Politics and Prose Presents

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

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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

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

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

PURCHASE:

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