Politics and Prose Presents

An intimate and captivating exploration of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s artistic journey, revealing how the creator of the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights found his unique voice through bold collaborations, redefining the world of musical theater.
How did Lin-Manuel Miranda, the sweet, sensitive son of Puerto Rican parents from an immigrant neighborhood in Manhattan, rise to become the preeminent musical storyteller of the 21st century? Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist is his incredible story as never told before, tracing Miranda’s path from an often isolated child to the winner of multiple Tonys and Grammys for his Broadway hits Hamilton and In the Heights; a global chart-topping sensation for his songs in Disney’s Moana and Encanto; and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Miranda’s journey is a testament to the power of creativity, collaboration, and cultural synthesis. He was not a musical prodigy, but an insatiable drive to create art and learn from those around him propelled him to fuse his Latino heritage with pop, hip-hop, and the musical styles of Broadway. His was a new way of telling American stories, and of speaking to new audiences.
Drawing on interviews with Miranda’s family, friends, and mentors—and many conversations with Miranda himself—Daniel Pollack-Pelzner delves into the formative experiences that shaped Miranda as an artist, from his early musicals in high school and college to the creation of his Broadway and Hollywood triumphs. With full access to Miranda’s inner circle, this behind-the-scenes origin story is sure to captivate his legions of fans and beyond.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner has written about theater and contemporary culture for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Born and raised in Oregon, he teaches theater history at Portland State University and is the scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project. He lives in Portland with his wife, whom he met in a fifth-grade production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and their two children.

Pollack-Pelzner is in conversation with Stephen Fishbach, a Pushcart Prize–winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by more than ten million fans), he’s worked on the network side as a vice president at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honors from Yale and received an MFA in fiction at NYU. In 2009 he was named one of People magazine’s hottest bachelors. His short story “To Sharks”—an excerpt from Escape!—was published by One Story and garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668014707?ic_referral=IBEt9NsjHqOALgUhPsmLvRyEB6z9DEUs1cB40ikQ7owwM_5d31ATwOkM9NXsXtgxH8ai7tV8mDSGJEV3VBg2QzQsslfqCW6H5MFtt3h_QP2AMPO2cUQl8psbbbBTF0kmlrkn9Mw

An insanely competitive housing market. A desperate buyer on the edge. In Marisa Kashino’s darkly humorous debut novel, Best Offer Wins, the white picket fence becomes the ultimate symbol of success—and obsession. How far would you go for the house of your dreams? 
Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Desperate to escape the cramped apartment she shares with her husband Ian — and in turn, get their marriage, plan to have a baby, and whole life back on track — Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand).
A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged—but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Undeterred, Margo will prove again and again that there’s no boundary she won’t cross to seize the dream life she’s been chasing. The most unsettling part? You’ll root for her, even as you gasp in disbelief.
Dark, biting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.

Marisa Kashino was a journalist for 17 years, most recently at The Washington Post. She spent the bulk of her career at Washingtonian magazine, writing long-form features and overseeing the real estate and home design coverage. She grew up near Seattle, graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism and political science. She lives in the DC area with her husband, two dogs, and two cats. Best Offer Wins is her first novel.

Kashino is in conversation with Rachel Kurzius, a features reporter who covers homes and how people interact in them. She also writes about books and discusses them on NPR. She won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting and was a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists’ D.C. Dateline Awards. For two lovely years, she was fortunate to have Marisa Kashino as her editor at the Washington Post. 

