Politics and Prose Presents

Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together - of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She's afraid of her own floorboards, and "WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON'T HURT ME" plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn't know who they are.

Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she'll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened: time and memories pass straight through her body. "I'm sorry not to respond to your email," she writes, "but I live completely in the present 
now."

Will There Ever Be Another You is the brain-shredding, phosphorescent story of one woman's dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as a profound investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss, from one of our most original writers.

Patricia Lockwood is the bestselling author of the Booker Prize finalist and Dylan Thomas Prize-winning novel No One Is Talking About This, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2021 by The New York Times Book Review and one of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the past 100 years. Her other books include the memoir Priestdaddy, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review as well as two poetry collections. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.

Lockwood will be in conversation with Emma Sarappo, senior associate editor for The Atlantic, where she covers books and literary culture. Previously, she was the arts editor at Washington City Paper.

Every discussion of sexual ethics revolves around consent, but is this notion enough to help us understand good sex? How does the dominance of consent help or prevent us from negotiating the complexities of intimacy and pleasure?

Georgetown professor Quill R Kukla argues that the idea that consent is the gatekeeper between the realms of good and bad sex does not give us the tools we need to navigate pleasure and intimacy. They claim that traditional discussions of consent make no room for the reality that we can have good sex even though we may get drunk or high, or become forgetful with age, or be limited by social pressures and power relationships

Kukla explores the ambiguous realms in which sexual agency requires much more than the ability to just say "yes" or "no" to sex. They confront moments of discomfort: How does consent work for people with dementia, a condition that is also associated with increased libido? Or in sex work, where sexual contracts challenge our traditional conceptions of ethical sex? How can we express our agency when exploring new kinks, where our hesitations and ambivalence are part of the thrill? Or even in everyday sex--where partners inevitably differ in enthusiasm, power dynamics, and experience?

Combining rigorous research and universal lessons that apply both in and out of the bedroom, Kukla approaches the concepts of sexual agency, sexual pleasure, and consent with unapologetic verve. Challenging readers to think beyond reductive concepts of consent, gender, and freedom, Sex Beyond "Yes" reframes the communication and social support we need to establish sexual relationships founded on genuine respect, open discourse, and unhindered joy.

Quill R Kukla lives in Washington, DC, and Berlin. They are Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal. They are also an amateur competitive boxer and powerlifter, the parent of a young adult, and the devoted caretaker of a corgi and two cats. This is their fourth book.

Quill is in conversation with Dr. Vanessa Wills, a political philosopher, ethicist, educator, and activist based in Washington, DC, where she is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The George Washington University. Her 2024 monograph, Marx’s Ethical Vision, is available from Oxford University Press.

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324064923?ic_referral=81Qf-M7hwsR7xAvLoR-bvLcZdrU-3Ua4XOYLgCIYVe8wM2IVftqm3o9gRXOFmA3Fv6y8GmUyy-zLpNkOevb-z6OSgE2Yba-t1W8bTeBnvzBLC-aTywA_xN3ebQLFwLjSC4S0GS8

Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It's also necessary for social coordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech.

But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge--to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can't know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life's enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. Artists and humorists have long mined the intrigues of common knowledge, and Pinker liberally uses their novels, jokes, cartoons, films, and sitcom dialogues to illuminate social life's tragedies and comedies. Along the way he answers questions like: 

• Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency?
• Why are Super Bowl ads filled with ads for crypto?
• Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite?
• Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign?
• Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call?
• Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable?

Consistently riveting in explaining the paradoxes of human behavior, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows... invites us to understand the ways we try to get into each other's heads and the harmonies, hypocrisies, and outrages that result.

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today."

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668011577?ic_referral=_pkeGXwUF-x_F5JRXd8wnZ8iWAZ0bLmNdQ6Ei7jc2sgwM16PpcUMcipkLDc3eJYtxrLLn5qI3-RIeBAkkhteJOw-BpS2_Pdmx6IizUTU_bKFX-ZgDkqvSj_fjLjm6OqWt6D47WQ

Rachel Kolb was born profoundly deaf the same year that the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, and she grew up as part of the first generation of deaf people with legal rights to accessibility services. Still, from a young age, she contorted herself to expectations set by a world that prioritizes hearing people. So even while she found clarity and meaning in American Sign Language (ASL) and written literature, she learned to speak through speech therapy and to piece together missing sounds through lipreading and an eventual cochlear implant.

