the remarkable story of this woman who spent more than seventy years at the center of American political life, but always remained somewhat enigmatic to the public. Kerry delves into her own memories, her family's recollections, and her mother's private papers to paint a true-to-life portrait of her beloved mother, one that captures her humor, resilience, and hope. Until her recent passing, Ethel was the last survivor of Camelot, and she is remembered as a pillar of endurance, strength, and religious belief who rarely revealed anything about her interior life to the media. With a daughter’s insight and care, as well as access to family papers and unpublished letters not available to historians or journalists, Kerry tells her story: Ethel's family's journey from a working-class Chicago background to life in the tony Greenwich, ConnecticutEthel's fairytale romance with Kerry's father RFK—a courtship that inspired a Taylor Swift song half a century laterHow the bold, athletic Ethel quickly became "more Kennedy than the Kennedys"The years on the famed family properties in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and the Hickory Hill estate in Virginia, where Kerry and her ten siblings grew up amidst presidents and politicians, Olympians and Hollywood stars, and a rambunctious menagerie of pet animalsMoments of pain and loss—RFK’s assassination just five years after that of his brother; and the tragic deaths of two of Kerry’s siblingsEthel’s unflagging commitment to global human rights causes that carried on through the decades Ethel offers an account of all that she accomplished as a wife, matriarch, and political activist, who inspires us to reject cynicism and to live bigger and bolder.Ethel includes sixteen pages of color photographs, Kerry Kennedy is a human rights lawyer, activist, New York Times-bestselling author, and daughter of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. Kerry is the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the organization Ethel founded in 1968 to continue Robert's unfinished work, and served as chair for the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council for over a decade. During her forty years working in human rights, she has led hundreds of delegations and negotiated with leaders around the globe. She is the author of three previous books: Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope; Speak Truth to Power; and Being Catholic Now. Kennedy is in conversation with Michael Beschloss, the author of nine books on presidential history, including, most recently, the New York Times bestsellers Presidents of War, Presidential Courage and The Conquerors, as well as two volumes on Lyndon Johnson’s White House tapes. He was also editor of the number-one global bestseller Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. He is the NBC News Presidential Historian and a PBS NewsHour contributor and has received an Emmy and six honorary degrees. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063585935?ic_referral=mYttRY88nqsULcM8C-3p25zZRBu0VXH5QygH7vQgUwEwMzdY4VuvVniXB2hV5hfYWbm8j111DYuSfOkVZEpadFXtxS6P8VLOu_u8zIh7Qs6GWqkNHXHFVo5UWUWBQdQUWkGucws

The essential guide for navigating crisis and uncertainty from the acclaimed physician who led the White House response to the world’s most dangerous health emergencies. When crisis hits — a sudden illness, a global disruption, or a career upheaval — our instinct is to retreat. Yet decades of research prove that our greatest protection isn’t isolation, it’s connection. From high-stakes decisions in the White House Situation Room and hospital emergency room to dramatic shocks of violence and illness his family struggled with in their own living room, Dr. Raj Panjabi has navigated humanity’s most precarious moments. Now, he translates hard-earned wisdom into a step-by-step roadmap. Through gripping storytelling and cutting-edge science, Safer reveals the eight practical "plays" to protect what matters most at home and work. You will learn how to: Navigate Fear and Denial: Use Situation Room insights to take decisive action without falling into paralysis. Cut Through the Noise: Use science to assess your risk and protect those you love amidst the flood of misinformation. Build Trust in Divided Times: Move from isolation to connection and find common ground. Gain Control Despite Chaos: Adapt to change and transform vulnerability into your greatest strength. In an era of uncertainty, you don’t have to live in fear. You just need a better playbook. Safer gives us the tools for emerging from any crisis more connected than ever before. Raj Panjabi, MD, has spent his life preparing for the crises no one sees coming, because he has lived through them. At nine years old, he arrived in America after fleeing civil war in Liberia, an experience that forged an unshakeable conviction: no one should be left behind when the world falls apart.  Panjabi later served as White House Senior Director and Special Assistant to the President of the United States at the National Security Council, helping lead the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic and create the nation’s playbook for future public health emergencies. Before joining the National Security Council, he led the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and was founding CEO of Last Mile Health, bringing care to communities beyond the reach of any health system.  Today, Panjabi is Senior Partner at Flagship Pioneering, where he helps invent and build companies using artificial intelligence and biotechnology to stop disease before it starts. He is also an associate physician and on faculty at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. Forbes has named him one of America’s 250 greatest living immigrants celebrating the American Dream, and he has also been named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and one of Fortune’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders. Panjabi lives with his wife, three children, and a legendary collection of stuffed animals. Dr. Panjabi will be in conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy served as the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States. As Vice Admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, he commanded a uniformed service of 6,000 public health officers. Dr. Murthy’s service as the “Nation’s Doctor” has widened the lens through which we understand the forces shaping our health and well-being, particularly the epidemic of loneliness, mental well-being among youth, parents, and in workplaces, and the impact of social media on youth mental health. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063468894?ic_referral=4htgHFSlOwWBMO_RRCXdCYmjiy8FlG9bjxP8VvnDcXswM0kTr7m2DEAwjg7wYQT9j9On4T8IIqtuaiU0_5ahLoC9u2sV_xPr3lvQIPiat5OkHOrg4fvfBOpfH_I6bGcEMQDTups