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250400543?ic_referral=HsQSZ_QYHRxG1OYcGUTTxjtUq6GzCljbaHmTYllMRUkwM8ut0_OVhqkl-McvPtUizNiYCwxBRD2kgE_H5whE5-01SynY3gcnsaUfeQvY8eu2VaHXA7ZXkAhk07t808a8h9oUkPs

“You’re in for a great ride of twists and turns. A novel for our time. Irresistible.” – Odile Hellier, author of Village Voices

Sherry McManus, a New York photographer of musicians in concert, has been around the block in love. As she begins a relationship with Thomas G. Paine, she asks herself: Is the pursuit of happiness worth the risk? Tom, a formerly best-selling author who hasn’t published a book in seven years, is trying to get his life back on track a year after separating from his wife. Although unrelated to Tom Paine the revolutionary, he has built his career publishing novels under the titles of his famous namesake: Common Sense, The American Crisis. Sherry and Tom play a game in bed, telling stories as a prelude to sex. As he at last begins a new book, neither can imagine that their entanglement will upend both their lives and spark a national conversation about artistic legitimacy and the rights of women.

Meg Bortin is an American writer based in Paris. Previous literary works include a memoir, Desperate to Be a Housewife (Mirabelle Books, 2013), and Dear Djeneba, a personal essay included in Family Wanted: Stories of Adoption (Granta Books, 2005; Random House, 2006). As a journalist she covered international affairs for 30 years. Her articles have appeared in many publications including The New York Times, which honored her with a Punch award in 2007. She also writes a cooking blog, The Everyday French Chef. Learn more at megbortin.com.

Bortin is in conversation with Serge Schmemann, who joined The New York Times in 1980. He served as the editorial page editor of The International Herald Tribune in Paris from 2003 to 2013. He has been a Times correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow, Bonn and Jerusalem and at the United Nations. He served as the deputy foreign editor in New York from 1999 to 2001. Mr. Schmemann received the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for coverage of the reunification of Germany and an Emmy in 2003 for his work on a television documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was previously a reporter with The Associated Press. He is a graduate of Harvard College and holds an M.A. from Columbia University, as well as an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College. He was born in Paris, is married and has three children.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/product/rites-man-meg-bortin?v=2230209&ic_referral=UV4H06SkX-xtx2rFW8g40syEqZjkdjPbo46_wV8nXNkwM6KsKsTRY-y4Opr7GsXlXhABtzZZrfwzuwo4behzzHDlXUvdgtJAkWIjwOkS_6qKNtb2pSuTPM0aJPU3558cfFsroHw

From New York Times reporter Jazmine Ulloa, a sweeping human history of El Paso, revealing violence, power, and privilege at play in America's most famous border town.
El Paso has been called the “Ellis Island” of America’s southern border, a mountain pass cum border town cum bifurcated metropolis where past meets future, and disadvantage meets opportunity, or so the promise goes
El Paso is an extraordinary, can’t-look-away reported history; it uses deep research and dozens of new interviews to blow away the myth of this place, where Mexico’s Juarez and America’s El Paso intertwine. It charts the history of El Paso through five families. From the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican Repatriation, to the shifting immigration laws under Reagan and Trump and the violence and bloodshed brought on by the drug war, El Paso captures a place often misunderstood or forgotten by the rest of the country, and the world.
El Paso is a brave new work of narrative nonfiction that gives new voice and perspective to history that has long been checked at the border, or told through the lens of white men alone. Ulloa draws upon meticulous research and reporting and stunning historical detail to craft the intimate narratives of an unforgettable cast of characters.

Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter for The New York Times. She previously reported for The Boston Globe, where she was part of a team that won the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the Los Angeles Times. A native of El Paso, she started out as a journalist in Texas, where she worked for newspapers in Brownsville, San Antonio, and Austin. She has made appearances on MSNBC, CNN, and CBS, as well as in Al Jazeera’s documentary television program Fault Lines.

Ulloa will be in conversation with Jia Lynn Yang, a senior ideas writer at The New York Times, writing deep, explanatory pieces on a wide variety of big issues facing our nation. From 2021 to 2025, she was National editor, overseeing The Times's coverage of the country. She is also the author of "One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965," a political history of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the landmark law that allowed her family and many others to settle in this country. Before joining The Times in 2017, she spent seven years at The Washington Post as an editor and reporter covering national security, business and economics. 