Now, in Articulate, Kolb blends personal narrative with commentary to explore the different layers of deafness, language, and voice. She tells the story of how, over time, she came to realize that clear or articulate self-expression isn't just a static pinnacle to reach, a set of words to pronounce correctly, but rather a living and breathing process that happens between individual human beings. In chronicling her own voice and the many ways she's come to understand it, Kolb illuminates the stakes and complexities of finding mutual and reciprocal forms of communication.

Part memoir, part cultural exploration, Articulate details a life lived among words in varied sensory forms and considers why and how those words matter. Told through rich storytelling, analysis, and humor, this is a linguistic coming-of-age in both Deaf and hearing worlds, challenging us to consider how language expresses our humanity--and offering more ways we might exist together.

Rachel Kolb is a graduate of Stanford University, she was the first signing deaf Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, holds a PhD in English literature from Emory University, and recently completed a junior fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Atlantic, among other venues. Her book Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice will come out from Ecco in Fall 2025.

Kolb is in conversation with Kristen Harmon, a Professor of English at Gallaudet University specializing in Deaf literature and creative writing. She has published fiction, creative nonfiction, and scholarship on Deaf literature, bilingual writing, and narrative methodologies. Her most recent work includes short stories and creative non-fiction in Dinner Table Syndrome and Tripping the Tale Fantastic and essays in Sign Language Studies, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, and the Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability. She has written for and edited multiple anthologies of Deaf creative writing, including Deaf American Prose.

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063375185?ic_referral=FxwaW5GmrHulrOk5yIeK0XyelSN1pKo34VvqcFTJMbwwM0Ak6EkRDFv9Sp3z5OvTzcaPlfPM4IlelyhshuCXyswV2s8h3yMwod3Ob-GOjP7fYTmk8ZcbzoGQLiPaEthgnX24F1Q

In May 1894, President Grover Cleveland gave a speech thanking those who gathered “to worship at this national shrine.” He was not referring to the battlefields at Gettysburg or Antietam, nor to Mount Vernon, but to the gravesite of Mary Ball Washington, mother of George. While dedicating the new monument that marked it in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Cleveland honored “the woman who gave our Nation its greatest and best citizen.” There could be no clearer valorization of eighteenth-century republican motherhood and its centrality to the nation's origin story.
The Mother of Washington in Nineteenth-Century America examines the role of motherhood in the commemoration of the American Revolution by tracing the creation and evolution of the Mother of Washington figure. Kate Haulman explores the nineteenth-century memory of an eighteenth-century woman known for and through her famous son, the nation's first president. Underpinned by a canon of stories about Mary that often involved George, the monument and the figure it memorialized overlapped, sometimes in surprising and even paradoxical ways. In print, in images, and on the landscape, memorializing Mary foregrounded maternal ideals based in traditional gender roles and ancestry in the public memory of the nation's founding. As some women framed their engagement with the state in maternal terms, other men and women used the Mother of Washington to link the virtues she represented to the nation's origins. Women memorialists finally took up the cause to complete the monument, finishing what elite men had begun decades earlier.
Then as now, groups used the past to construct American motherhood, as well as using motherhood to engage with the founding past. The Mother of Washington in Nineteenth-Century America offers fresh arguments about gender, race, and the politics of Revolutionary history and memory still contested 250 years later.

Kate Haulman is an associate professor of history at American University. She is the author of the prize-winning The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America and co-editor of Making Women's Histories: Beyond National Perspectives. An active public historian, she has worked on several exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

Haulman is in conversation with Karin Wulf, Professor of History at Brown University and the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library.

https://politics-prose.com/product/mother-washington-nineteenth-century-america-kate-haulman?v=1383115&ic_referral=mLjlG1AGIYHOjkvEYEYcDTai1_sFQw6F6c8Hc2rNVtIwM8x4HSfmrpe29wEo5dc5dOCmVk-5UY3HYzSjpX4XuSn9W5ePtJkrgw2cMCcCUw19NDTOHfixUVpJ-7cD05mOk2YUFU4

Surviving Paris is not Emily in Paris. It's not a story of moving to the City of Light, meeting a dashing Frenchman, and raising beret-wearing enfants. It is not a romantic fantasy. It is a true story about a young, Black single woman and what happens when your Paris dream turns into a Paris nightmare.

