Politics and Prose Presents

The building of the atomic bomb is the most audacious undertaking in human history: a rush by a small group of scientists and engineers in complete secrecy to unlock the most fundamental power of the universe. Even today, eighty years later, the Manhattan Project evokes boldness, daring, and the grandest of dreams: bringing an end to World War II in the Pacific, a conflict that already had stretched from Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal to Leyte Gulf to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen fight those battles, men and women strive to discover the atom's secrets at laboratories and plants in places like Chicago, Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos. On August 6, 1945, the world discovers what the end of the war--and the new global age--will look like. Science and politics will never be the same again.

The road to the first atomic bomb ends in Hiroshima, Japan, but it begins in Hitler's Europe, where brilliant physicists following the path that Einstein blazed are forced to flee fascism and antisemitism--bringing to America their determination to harness atomic power before it falls into the Führer's arsenal. The Devil Reached Toward the Sky traces the breakthroughs and the breakneck pace of atomic development in the years leading up to 1945, then takes us inside the B-29 bombers carrying Little Boy and Fat Man and finally to ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky is the panoramic narrative of how ordinary people grapple with extraordinary wartime risks, sacrifices, and choices that will transform the course of history. Theorists and engineers dare to experiment with forces of terrifying power for the purpose of creating an atomic bomb, knowing each passing day costs soldiers' lives--but fearing too the consequences of their creation. Hundreds of thousands of workers toil around the clock to produce uranium and plutonium in an endeavor so classified that most people involved learn the reality of their effort only when it is announced on the radio by President Truman. The 509th Composite Group trains for a mission whose details are kept a mystery until shortly before takeoff, when the Enola Gay and Bockscar are loaded with bombs the crew has never seen. And the civilians of two Japanese cities that have been spared American attacks--preserved for the sake of judging the power of the bomb on an intact city--escape their pulverized homes into a greater hellscape.

Drawing from dozens of oral history archives and hundreds of books, reports, letters, diaries, and transcripts from across the US, Japan, and Europe, Graff masterfully blends the memories and perspectives from the known and unknown--key figures like J. Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, and President Truman; the crews of the B-29 bombers; and the haunting stories of the Hibakusha--the "bomb-affected people." Both a testament to human ingenuity and resilience and a compelling drama told by the participants who lived it, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky is a singular, profound, and searing book about the inception of our most powerful weapon and its haunting legacy.

Garrett M. Graff has spent two decades covering politics, technology, and national security. The former editor of POLITICO Magazine and longtime WIRED and CNN contributor, he writes the popular Doomsday Scenario newsletter and hosts the Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast Long Shadow. He is the author of ten books.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668092392?ic_referral=dfPf5xY7Re-k6d_7ji7yQ-jahSJVU7FSGMUcQ70KTVQwM4tCSG_CCUlnTt9EQbQrYtEbsQD_XztqV520a3OQXXp6FfVWJElBDHO6_Ako30sJApQ6gK-3iF0fRtz-PPtPchxLpGY

Sleeping in the Courtyard shines a light on works by a group of diverse contemporary Kurdish women and nonbinary writers living in Kurdistan and in diaspora. Featuring poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic work by both emerging and well-established writers, this collection recognizes the complex web of physical and lingual displacement of the Kurdish people. It presents work originally written in English and work translated from Kurdish dialects as well as from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Swedish. A few works in Kurdish dialects appear alongside their translations, both in recognition of the history of linguicide and to push against oppressive attempts to strip away Kurdish language.

This collection showcases variety in representation, point of view, identity, intersectional experience, geographical context, and style. What emerges is the anthesis of erasure. Sleeping in the Courtyard brings together historically isolated writers in community--and invites readers to join around their table to share in their stories, laughter, tears, secrets, memories, and warmth.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781682262733?ic_referral=KnRPCaML3z_Bz-MztpRHp6F6QcZ4t2YvqQEtmpt5ZoUwM4Yzmbza2UBbUmuWVOL04wyeskdnoROcOEmN1Hus5uTo4dbhL5OsfUcg4Wfpxavj8jrrpyLa80ySTl-eHFANq7H6eG0

Holly Mason Badra is a Kurdish-American writer. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews appear in Meridian, The Arkansas International, The Rumpus, CALYX, Circumference, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is currently the associate director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She reads for Poetry Daily.