Ulloa will also be in conversation with Hamed Aleaziz, who covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy in the United States for The New York Times. He began covering immigration as a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle in 2017 and continued covering the beat at BuzzFeed News, The Los Angeles Times before joining The Times.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593471869?ic_referral=TIrOD7C_xwMIY_GH0W2mswm94p84VqugcIH_T1kew8cwM1xOdVdIupi3VuxnneE_zV-enE76mIJMJowduBR79ihYqHt2uVfHkrydoFYoFuYmt1nzqlyAaqnoBMn4qJ_P4KQRckQ

Known for such brilliant historical novels as Those Who Save Us and The Lost Family, A Mighty Blaze co-founder and New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum now offers a contemporary, suspenseful novel about love, loss, and revenge in the world of books.

Simone “Sam” Vetiver is a mid-career novelist finishing a lukewarm publicity tour while facing a deadline for a new book on which she’s totally blocked. Recently divorced, Sam is worrying where her life is going when she receives glowing fan mail from stratospherically successful author William Corwyn, renowned for his female-centric novels. When William and Sam meet and his literary sympathy is as intense as their chemistry, both writers think they’ve found The One.

Jenna Blum is the New York Times and # 1 internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family; memoir Woodrow on the Bench; audiocourse “The Author at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction” and original podcast The Key of Love. Jenna is CEO and Co-Founder of online author interview platform A Mighty Blaze and one of Oprah.com readers’ Top 30 Women Writers. Jenna earned her MA in Creative Writing at Boston University and has taught workshops for Boston University, Grub Street Writers, A Mighty Blaze, and numerous other institutions for over 25 years. She interviewed Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and is a professional public speaker, traveling nationally and internationally to speak about her work. Jenna is based in Boston. For more about Jenna, please visit www.jennablum.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X (@Jenna_Blum), Instagram (@Jenna_Blum), TikTok (@jenna.blum), and Substack.

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Caleb was driving home for Christmas. Steven was pounding beers at a local bar. Matthew was out looking for his ex-girlfriend. Leo was walking in the woods on a winter night. Then they disappeared.
Days, weeks, years later, their bodies turn up in icy rivers hundreds of miles apart. How did they get there? What, if anything, connects them? Some of their loved ones believe the official answers. Some are convinced the boys are victims of an insidious network called the Smiley Face Killers. Some are trying to forget them altogether. Meanwhile, Caleb, Steven, Matthew, and Leo find one other—and other boys like them—in the murky depths of the afterlife. Each tells his story in his own way, speaking his version of truth, confessing his desires and grievances and even his hopes for a future he still somehow believes belongs to him. Each revelation brings the reader deeper into their intertwined fates, along a journey through the landscapes of identity, intimacy, and the haunting echoes of unresolved grief.

Christopher Castellani is the author of four previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the winner of a 2024 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim and Mass Cultural Council fellow, and the 2022-24 writer in residence at Brandeis University. His fourth novel, Leading Men, is currently being adapted into a film for Fox Searchlight Pictures by Oscar-winning producer Peter Spears and director Luca Guadagnino. He lives in Boston and Provincetown.

PURCHASE BOOKS HERE:

https://politics-prose.com/jenna-blum-030526

A gripping psychological thriller, Best Boy teeters on the knife-edge of memory and identity when the arrival of a shocking letter threatens the carefully constructed life of a woman desperate to outrun her past.
Viveca Stevenson has it all: a handsome and successful husband, an adorable ten-year-old son, and a coastal dream house in Greenwich, Connecticut. She has a solid group of girlfriends and is content with the afterglow of the film career she’s left behind. But when a threatening letter arrives—from a man she does not remember—it cracks open a part of her past she thought was buried for good.
A terrifying chain of events is set in motion, forcing Viveca to confront what happened on a shattering Halloween night in high school when she had a different name, a different face, a different voice. Who is the man contacting her now and was he really the best boy on her most famous film, Misty? Why can’t she remember him—or that night?
A taut psychological thriller, Best Boy explores identity, memory, and the dangerous power of forgetting.

Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road, a national bestseller and Indie Next pick, was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews. Ruby Falls won the Zibby Award for Best Plot Twist, and Finding Mrs. Ford was hailed by Forbes and Good Morning America. At the Ocean House Author Series, Deborah interviews writers ranging from Katie Couric to Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. With fellow authors Luanne Rice and Amy Scheibe she leads the Deer Mountain Writers’ Retreat. She writes a book column for Hey Rhody and Providence Monthly magazines and began her career as an actress on All My Children and story editor at Miramax Films. Deborah holds a BA in modern foreign languages and two honorary doctorates of humane letters from Lake Erie College and the University of Rhode Island. With her husband, Chuck, Deborah restored the Avon Theatre, Ocean House Hotel, Deer Mountain Inn, United Theatre, Martin House Books, and numerous Main Street revitalization projects. She is a trustee of New York Botanical Garden.

Goodrich Royce is in conversation with Victoria Christopher Murray, a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including The Personal Librarian, a Good Morning America book club pick, and The First Ladies, Target’s 2023 Book of the Year, both of which she coauthored with Marie Benedict. She is a NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work for her novel Stand Your Ground, which was also a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9798895653340?ic_referral=VtnD5Ib6MtG5tKS3bOjqntiUzXr7PxUfS9EpuZFrl7kwM1k0biNOW8fiM0Rs1_SHwTujF6IWFExMzLY0nzoNEAyaiPysoCg5n1hZ1R0RnAcgaB2HrcUsIwI7Xqgh0bFGfCeQynY

This event is in partnership with FreeDC.

A provocative, personal, blazingly intelligent examination of one of the most vexing questions facing the United States today: Who is, and should be, a citizen?
In this one-of-a-kind book, Daisy Hernández fiercely interrogates one of the most complicated subjects of contemporary life and politics: citizenship. Braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she exposes the truths and lies of how we define ourselves as a country and a people. Turning to her own family’s stories—her mother arrived from Colombia, while her father was a political refugee from Castro’s Cuba—Hernández shows how the very idea of citizenship is a myth, one of the stories we tell ourselves about the American soul and psyche.
Reframing our understanding of what it means to be an American, Citizenship is an urgent and necessary account of the laws, customs, and language we use to include and exclude, especially those who come from Latin America. With her scholar’s mind and memoirist’s gift for narrative, Hernández weaves a story both personal and national, while reckoning with our country’s ongoing debate about who belongs and providing fresh ways of thinking about citizenship. At once bracing, fearless, and tender, Citizenship is a powerful portrait of one family’s experiences in the borderlands of citizenship and an honest illumination of the country in which we live.

Daisy Hernández is the author of The Kissing Bug, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the inaugural title for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Program. Her memoir, A Cup of Water Under My Bed, won Lambda Literary’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award and was a Publishing Triangle Award finalist. She co-edited the classic feminist anthology Colonize This! and is an associate professor of creative writing at Northwestern University.

Hernández is in conversation with Lupita Aquino, better known as @Lupita.Reads on Instagram and TikTok, passionately spreads her love for books online. She has moderated numerous book events and founded La Comunidad Reads, an author-inclusive book club in partnership with the DC Public Library. Alongside her vibrant online presence, she has contributed insightful book coverage to outlets such as TODAY.com, Aster(ix) Literary Journal, She Reads, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and many more. Notably, Lupita has served as a judge for the 2024 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Prize for the Feminist Press, and was on the Selection Committee for the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021. She enjoys exploring local bookstores and libraries with her wife and son when not immersed in books.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593730171?ic_referral=BgNDZh9ndDd6rD80kn0zKbmyvemAK84L8h3c2GkrjTIwM3wEbEdQQfcautD2GHbIeUBTs-wZjGN15vyH_6Wk_bTSS_NJViPTjvX5mx8lBQCRqoDQTbaW3REzSXREpgQcnr65Bn4

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time
Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region -- from New England to Florida to California -- these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.
“In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,“ one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.
Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.