Finally, the science-backed guide to making the most of in-person work—whether it’s one day in the office or fiveFor the first time in history, millions of workers can do their jobs from anywhere—and the result is the most contentious workplace debate in generations. Employees fight to protect their freedom. CEOs issue return-to-office mandates by gut instinct. Everyone argues, but no one has the data. Until now.Harvard-trained economists Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington are leading researchers on remote and in-person work. They've spent years tracking millions of work hours across industries, analyzing Fortune 500 companies, startups, tech companies, and call centers. Their findings? Remote work is good for crossing tasks off a to-do list, but it erodes the quality of our work, stifles creativity, and hurts mental health. When we're together, our brain-to-brain synchrony increases 10x, accelerating creativity, mentorship, and innovation. That’s why Pixar animators, Nobel Prize winners, and Silicon Valley founders have come up with their best ideas face-to-face with one another.Working side-by-side can be a powerful force to supercharge company performance. But many office policies miss this mark, focusing on butts in seats, instead of brains in sync. Emanuel and Harrington offer solutions on how to craft the right policy. Backed with the latest research on the science of work, In Person offers tactical steps to make the most of in-office time, covering: How to calculate the right number of on-site days for your specific organizationThe playbook for preserving employee flexibility without losing the power of being togetherWhy some RTO mandates fail spectacularly–and how to succeedAfter years of confusion, animosity, and conflicting mandates, In Person finally delivers the answers in a clear, evidence-based roadmap for making smarter decisions with your most valuable resource: your people. Emma Harrington and Natalia Emanuel received their PhDs in economics at Harvard, and both completed postdocs at Princeton. Natalia is a research economist, and Emma a professor of economics at the University of Virginia. Their work has been published in top journals including Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and American Economic Journals. Their research has been featured in the BBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic’s Good On Paper podcast, and NPR’s PlanetMoney, among others. Harrington and Emanuel are in conversation with Brigid Schulte, an award winning journalist and bestselling author working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change.  Brigid’s first book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time, about time pressure, gender and leisure, was a New York Times bestseller, named a notable book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR, and won the Virginia Library award for literary nonfiction. Schulte is the author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times–bestselling book on time pressure, gender, and modern life, Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play When No One has the Time.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217087235?ic_referral=sA75I3ph2fFopHWUO_5ak9UbgBgHeVE7VEW7p0mS0jkwM-m8fiNHv_vYnHMCQn-GcdaQEA6v4BJ_N3D_EUGTtSQDuPxOwADeB3iuFocZLRhsY0R_P7OKw80DJ1bXo08Pz9CT3Fc