Badra is in conversation with Heba F. El-Shazli, an Egyptian American and an avid lover and reader of literature from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She is an associate professor of political science (retired as of June 2025) at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. Heba taught courses on governments and politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Islam and politics, international relations, Israel and Palestine, and the role of civil society and social movements in democratization. She has been teaching at Politics & Prose bookstore since 2013 and she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. During the 2023-24 academic year, she was a visiting academic at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Heba recently (February - April 2025) taught a series of classes at Politics and Prose about the Kurds and their literature in an attempt to better understand the Kurdish people: their culture, history, society and politics. 

This event is in partnership with The Atlantic.

Amid the ongoing decimation of media, Jacob Goldberg, a culture writer in New York, knows what will save him: a podcast. And not just any podcast, but something that will demonstrate his singular thoughtfulness in an oversaturated, competitive market. When Jacob learns the true, tragic circumstances behind the mysterious death of Seth, one of his best friends from high school, his world is turned completely upside down. But when the dust settles, he realizes he has an idea worth digging into.

Of course, it's not so simple. Learning the truth--or at least, the beginning of it--sends Jacob spiraling. His increasing obsession ultimately leads him back home to Chicago, where he tracks down Lee, a once up-and-coming musician who probably knew Seth best at the end of his life. As his investigation deepens, Jacob's drive to find out the truth--and whether there's a deeper story to be told about the fault lines of our memories, life and death on the internet, and the people we never forget--grows into a desperation to discover whether it even matters.

A poignant and funny novel about grief, loneliness, memory, and the unique existential questions inherent to the digital age, See Friendship introduces a new voice in fiction--a writer known for his pitch-perfect cultural criticism, with a depth of literary talent.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063375093?ic_referral=eiKavJMHeK64l4C8pEkl5xGs8maNC8_Edm_nMPLNOEowM1j0Y3kGYRX0F6l46BcFExX7hoijOxHl7wEALyu3Cv8E8jJsmJVev7ry3m2ygrAET76WXAD_68Zv8dncg5jm83X4hmE

Jeremy Gordon's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Pitchfork, The Atlantic, and GQ. He was born in Chicago, and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Jen. See Friendship is his first novel.

Gordon is in conversation with Megan Garber, a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the recipient of a Mirror Award for her writing about the media, and she previously worked as a reporter for the Nieman Journalism Lab and as a critic for the Columbia Journalism Review. At The Atlantic, she writes about the intersection of politics and culture (which often, but not always, means that she writes about reality TV). She is the author of On Misdirection: Magic, Mayhem, American Politics and co-host of the sixth season of The Atlantic’s How To podcast, “How to Know What’s Real.”

After suffering her first big heartbreak two years earlier, Penelope Lin has built a quiet life with no romantic entanglements. She spends her days cataloging a museum's vast collection of Qing Dynasty bound-foot shoes and in the comfortable company of close friends. One day, she happens to meet Hoang, who confesses to releasing mice from the cancer research lab where he works. Hoang's openness catches Penelope off guard; from then on, she finds her carefully constructed life slowly start to unravel. Told in Penelope's witty, vulnerable, and thoroughly endearing voice, Gingko Season captures three seasons of reawakening, challenges, and transformation.

This wise and tenderhearted novel explores the nature of our deepest friendships as seriously as it does the dizzying terror and thrill of falling in love, and the complications of trying to live a life that matches your ideals.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781324086147?ic_referral=8OzHlClGmgFyKuzHzUcn3sYkVz_sMrj5f5nOnQ4L5xAwMzbPEcTIwlB4mxfbgFZgkjp93YxZ1JTPesuJ8mwuGwARcEEUGjwsJ9qe6J8Z-3ruzWhz9aWn7Ck3wtVI4l-wRhz1qNM

Naomi Xu Elegant is a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Monocle, Fortune, Atlas Obscura, and elsewhere.

Elegant is in coversation with Hasan Dudar, a writer living in Washington, D.C. His debut collection of short stories, Carryout, is forthcoming with the University of Iowa Press in the Spring of 2026. He is originally from Toledo, Ohio. 