After more than a decade as a journalist and television producer, Robin Allison Davis decided to shake up her life and move to France. But it wasn't quite the life she expected. When she was just thirty-four, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Surviving Paris recounts her journey from diagnosis through multiple surgeries to surviving the strictest Covid-19 lockdowns, only to be told her cancer had come back--and how she got to finding herself healthy again, including all the detours in between.

While this book is about cancer, it's not just about survival. It's a love story about cancer. It's a story about Robin's love of adventure, her love of love, and her love for herself. Grounded yet irreverent, informative and anecdotal, Surviving Paris has laughter, sorrow, and some unforgettable cringe-worthy moments. It also has courage, surprises, and remarkable depths of heart.

Robin writes about the struggles of finding her community and family away from home, dating on Tinder with one boob, and learning to be the best advocate for her medical care in a culture she doesn't completely understand, and that doesn't understand her. Surviving Paris details the good, the bad, and the ugly of expatriating to Paris and one American woman's unexpected and often hilarious journey--and her precious second chance at life.

Robin Allison Davis is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, writer, and producer based in Paris and born and raised in the Washington, DC, area. After a ten-year television career in New York City and desiring to see more of the world, she moved to Paris in 2016 to pursue the dream of a more international lifestyle--and got more than she bargained for. A two-time breast cancer survivor, Surviving Paris is her first book.

Davis is in conversation with Jummy Olabanji. Olabanji co-anchors News4 Today, the #1 morning news in Washington, D.C. Olabanji started her journalism career as an intern for NBC4. She has also worked for stations in Charlottesville, Norfolk, and New York City. She has been honored for her work with two national Edward R. Murrow Awards for breaking news anchor coverage, two Virginia Associated Press Awards and eight EMMY Awards. Olabanji lives with her husband and their baby daughter in Washington, D.C.

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063353138?ic_referral=TWAurbTQmGrwSJGE6YKmLc9b-FN8TCLo4EWqFoLRGawwM1r_QUFwIvrkbPgCKzje1Msun4NMZDDMixrc8gk5MMm_WvqqzYcEA0QgSIF8KXp-SA3jjtgcZj08qTZk5hP9qxFwEMU

This event will be in partnership with the Washington Literacy Center. 

Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Over the course of two hundred years, they were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change. From worldwide travel and public advocacy in the global Black press to their work for the United Nations, they courageously and effectively moved human rights beyond an esoteric concept to an active, organizing principle. In Without Fear, acclaimed historian Keisha N. Blain tells the story of these Black women through the lives and experiences of a diverse cast--from the well-known, like Ida B. Wells, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lena Horne, to those who are still less known, including Pearl Sherrod, Aretha McKinley, and Marguerite Cartwright. Without Fear is an account of their aspirations, their strategies, and their struggles to combat systems of oppression.

Keisha N. Blain is professor of Africana studies and history at Brown University. She is a Guggenheim, Carnegie, and New America Fellow, and author--most recently of the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Until I Am Free. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Blain is in conversation with Glory Edim, a literary tastemaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for diverse voices in literature. In 2015, she founded Well-Read Black Girl (WRBG), an online platform and book club dedicated to celebrating the works of Black women authors and creating a supportive online community for readers. Under Edim's leadership, WRBG has grown into a nonprofit organization, hosting events, book festivals, and author conversations that highlight the richness and diversity of Black literature. Her efforts have earned her accolades such as the 2017 Innovator's Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the Madam C.J. Walker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. As an author herself, Edim has contributed to the literary landscape with her bestselling anthologies Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, and On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library and her recently published book Gather Me.