A spiritual guide to creating hope and healing in American civic life.We live in a time of fracture and lost faith. But most Americans don’t want this feeling. Most of us, the exhausted majority, want to be invited into something better. That’s the call of Live Like a Citizen: to give everyone the tools to turn away from the resentment and cynicism eroding democratic life. To turn toward a healthier way of living together. Eric Liu, CEO of Citizen University, gives readers eight deep practices for rekindling our belief in democracy—and our own humanity.Each chapter centers on a single verb—an elemental civic way to be and to be with. Through powerful stories of Americans from many backgrounds, we learn anew how to:1. See: Seeing too quickly makes us manipulable by algorithms and exploitable by politicians. We’ve got to retrain our eyes to stop making three-dimensional humans as flat as our screens.2. Listen: Listening can’t solve everything—but nothing can be solved without listening. We’ve forgotten the transformative civic power of making someone feel truly heard.3. Feel: We will learn how to practice civic joy, civic love, and civic grief. To face ourselves so we can face each other. To make pain into a bridge rather than a moat.4. Join: Joining is more than lurking on the sidelines or being “alone together” online. It is finding purpose by committing to others, in person and in place, over and over.5. Fight: We don’t need fewer arguments. We need fewer stupid ones. When we argue to understand rather than to win, we make relationship possible. Fighting like a citizen means fighting like we must live together perpetually.6. Change: You cannot truly change another person’s mind unless you are willing to change your own. And you cannot change it unless you know your own mind and learn the minds of others—and resist being too sure you’re right.7. Imagine: Civic imagination is a powerful force—but it can be used to harm as well as heal. Imagining a shared future in our diverse society is therefore a practice—and an imperative.8. Commit: When we live out these habits of heart and mind, we are creating a new culture of commitment—to one another, and to the purposes of our continuing revolution.Democracy works only if enough of us believe democracy works. Live Like a Citizen will give you reason to believe—and the tools to transform belief into everyday action. Eric Liu is the cofounder and CEO of Citizen University and author of numerous acclaimed books on democracy and American identity. His TED Talks on power and democracy have been viewed over ten million times. Liu served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and as the President’s deputy domestic policy adviser. He was later appointed by President Barack Obama to the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Liu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668008867?ic_referral=S6ptcBpZoHHdEgKaqfhhh276SP3yAe9nrgLcEXW9ZLwwM4AbxAnjnVNeoleTT9blNcAUiHwCS3wHi6NfOUi-HcvuahnFBXnmruYPR0KkHlMNXPym0T4m5FNd3tf_wt_JXJjRARk

Meet Taylor, 2003. She's a teen who came to Nashville with blisters on her fingers from learning to play a 12-string guitar. In every room she enters, she’s the youngest person (by decades) and often the only woman. And if anyone asked if she could see herself becoming the biggest superstar on the planet, her answer probably would have been yes.Writing alongside industry veterans after school, Taylor Swift’s songwriting ability set her apart. But her origins are more complex than a teen tapping into a new generation of country music fans. It’s a story of taking risks, like walking away from powerhouse label RCA to strike out with an unknown, unfunded new label, and of trusting her instincts when no one else did.Washington Post reporter Emily Yahr pulls back the curtain on the country music industry—from executives who said yes to Taylor (and those who regret saying no), to collaborators like Scott Borchetta, Nathan Chapman, and Liz Rose, to Nashville itself. Intimate and immersive, Yahr takes us to iconic locations like Music Row and The Bluebird Cafe, as well as to Hendersonville High and the Swifts’ own lakefront house.Taylor Swift: The Debut Years tells the definitive origin story of today’s biggest star, with never-before-published interviews. Taylor’s decade in Nashville shaped her as a musician, and ultimately changed country music itself long after she left the genre. Emily Yahr is an award-winning pop culture reporter in the Style section at The Washington Post, where she writes about TV, celebrities, music and movies. She is known for her coverage of country music and her coverage of Taylor Swift. Her first book is Taylor Swift: The Debut Years, a deep dive into Taylor Swift’s first 10 years in Nashville as a country music star. Yahr lives in Washington, DC. Yahr is in conversation with Chris Richards, a writer and critic living in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the former pop music critic for The Washington Post where he shared a cubicle with Emily Yahr for many happy years. His work has recently appeared in The Washington Sun, The Guardian, POW Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, and most frequently in his music newsletter The Future is Ours to Make. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250379252?ic_referral=Bbj4A2I4OgkdAXZUqmUuoMuISlD7PdhK6nl0omd9ENcwM6XJhYxmZR_Ekx9edH-CkPjvWxUSfSgpgvRbadphHocf0PfUJBmKA9wA7kKJNTjp_5iEYeiubBFrzqYrwXivv3KuD1Q

As tech bosses fall in line with fascism, tech workers are fighting back. This is the rousing inside story of their movement—and how it spawned the right-wing, anti-worker backlash now reshaping the industry.After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the tech industry sprang into action to oppose his right-wing agenda, with workers staging walkouts against ICE contracts and CEOs joining mass mobilizations against the so-called Muslim ban. But it wasn’t long before the tech bosses started to fall in line with the new administration. Using the autonomy afforded to them by the industry’s progressive and mission-driven culture, tens of thousands of tech workers began speaking out against their own executives. This burgeoning resistance included organizing against military contracts, walkouts to protest sexism, agitation about tech’s role in the climate crisis, and even a wave of union drives. By the early 2020s, tech workers had sparked an exciting movement that seemed to hold the potential to check the industry’s rapid growth and reactionary drift.But as their struggle grew, so did the employers’ backlash. A new class consciousness took root among the billionaire owners. Hellbent on stamping out any and all dissent, tech executives embraced Trumpism, fired organizers, and began lashing out against the “woke” ideology they blamed for turning their once loyal employees against them.Against Tech Oligarchy provides a gripping account of this inspiring movement’s development and offers a balance sheet of its successes and failures that will prove crucial for anyone looking to challenge right-wing billionaires anywhere. JS Tan is getting his PhD at MIT and formerly worked in tech. His work has been featured in The New York Times, MIT Technology Review, Dissent, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union and cofounded the tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Her organizing work has been featured in The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian, The Verge, TechCrunch, and elsewhere. Moderating this event is Dave Karpf, an Associate Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University and author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy. His research explores the internet’s impact on political associations —  both in the formation of novel organizational structures seen in MoveOn and DailyKos, and also tracing implications for more traditional advocacy organizations.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798888908570?ic_referral=QNA8EpzQ7WrKILCujV_8rJvDpJuKQ9dmrRg-Ft0YmZ4wM21SKDmCMgdZvDYvOzpz0fjNNEI8LRwwBllYXP97ACiJ5Bq2CVOfkBt_sZmcAJX1aNyF2xzW_lz_ob2vMS_7IjuxVhs

From Venetian canals to Vatican conclaves, New York Times correspondent Jason Horowitz takes you on a tour of the real Italy.Italy’s deep history, stunning landscapes and glorious food have uniquely captured our imagination. In The Italian Job, Jason Horowitz, a longtime Rome bureau chief for The New York Times, tells the story of how he too fell under that Tuscan-sun enchantment before ultimately discovering a more fascinating place in the country's long shadows. He shows us an Italy conducting experiments in populist politics, confronting global challenges like immigration, climate change and an aging population.In telling this story, Horowitz introduces us to an extraordinary range of characters. He flies with popes and drinks Spritzes with prime ministers, talks beauty with top fashion designers in Milan, ponders the big questions with cardinals in Rome, and gets his feet wet in the Venice lagoon with engineers trying to save the sinking city. Throughout, Italy’s streets, layered with history, and its cafés, vibrating with conversation, are full of lessons. So is his life at home, where his Italian wife and their two children offer an even more intimate, concentrated and rollicking view of Italian life. As years pass and the world turns upside down, Italy, more than a vacation destination or land of the past, reveals itself as a vivid lens through which to understand our present and future. Jason Horowitz is a senior European correspondent for The New York Times who worked for nearly a decade as the paper’s Rome bureau chief, covering Italy, the Vatican, and the region’s culture and politics. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. He got his start in journalism in Rome, where he met his wife as a young reporter, and for more than a quarter century maintained a connection to Italy, both personally and politically. Prior to joining The New York Times in 2013, Jason was the roving political features and profiles writer at The Washington Post, and he has written for The New Yorker, GQ, Vogue, Observer, and other publications. He has two children. Horowitz is in conversation with Maureen Dowd, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and author of Notorious. She is known for her sharp and incisive commentary on politics and culture. She is the author of three additional bestselling books: Bushworld, Are Men Necessary?, and The Year of Voting Dangerously. She lives in Washington, DC. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250363350?ic_referral=Q8ff-JALaqHf-ExtEvOUjTHedtPYNVVDgPS4a_PnRnUwM69WtLVZhJoY0y3ZBtlc9XeHyDlsKa5evA7mPve0iCmvojadWuz9dU0DYq_F6AgvLbJE2hAtKXyZd0h-1HuhOiDyDF8

A fascinating and intimate inquiry into the shadowy life and horrifyingly compelling work of Edgar Allan Poe and why we are drawn to darkness in artSince Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death in 1849, his stories and poems have captivated millions of readers around the world. Two centuries later, why do we continue to descend into the darkness of his imagination—and of the genres, from horror to crime, that he pioneered?In this spellbinding and singular book, Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting grant recipient Emily Ogden plumbs the darkness within Poe and enters it alongside him. She interweaves stories from his mysterious and tragic life—from his strange disappearances and tortured romances to his nearly fatal use of opium—with those of his most famous readers and translators, including poet Charles Baudelaire, writer Julio Cortázar, and psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleon and a patient of Sigmund Freud.Tracing their passionate attachments to Poe—and Ogden’s own, unexpectedly sparked when she taught an introductory Poe course at the University of Virginia, where Poe himself was once a student—Darkness Becomes Bright makes a different case for literature from the one we most often hear. This exquisite volume shows how Poe’s vision and its echoes across the generations allow us to make peace with our own flawed humanity. Emily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows, she is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. Emily is in conversation with Leon Wieseltier, the editor of Liberties. The former literary editor of The New Republic, Wieseltier’s essays on culture, religion, and history have been published in many international journals and magazines. In addition, his books include Kaddish and Against Identity, and he has published many translations of Hebrew poetry into English. In 2013 he won the prestigious Dan David Prize for outstanding achievement in the humanities. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593832509?ic_referral=U-tfvnSx9jc1zPGPFiLVqUVqmVmI8WS6ea-hF3h5HMwwM_-e8BTlsQ-6ft0F52nsak6uo0POWbyba2U4Ux5Z-gXQ5KklxFk_FsnAJ86vVJW5NmWHUFMIzhLV4D2G8x0v8Eo6zA4