With Rax King's trademark blend of irreverent humor and heartfelt honesty comes a new collection of personal essays unpacking bad behavior. Sloppy explores sobriety, begrudging self-improvement, and the habits we cling to with clenched fists.

In "Proud Alcoholic Stock," King examines her parents' unwavering dedication to 12 step programs and the texture her family history has lent to her own sobriety. "Shoplifting from Brandy Melville" is a lighthearted look at, what else?, shoplifting from Brandy Melville--one of her few remaining indulgences now that she doesn't drink. King writes about her overspending and temper control issues as well as her poorly managed mental health. These seventeen essays capture the personal and generational vices that make us who we are. From being a crummy waitress to using uppers to force friendships, from obsessing over the Neopets forums to lying for no discernable reason, these essays approach bad habits with emotional intelligence, kindness and--most importantly--humor.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593688458?ic_referral=3MdYDBYTUSofeBsjMdrdDHjsnjmjCEb7sCsOwI6-sbgwM8UgrrCpLgXMSKGWTF42B4n935vQMXdmfBhRw1pzmTG-Rpdi9SS05q2h0QldEumkDqkxysP7mH4vxMLzvxHdPyJv8qA

Rax King is the James Beard award-nominated author of Tacky and co-host of the podcast "Low Culture Boil." Her writing can be found in Glamour, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and toothless Pekingese.

Every premodern society, from Sumeria to China to seventeenth-century Europe, knew that bad words could destroy lives, undermine social order, and create political unrest. Given the obvious dangers of outspokenness, regulating speech and print was universally accepted as a necessary and proper activity of government. Only in the early 1700s did this old way begin to break down. In a brief span of time, the freedom to use words as one pleased was reimagined as an ideal to be held and defended in common.

Fara Dabhoiwala explores the surprising paths free speech has taken across the globe since its invention three hundred years ago. Though free speech has become a central democratic principle, its origins and evolution have less to do with the high-minded pursuit of liberty and truth than with the self-interest of the wealthy, the greedy, and the powerful. Free speech, as we know it, is a product of the pursuit of profit, of technological disruption, of racial and imperial hypocrisy, and of the contradictions involved in maintaining openness while suppressing falsehood. For centuries, its shape has everywhere been influenced by international, not just national, events; nowhere has it ever been equally available to women, the colonized, or those stigmatized as racially inferior.

Rejecting platitudes about the First Amendment and its international equivalents, and leaving no ideological position undisturbed, What Is Free Speech? is the unsettling history of an ideal as cherished as it is misunderstood.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780674987319?ic_referral=Yui9S_k-w0SJndV2wHVtISr56cYsqm5Wl3D_xtE21hgwMwvYK4LIJct_SUsy0CWYPLmWDi8VJd13FNpdmjFUP85Fz8lb5pE92GUMfeMiWgGycwDvXqLpiIv1i7FTOAbyQOBM0cQ

Fara Dabhoiwala is Senior Research Scholar and Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University and author of The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. Formerly on faculty at the University of Oxford, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, All Souls College, and Exeter College.

Dabhoiwala is in conversation with Ronald Collins. Collins is a retired law professor, co-founder of the History Book Festival, and  co-founder and co-chair of the First Amendment Salons. He is the editor of the weekly online blog First Amendment News ]and editor of Attention (an online journal on the life and legacy of Simone Weil). He is also the Lewes Public Library's Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author or co-author of 13 books on topics ranging from free speech to racial justice, from robotics to poetry, and from literature to jurisprudence. His biographical works have profiled the likes of Floyd Abrams, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Simone Weil, and Emmett Till. He served as a Supreme Court fellow under Chief Justice Warren Berger and later was a Norman Mailer fellow. His latest book is Tragedy on Trial: The Story of the Infamous Emmett Till Murder Trial (2024). His next book is a novel titled Forbidden Freedom.    

Whatever the cause--and everyone has a theory--it's the Crime of the Decade when glamorous Georgia Cartwright, who was adopted as a newborn, is accused of killing the biological daughter of her wealthy, Southern family.

Georgia is locked in a psychiatric institution where the most violent offenders are held while she awaits trial. The only words she whispers when her estranged twin sister Amanda visits are, "I didn't do it. You've got to get me out of here."