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780393882292?ic_referral=ejWvnxOF5prvZw5FY-3FFvkr7spiAOuUeYO9KUax3fYwM7PThGJfMII9N__BVEP9nUtql5vop7C3ZfbMRYPGM7c1os3vpcy76L7WFpzHDlKIoqYD6IHusEGs8DaHF5cWI7qyYB4

Moon landings and space walks once captivated the public's attention. But, in recent decades, the U.S. space enterprise has felt moribund. Now, that's finally about to change.

A fleet of powerful new rockets is poised to take humans into the cosmos more than ever before. A lunar land rush has sparked a geopolitical competition among nations. And the world's two richest men have engaged in escalating brinkmanship, as NASA and the U.S. government embraces Silicon Valley innovation to jump-start the nation's ambitions.

Space has entered a golden age, and this is just the beginning. In this gripping work, award-winning Washington Post writer Christian Davenport chronicles the mad scramble to shape humanity's off-planet future. He takes readers behind the scenes at NASA and the Pentagon as China's aggressive moon mining plans raise alarms, onto the sprawling Cape Canaveral factory where Blue Origin is working toward Amazon-style lunar deliveries, and onto SpaceX launch pads as Musk's engineers log 100-hour weeks--leaving veteran astronauts marveling that they're now operating "flying iPhones."

What will happen as human ambition outpaces governmental regulation? Which country will win the race back to the moon? Was Donald Trump's much-derided creation of the Space Force a surprising act of foresight, and will the U.S. finally make a real push to the moon and eventually toward Mars?

Masterfully paced, rigorously reported, and vividly told, Rocket Dreams offers a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the grit-fueled global battle to push humankind further into the cosmos--revealing that the science fiction dreams of the last century may soon become our reality.

Christian Davenport is a staff writer at The Washington Post covering NASA and the space industry and the author of The Space Barons. He has been on reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize three times and is a recipient of an Emmy award for his work on the Discovery and Science Channels covering SpaceX's first human spaceflight mission.

Davenport is in conversation with Ian Shapira. Shapira has been a staff writer at The Washington Post since 2000. He was on the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for the paper's coverage of the Virginia Tech mass shooting. His recent stories on racism, sexism, sexual assault and hazing at the Virginia Military Institute won a George Polk award from Long Island University and the Paul Tobenkin award for reporting on discrimination from Columbia University. Over the years, he's also written extensively about the lives and deaths of CIA operatives who have died in the line of duty, especially those who perished in the Afghanistan war. Shapira lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, two daughters, and their dog Merlin. 

https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593594117?ic_referral=1MFwdbLVyi0s8tZ3EGQ5CppL-NuFMzifYw0HtJvRalMwMwNF_l2Qiw75EdeXKQGgVxEGnv0dhFmEKE6UmS-5fIRgfu-g1yq1iUrMWucb35_AHZX6ZdbHStJc4VGHsil8VF8d0-s

In Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence, activist and endocrinologist Dr. Stanley Andrisse brings together a profoundly moving collection of first-hand accounts from individuals impacted by various lengths of incarceration. This powerful book sheds light on the struggles, triumphs, and enduring hope of people navigating life under the weight of harsh prison sentences and the daunting challenges of reentry.

Dr. Stanley Andrisse is a distinguished endocrinologist, educator, and social justice advocate dedicated to addressing systemic barriers within the criminal justice system and promoting higher education for formerly incarcerated individuals. As an Assistant Professor at Howard University College of Medicine, Dr. Andrisse combines his expertise in endocrinology with a passion for mentorship and transformative education. A formerly incarcerated person himself, Dr. Andrisse overcame significant personal and systemic challenges to earn his Ph.D. in Physiology from Saint Louis University and an MBA from Lindenwood University. His remarkable journey from incarceration to academia inspired him to establish From Prison Cells to PhD (or Prison to Professionals, P2P), a nonprofit organization that empowers justice-impacted individuals to achieve higher education and meaningful careers.

Elhadji Ndiaye is a student in the Howard University and Baltimore City Community College Bridges to Baccalaureate (B2B) program. An entrepreneur at heart, he helps manage his family business while also serving as the newly appointed CEO of his own venture, which he and his team plan to incorporate in 2025. Passionate about entrepreneurship, social and political sciences, and the arts, Ndiaye channels his experiences into creating meaningful intellectual property and uplifting both professional and aspiring creatives.

Tenaj Moody is a internationally-renowned educator and keynote speaker in domestic violence, sexual violence, criminal legal system and mental health. She is the Founder of Light To Life and two-time best-selling author. She is a Licensed Behavior Specialist and has her Master’s in Criminal Justice with a certification in Applied Behavioral Analysis. As an Afro-Latina millennial raised in North Philadelphia, who survived domestic violence, poverty, and having a parent who was incarcerated growing up, her experiences quickly taught her the power in owning her story and resilience.

William Freeman III is a powerful advocate for criminal justice reform and education in prison. After serving 20 years for murder, Freeman was released in 2018 and went on to earn his degree in sociology and anthropology from Goucher College through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership. Today, Freeman is a Bloomberg Fellow and a master's candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He works at The Education Trust, where he helps empower formerly incarcerated individuals and advocates for policy changes that close opportunity gaps for marginalized students.

Mancy Thompson’s journey from the streets of Baltimore to the battlefields of Beirut and eventually back home is a testament to resilience and redemption. Growing up in a challenging environment, Mancy sought escape through the Marine Corps, where he faced not only the horrors of war but also the lingering effects of racial tension and personal trauma. His life took a tragic turn when a post-service incident led to a 23.5-year incarceration. Despite the hardships, Mancy emerged determined to rebuild his life.

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781394321049?ic_referral=nips2ruFoUHJzHftpj7n0JgVOjeGs4HMjZyAoa-G034wM2ay60tmzlPRed8kV75nm5BErJY5-rkRBUqcAAp68ImEWo1xV2GFx26fcxivqXkojGx07kdHL8qp6XBfC4pJO743IRA

This is the inside story of one of the most extraordinary brands in the corporate world, the rare company that is driven by environmental activism instead of cutthroat capitalism. Founded in 1973, Patagonia has grown into a wildly popular producer of jackets, hats, and fleece vests, with a cultlike following among hardcore alpinists and Wall Street traders alike, posting sales of more than $1 billion a year.

But it's not just the clothes that make Patagonia unique. For decades, the company has distinguished itself as a singular beacon for socially responsible business, the rare company that can legitimately claim to be doing its damnedest to make the world a better place, while also making a profit. From its early efforts to take exemplary care of its employees, to its extensive work trying to clean up its supply chain, to its controversial activism, Patagonia has set itself apart from its peers with one unorthodox decision after another, proving that there is another way to do capitalism.

At the heart of the story is Patagonia's founder, the legendary rock climber Yvon Chouinard. A perennial outsider who forged one of the most impressive resumes in the outdoor world, Chouinard also established himself as a pivotal figure in the history of American business. Guided by his anti-authoritarian streak and his unwavering commitment to preserving the natural world, Patagonia came to exert a powerful influence on other companies, paving the way for a new era of social and environmental responsibility. He started out as a dirtbag--a term affectionately bestowed on poor, itinerant outdoorsmen so uninterested in material possessions they are happy to sleep in the dirt--and he became a billionaire.

Chouinard also proved that there was another way to be a philanthropist. In the twilight of his career, he gave away Patagonia, renouncing his wealth and committing all its future profits to fighting the climate crisis.

Drawing on exclusive access to Chouinard and the Patagonia team, Dirtbag Billionaire offers new insights into the key moments that informed their priorities, shaped the company, and sent ripples across the corporate world.

David Gelles is an award-winning correspondent for the New York Times. He currently writes for the climate desk and previously wrote for the business section and was the "Corner Office" columnist. His book, The Man Who Broke Capitalism, was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Gelles is in conversation with Teddy Schleifer, who covers billionaires and their impact on the world for The New York Times. 

https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668032268?ic_referral=NaqhaAPqGxApQNWKNLCDHAyj6FI4HUu25UjRjTMgjEIwM_8CT_6k6rbhNYlJ4-1KGdAYEPAvxwGbX3msmkQ3QUayXFvFJYKyUdy2_DuJqS5va7JbuZXgR73KxfiSXU0sMEDQ618