Groff is in conversation with Danielle Evans, the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her work has been awarded honors including a USA Artists Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship the PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award, the Bridge book award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593418420?ic_referral=JzIsODVD-yFLNvXe3S6de_98sz887kC3vdoAIZLwwgAwM9fMEtzY2WN3Sj_n9TgK3tHnZpBX6zYkhfpeutL-tkAX9SiH6gIpmWHXTJBvNS1Exr2LzuwfCwcPd3ogztRZHn09MVk

A landmark new history of Syria, a country forged in conflict, cursed by civil war and dictatorship, and pivotal to the future of the Middle East
Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. Yet the history of Syria is not just a tale of dictators and generals. From the 1800s to the 2020s, the Syrian people have engaged in a passionate struggle for justice, equality, and a better future. Whether fighting for national independence from French colonial rule, battling local landowning elites to share the country’s wealth, or rising up against the Assad regime, the Syrian people have fiercely clung to their right to live with respect and dignity. Theirs is a story of protest and perseverance in the long fight to reshape the political destiny of their nation. 
 
Daniel Neep’s Syria: A Modern History offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated these events. Never losing sight of the fates of ordinary people, it provides a comprehensive account of how a nation born in conflict nevertheless sustained a rich, complex, and diverse society that will now chart its own path into the uncertain future. 

Daniel Neep is Senior Editor at Arab Center Washington DC and a non-resident fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He has taught Middle East politics at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the University of Exeter, and was previously Syria research director with the Council for British Research in the Levant. He has lived in Damascus, Amman, and Beirut, and now lives in Washington, DC.

Neep is in conversation with Ariel I. Ahram, he is professor of government and international affairs in Virginia Tech's School of Public and International Affairs in Arlington and editor of The Middle East Journal. He earned a Ph.D. in government and M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis. He writes widely on security issues in the Middle East and North Africa. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. and has spoken and lectured at the World Bank, Marine Corps University, and the German Institute for Global Affairs. In 2015, he testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Islamic State's abuses of women and children.

PURCHASE:

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781541608122?ic_referral=qiLr6H_mxeLgpjqarujvkuLGwb6pcycoMPE3-jEwAeIwMxEGry5knpm9x0Yxx6E9xVxnABAN6bjS-9axApc52KFk1xdak_pallMTIu1PHmJgA5ZMoR7czansmDvPGxQTch0x-Mo

Among the casualties of the drastic cuts this month at the Washington Post is the Book World section, which no longer will exist. The demise of Book World is a tragic blow to writers, readers, and the publishing industry. As a tribute to the many reviews the section carried over the years and all it did to serve the reading public, Politics and Prose will be holding an event with former Book World editors and contributors offering reminiscences. The event will be at P&P’s Connecticut Avenue NW store on Saturday, February 21, at 5 pm. Come and honor the memory of what was a great section of the Post.

Featuring:

• Master of Ceremonies: Marie Arana — author, editor in chief, Book World 1993-2009

• Warren Bass — author, editor, Book World, 2004-2009, will read comments from:

  - Jonathan Yardley — author, book critic, Book World, 1983-2015

  - Becca Rothfeld — nonfiction critic, Book World, 2022-2026

  - Don Graham — publisher, Washington Post, 1979-2000

  - Martin Baron — author, executive editor, Washington Post, 2013-2021

• Louis Bayard — author, contributor, Book World, 1998-2026
• Ron Charles — fiction critic, editor, Book World, 2005-2026
• Steve Coll — author, managing editor, Washington Post, 1985-2005
• Michael Dirda — author, editor, columnist, Book World,1978-2025
• Rita Dove — U.S. Poet Laureate, columnist, Book World, 2000-2003
• Nora Krug —  Writer, editor, Book World, 2007-2026
• Carlos Lozada — author, nonfiction critic, Book World, 2015-2022
• John Williams — editor in chief, Book World, 2022-2026
• Bob Woodward — author, associate editor, Washington Post, 1971-