Amanda doesn't trust Georgia, but she can't abandon her in a place so eerie and menacing that it seems to exist in another dimension. Is Georgia the victim of a powerful family that's so depraved murder is the least of their crimes? Or is Amanda being led down a path of madness into the web of a master manipulator?

Nothing is as it seems in Sarah Pekkanen's The Locked Ward, a shocking psychological thriller about the complex bonds of sisterhood--and what happens when they are stretched to the breaking point.

Some doors in the Locked Ward should never be opened.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250349514?ic_referral=QE2vyVzGUR1tw4abZzHgM4mST4q1dbz4RbZ3XLjpfBIwM01l85Fl8eVP6EqH1DTyBNnJzx6m7MYd8RI_8DsjhNu-mog0737famC8N9fwh1rd1-QyOIY5um4XaXxKIyd1TWvaIck

Sarah Pekkanen is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fifteen solo and co-authored novels. Her books are sold in thirty-six countries, with several optioned for TV and film. Sarah also co-wrote the screenplay for The Wife Between Us for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. She serves on the board of directors of International Thriller Writers, and is the founder of the nonprofit IndiaStreetPaws.com, which rescues injured and abused street dogs in India. She lives just outside of Washington, DC.

Pekkanen is in conversation with Alex Finlay, the bestselling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including the 2024 national bestseller, If Something Happens to Me. His work regularly appears on best-of-the-year lists and has been translated into twenty-five languages and sold around the world. Nearly all of Alex’s books have been optioned or are in development for film and television. His May 2025 release, Parents Weekend, has already been scooped up by Hollywood for adaptation to the screen. Alex lives in Washington, D.C. and Virginia.

At the height of the Cold War, as a high school freshman, CNN's Jill Dougherty developed an obsession with Russia. Over the next half-century, she studied in Leningrad, traveled across the Soviet Union, lived in Moscow, and reported on the presidencies of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin. Jill's life, and Putin's, intersected. They studied at the same Russian university; Jill was named CNN Moscow Bureau Chief just as Putin began his rise to power. She knew he was a former KGB officer, but she also believed he was an economic reformer. As Putin tightened his grip on the media, she changed her mind. In 2022, reporting from Moscow as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, she was convinced the leader with whom she once had sympathized was a tyrant threatening to destroy a country she had come to love.

My Russia charts Russia's evolution through the eyes of an American with rare insight into Russia, its people, and its leaders.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781493087983?ic_referral=kPhmZrFHUSjqTwtrSP49CvXWyUYWKJ7TIUhgXiQd7eAwM5yFlqoy6adCzBM5yZxqjx7Q--gNrJ_XuaCncn2swWa7UD8RdZ5fvVYHy3MQB6iNFPayG4wtNbSgRFm_IpMOt3K5frM

Jill Dougherty was a CNN Correspondent for over thirty years. She now is a CNN on-air Contributor, reporting and analyzing events in Russia and the region. She was CNN's Moscow Bureau Chief for almost a decade and served as CNN's White House Correspondent, US Affairs Editor, Managing Editor for the Asia/Pacific Region, and Foreign Affairs Correspondent covering the US State Department.

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She teaches at Georgetown University's Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and has pursued research on Russia and the media as a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School and at the International Centre for Defence and Security in Estonia. She writes regularly for CNN.com, and her work has been published in The Atlantic, Politico, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC and speaks fluent Russian.

Dougherty is in conversation with Alex Marquardt. Marquardt was until recently CNN's ChiefNational Security Correspondent based in CNN's Washington bureau. He helped lead the network's coverage of a wide range of national security and foreign policy stories, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Marquardt was in southern Ukraine when Russia invaded in 2022 and has returned several times to cover the war. He was previously based in Moscow as a correspondent for ABC News where he also covered Russia annexation of Crimea. 

In recent years, the Nordic countries have been the envy of the world for their economic success, their institutional stability, and their consistently high levels of social happiness. But are they socialist? Some prominent members of the American Right certainly think so, and in this book they may find a surprising ally. Pelle Dragsted is a member of the Danish parliament and the leader of the socialist political party Enhedslisten (red-green alliance). Contrary to most Nordic leaders, Dragsted accepts the charge of socialism and delivers a clarion call to lean into that description.