This richly illustrated volume evokes the early history of the US postal system with 130 new full-color images of artifacts and historical documents from the Smithsonian's National Postal MuseumTravel back to the postal system’s humble origins in colonial America with Routes to a Nation, which traces the development of the post from trans-Atlantic communication through the Revolutionary War and follows its growth as the nation expanded through the 18th and early 19th centuries. The story of the network's early days emerges from the 130 all-new high-quality photographs of letters, covers, seals, newspapers, stamps, and other artifacts, including many rarely seen archival images from the National Postal Museum's collections.From colonists resisting a postal network to the taxation debates of the early republic, the fledgling postal service was often entangled with its era’s hot-button political issues. This book illuminates the postal system’s role in the larger process of nation-building, as well as its impacts on the lives of the ordinary people who sent, received, and delivered the mail that fostered communication, facilitated trade, and connected communities. Mail carriers who completed the first postal routes across treacherous terrainFolded letters that offer first-hand accounts of 18th century lifeBen Franklin’s tumultuous decades as colonial deputy postmaster general, marked by administrative reform and political conflictMail that helped keep the patriot's military informed during the Revolutionary WarPolitics of the post in the early republic: freedom of expression in newspapers, debates in financing expansion, and handling diplomatic channelsRoutes to a Nation explores the personalities, controversies, and planning that shaped the continent-spanning postal system that has grown to provide service to more than 169 million addresses across every state, city, and town in the United States today. The SMITHSONIAN'S NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM is located in the historic City Post Office Building, which was constructed in 1914 and served as the Washington, DC, post office from 1914 through 1986. It showcases the largest and most comprehensive collection of stamps and philatelic material in the world. DANIEL A. PIAZZA is the Chief Curator of Philately. LYNN HEIDELBAUGH is a curator specializing in the history of postal service in the U.S. ALISON R. BAZYLINSKI is a curator specializing in U.S. cultural history and material culture. SUSAN N. SMITH is the Museum's Winton M. Blount Research Chair.   This panel will be moderated by SUSAN N. SMITH, the Winton M. Blount Research Chair at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum and editor of Routes to a Nation: The Post Office in the Colonies and Early United States. Authors, also from the National Postal Museum, joining the panel are: DANIEL A. PIAZZA is the Chief Curator of Philately.  LYNN HEIDELBAUGH is a curator specializing in the history of postal service in the U.S.  ALISON R. BAZYLINSKI is a curator specializing in U.S. cultural history and material culture PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781588348241?ic_referral=cGnrM8fNx6uLTaP1RidoVg4Q-PD_CyH0uOo7C7LWamwwM0k1j9ojee0vtdRnFs_kieK3CvVNgYk70iWiP5NiztNksQkKlNmSCcy_UPE_Nvnz7xzNSEQ9gnm90ImkrhnXhQ4WLPw

The first biography of a preeminent postwar architect who championed the cause of freedom through architecture and transformed Black history and modernism J. Max Bond Jr. (1935-2009) was a civil rights activist, educator, and architect who shaped such iconic structures as the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Manhattan. Driven by the concerns of the civil rights movement, he insisted on a practice centered on deep social engagement during years when his profession became preoccupied with celebrity and spectacle. Harvard educated and son of an eminent African American family, Bond designed housing, cultural institutions, community centers, and campuses amid an era of sweeping changes in architecture, urbanism, and American culture. He expressed an architectural vision that was democratic and inclusive, international in orientation, and celebratory of cities and their diverse residents. Yet his work has often been overlooked. Award-winning historian Brian Goldstein renders it visible. Beautifully illustrated, Max Bond is the definitive biography of one of the most important architects of our time, whose aspiration toward an architecture by and for the people was as urgent in his day as it remains in our own. Brian D. Goldstein is associate professor of architectural history in the Department of Art and Art History at Swarthmore College. He is the author of The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem (Princeton). Goldstein is joined in conversation with Steven Nelson, the inaugural Executive Director of the Sam Gilliam Foundation. Professor emeritus of art history and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and former dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, he has published widely on the arts, architecture, and urbanism of Africa and its diasporas and on queer studies. Nelson has presented the Richard D. Cohen Lectures on African and African American Art at Harvard University and has held visiting appointments at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. While at UCLA, he also served as director of the African Studies Center. Both at UCLA and the National Gallery, he advanced diversity, equity, access, and inclusion and contributed to institutional strategic planning. Nelson is a member of Boards of Trustees of the Kress Foundation, the Bard Graduate Center, and Educare DC. He is a member of the Society of Architectural Historian’s 2021 as well as the Association for Art History’s 2022 Class of Fellows. Nelson earned a BA in studio art from Yale University and an AM and a PhD in art history from Harvard University. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780691220666?ic_referral=Psk94eguoYSL90aYmDdmZjN72ikS8EK3tpUzJYd33H0wM0edHFUVwSw1WABomprirmafJoIkibRUylH19XSIQjxS9J9PSd5znMD4_Z9IrUPy8OGMCmi1TKNyhSWVf4tFH1Y-Buo

Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime. Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life. With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless, life-changing power of art. Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, The Bean Trees, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and Coyote’s Wild Home, a children’s book co-authored with Lily Kingsolver. She also collaborated with family members on the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received numerous awards and honors including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Demon Copperhead, the National Humanities Medal, and most recently, the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063577541?ic_referral=1Pxrngk4se0goDPeFNNZkTzCu5H1q7-dDyRIKmRd2qwwMwFrkFpdiDU_e-QrpJie-kRylBsOaJ0ueszVShP83lHzFTDjkvwWV2HcHD2mNauPpWqEX1RMge0sZ455iabejoSrvSQ

The definitive account of how a discarded strand of hair found in Thomas Jefferson’s Bible led to a sweeping, multi-year genomic investigation, drawing on technological advances in DNA to finally resolve a 200-year national controversy.“Written with the gravitas of history and the pace of a thriller, Richard Kurin’s landmark account is vital and compelling.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of PowerIn 2011, staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History discovered what appeared to be a hair—light red, possibly human—pressed between the pages of the Thomas Jefferson Bible. That hair sparked an unprecedented scientific quest: determining if modern genomics could recover Jefferson’s DNA and finally resolve the most divisive and enduring question surrounding his life—the paternity of the children of Sally Hemings, one of hundreds of African Americans enslaved by Thomas Jefferson.For over two centuries, the Jefferson–Hemings controversy has shaped American debates about race, power, slavery, and the mythology of the Founding Fathers. Historians have argued fiercely. Descendants have lived with uncertainty. DNA technology in the 1990s brought us closer, but not all the way; the evidence remained incomplete. Until now. In this riveting narrative—part scientific detective story, part historical epic—Richard Kurin, distinguished scholar and museum official, leads readers through the fifteen-year-long genomic investigation conducted with leading DNA scientists, archaeologists, genealogists, forensic experts, and Jefferson and Hemings’ descendants across the country.The result is the first conclusive, scientifically validated answer to a question that has reverberated since the eighteenth century—an answer that settles the historical record, deepens our understanding of Jefferson, honors generations of family oral history, and asks America to confront the full complexity of its origins. Richard Kurin is the Smithsonian Institution’s Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large and previously served as Under Secretary overseeing all museums and scientific centers. An author of several popular books on American history and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Kurin has led major national cultural initiatives and produced award-winning public history. Kurin is in conversation with Steve Inskeep. Inskeep is a cohost of Morning Edition, the most widely heard radio program in the United States, and of NPR’s Up First, one of the nation’s most popular podcasts. His reporting has taken him across the United States, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Pakistan, and China. His search for the full story behind the news has led him to history; he is the author of Instant City, Jacksonland, and Imperfect Union, and now Differ We Must. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217088508?ic_referral=794ycoLUGLq6wWO4PAo81qUtxKpplmwrtSEig1NimhQwM_sWRWBn6T_3IrOo3lKAdz4a8fvGYuwR-XBGRtYPRImkj9TVWYILBjIqIkSW9c8xiuc8hiuEW1pNtBhZbocXe70Y5wA