In Dragsted's studied conclusion, Denmark and the rest of the Nordic countries are indeed already socialist, but only in part. The dangers faced by Norden come (and here many conservative American commentators will disagree) from the unhealthy encroachment of capitalism. His provocative starting argument is that capitalism and socialism are not in fact mutually exclusive, and already Nordic economies are hybrids, a mix of de-commodified, democratically governed sectors and undemocratic, privately controlled enterprises. The relevant question is the degree to which one dominates the other. Currently, undemocratic forces are ascendant, but it need not be so. Here, Dragsted offers both his diagnosis and his proposed solution, a comprehensive plan for a gradual (re)democratization of the economy and a move to fully and firmly embrace, and redefine, the charge of "Nordic socialism."

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780299353605?ic_referral=ml5srMt3rERZoZoED7y0dBAuPMRWIhkVWwkKa5V0_lwwM9uqJ_I_T-VBltfDeu81uakLcSs8qQT6XlRUdM3vfcLSP24sqUSqOVn7NgFbV1-3aNJjeVeOkSsEpdbY-32ksn8fUU4

Pelle Dragsted is the leader of the Enhedslisten party in Denmark and a representative in the Folketing. He is the author of N ordisk Socialisme: På vej mod en demokratisk økonomi, which was first published in Danish to great acclaim.

Dragsted is in conversation with Joe Guinan. Guinan is President of The Democracy Collaborative. His focus is on political economy, strategy, and economic system change, and he is co-author (with Martin O’Neill) of The Case for Community Wealth Building (Polity, 2020) and (with Christine Berry) of People Get Ready! Preparing for a Corbyn Government (O/R Books, 2019), which was named one of The Guardian’s best politics books of the year in 2019.

 Ben Mattlin was born in 1962 with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital and progressive neuromuscular weakness. He never stood or walked but grew up expecting a normal life. In this book of essays, he chronicles that life and also charts his growth as a reluctant disability activist and public intellectual.

Mattlin's disability was from birth. Raised in a family that insisted that he be educated in a mainstream setting, he never thought about his disability as being an obstacle until adulthood. It was not until he had graduated from Harvard and could not find a job that he began to understand what disability rights activists were talking about.

These collected short pieces chronicle Mattlin's intellectual coming-of-age including his beginnings, difficult conversations about disability, the social aspects of being disabled in a nondisabled world, and a wider perspective as the author looks back on his sixty years of disability. The book contains a variety of essays intermixed with a few edited podcast transcripts. Some of the pieces are deeply personal; others are stridently political. All of them are guaranteed to make readers see life and the world in a new way.

Altogether, this collection is a frank, unsentimental examination of some of the most important and moving issues of our day--always rendered with intelligence, sensitivity, and a liberal sprinkling of humor.

PURCHASE BOOK: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781958888520?ic_referral=zkYDaU159XUgLzWpN7rkrpqablYl6gd4hCP6uD-3M3MwM9GKqzJ9QGCFeW3cuOuxmqbOCPUV59WcGUa0F-F2NYy5qAKqdDXwIF2tOx1C9IaNtT_zDh4zpIArd82468qQF0uykEc

Ben Mattlin is freelance writer and the author of four books: Unbound: Notes from a Reluctant Disability Activist (2025), Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World (2022), In Sickness and in Health: Love, Disability, and a Quest to Understand the Perils and Pleasures of Interabled Romance (2018), and Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity (2012). A Harvard graduate, Mattlin has published essays in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Time, and he's been featured on NPR, "Here & Now," NowThis News, ABC's Prime Time Live, CNN, E! Entertainment Network, and independent radio stations across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, and they have two grown daughters.

Mattlin will be in conversation with Joel Michael Reynolds, a Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies, and Director of the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown University. They are jointly appointed as Faculty in the Department of Family Medicine as well as in the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Medical Center. Reynolds is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Philosophy of Disability, co-founder and co-editor of the book series Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society, and President of the Society for Philosophy and Disability. Their most recent books include The Life Worth Living: Disability, Pain, and Morality and The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability.