Politics and Prose Presents

Josiah Henson led a fascinating life--from the plantation fields of Maryland to the Georgetown Market to the plantations of Kentucky to escaping to freedom in Canada to being introduced to the Queen in England. Born enslaved, Henson eventually escaped and became a respected minister and famed secular leader.

My Name Is Not Tom is a biography of Josiah Henson, the man catapulted into fame after Harriet Beecher Stowe noted that certain events in his life partially influenced the development of her fictional character Uncle Tom. While previous biographies have relied heavily on Henson's four autobiographies, which replicated the myth that he was the sole inspiration for Stowe's character, My Name Is Not Tom uses new primary source research to fill in the untold parts of his extraordinary life and examine his views of slavery and morality, which changed substantially over the course of his life.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781647126100?ic_referral=RoNTe4SkmhiOVCnEH2jmXE_xRstmHbub3oMle1pyYZowM7L3cFRFzS-3m6SxUOvNyAyTm0q9meLk-zkJelR3_pGh049HMqpTExJ4lFpfHBgOkfucJMmOYNsvEXM72qaZkgGTpIE

Susan Cooke Soderberg retired as a historian with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and has written several books on state and local history.

*recorded 6/25/2025

Get on the Job and Organize is a compelling, inspirational narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it's equally important to organize when you love your job.

With an accessible voice and profound insight, Brisack puts everything into the context of America's long tradition of labor organizing and shows us how we too can organize our workplaces, from how to educate yourself and your colleagues, to what backlash can be expected and how to fight it, to what victory looks like even if the union doesn't necessarily "win."

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668080795?ic_referral=kXIg-Uxxx9D80SkwzkTkS05etUEYszDBrRZb5VMIEHIwMzFH_CyZ9Uzgo7acA3_fdbHPTy9NRaCFzMeH7rmNUOE60oyjcHVAd1mrukTfVgQEHl77dTQr10r98BAzkgV0FvfWN6E

Jaz Brisack is a union organizer and cofounder of the Inside Organizer School, which trains workers to unionize. After spending one year at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, they got a job as a barista at the Elmwood Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, becoming a founding member of Starbucks Workers United and helping organize the first unionized Starbucks in the United States. As the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York & Vermont, they also worked with organizing committees at companies ranging from Ben & Jerry's to Tesla.

Brisack is in conversation with Sara Nelson. Nelson has served as the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO since 2014, representing 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines.  She first became a union member in 1996 when she was hired as a Flight Attendant at United Airlines and today she represents 55,000 of aviation’s first responders at 20 airlines. The New York Times called her "America's most powerful flight attendant" for her role in helping to end the 35-day Government Shutdown and InStyle Magazine placed her on their Top 50 Badass Women list. The New Yorker profiled AFA and Sara's career in May 2022.

*recorded 6/23/2025

An Olympic athlete. An award-winning novelist. A successful entrepreneur. All raised under one roof. What can we learn from those families whose children aim high and succeed, sometimes in widely varied fields? Just as important: What were the costs along the way, and what can we glean from their travails and triumphs?

The acclaimed New York Times journalist Susan Dominus offers compelling profiles of six such families in search of the factors that led to their success--was it an inherited quality, a specific way of parenting, the influence of a sibling, or a twist of luck? Inspired by the iconic Brontë sisters, whose remarkable literary success prompted endless speculation, Dominus, the mother of twin teenagers, sought out contemporary high-achieving families who shared intimate stories of their upbringing. She introduces us to the Chens, young parents who fled their country's one-child policy to open a Chinese restaurant in Appalachia--then sent four children to elite colleges and on to careers that give back in technology and medicine; the Groffs, whose claim to fame is not just an award-winning novelist but an Olympic athlete and a notable entrepreneur; the Wojcickis, whose daughters made inroads as STEM pioneers in Silicon Valley; and the Murguias, who rose from exceptionally humble origins to become powerful jurists and civil rights champions. Woven into these and other stories is an account of centuries of scientific research into the ongoing question of nature versus nurture.

Elegantly written and extensively researched, The Family Dynamic is more than a checklist of how-to's. It's a deep and moving exploration of the complexity of family life and the rewards--and burdens--of ambition.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593137901?ic_referral=ue78GGIZxnGT9fieonb5GH5scXXRhYGh8jLPd-fAqIowM5BFOAPQmI1N6st42TN3Da3IaoB7AOwCa2Sdpo98587GC8xTmDMhJ8ag_xXRAsCa3VmXMEX5LNtZD0l3bGLN_beQwZ8

Susan Dominus has worked for The New York Times since 2007, first as a Metro columnist and then as staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. In 2018, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for its reporting on workplace sexual harassment. She won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club of New York and a Mychal Judge Heart of New York Award from the New York Press Club. She has studied as a fellow at the National Institutes of Health and Yale Law School. Her article about menopause in The New York Times Magazine won a National Magazine Award in 2024. She teaches journalism at Yale University.

Dominus is in conversation with Mark Leibovich. Leibovich is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of five books, including three New York Times best sellers, and two No. 1 Times best sellers, This Town (2013) and Thank You for Your Servitude (2022). He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for profile writing. Before joining The Atlantic in 2022, he spent 16 years at The New York Times, based in Washington, serving as the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, he worked at The Washington Post, where he covered technology and national politics. He is also a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC.

*recorded 6/22/2025

As Michigan's Secretary of State and chief election official, Jocelyn Benson has overseen several of the highest turnout, most secure elections in the state's history. But her life changed one snowy evening in December 2020 when armed protesters descended onto her doorstep, threatening her family. Her only crime: certifying a fair and accurate Presidential election in which the protesters' preferred candidate - Donald Trump - did not win. Benson refused to back down. She stood her ground, spoke out louder, and helped expose and defeat a coordinated national effort to overturn the election.

In The Purposeful Warrior, Benson shows us how to turn fear and frustration into a fight for integrity and truth. She shares powerful stories from her rise in politics--investigating domestic terrorist cells, becoming the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top 100 law school, and running the Boston Marathon while more than eight months pregnant--as well as those of paradigm-shifters throughout history, to demonstrate how we can be warriors for ourselves and for each other. It starts when we stand up for others, call out bullies, raise our voices, and work with grace and grit to ensure truth, integrity, fairness and justice prevail - even when it is difficult, risky, and the stakes are high.

In times of intense conflict and anxiety it's easy to believe we are powerless to make a difference. But we're not. We are purposeful warriors. And we all have the power to define a better world.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593994207?ic_referral=z0tDMF-OYreQghPa5VnCfK3upfSQnkZdvAFL8F1Dq4MwM34RSTwGYeaN8oadnPwjkZeW1FZciz3BajQsEgTDeh6KbIK9LDpaR5gwvSA1mdlhwxloNakyPCT9f2_TYOa8s9B7KNY

Jocelyn Benson is Michigan's Secretary of State. She ascended into the national spotlight during the 2020 election cycle as one of the "Women from Michigan", a group who led the effort to successfully stymy Donald Trump's failed attempts to overturn the valid and accurate results of the 2020 presidential election. She was subsequently featured on the cover of Time and was honored with both the JFK Profile in Courage award and the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Benson is in conversation with Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd is a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and NBC News’ chief political analyst. Previously, Todd was NBC News’ political director and the moderator of the longest-running show on television, the network’s flagship Sunday public affairs program Meet the Press, for nearly a decade.

*recorded 6/22/2025

1861: The Lost Peace is the story of President Lincoln's far-reaching, difficult, and most courageous decision, a time when the country wrestled with deep moral and political questions of epic proportions.

Through Jay Winik's singular storytelling, readers will learn about the extraordinary Washington Peace Conference at the Willard Hotel to avert cataclysmic war. They will observe the charismatic and farsighted Senator JJ Crittenden, the tireless moderate seeking a middle way to peace. Lincoln himself called Crittenden "a great man" even as Lincoln jousted with him. They'll be inside and among Lincoln's cabinet--the finest in history--which rivaled the executive in its authority, a fact too often forgotten, and they will see a parade of statesmen frenetically grasping for peace rather than the spectacle of the young nation slowly choking in its own blood. A perfect read for the historically inclined, with haunting overtones to our current political climate. 

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538735121?ic_referral=0tT-hsK6e2OOUee8DX7APHJJRtUkfMpzkHi9YmdqE5wwM5Ipy8okAQJQrwy5jeQBmpFuikm6Og85qlLCDTzkDfSAcLs8fyS5vbb_svs-i0LRvESVkibf28w3-zdua1CpROyFn0s

Jay Winik is an American historian and New York Times bestselling author, known for his award-winning April 1865: The Month That Saved America and celebrated for his innovative tellings of history. Winik is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and sat on the board of trustees of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He graduated from Yale College with honors, and holds a Masters from the London School of Economics with distinction, as well as a Ph.D. from Yale University.

Winik is in conversation with Evan Thomas. Thomas is the author of eleven books: The Wise Men (with Walter Isaacson), The Man to See, The Very Best Men, Robert Kennedy, John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, The War Lovers, Ike’s Bluff, Being Nixon, First, and Road to Surrender. John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, Being Nixon, and First were New York Times bestsellers. Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for thirty-three years at Time and Newsweek, including ten years (1986–96) as Washington bureau chief at Newsweek, where, at the time of his retirement in 2010, he was editor at large. He wrote more than one hundred cover stories and in 1999 won a National Magazine Award. He wrote Newsweek’s fifty-thousand-word election specials in 1996, 2000, 2004 (winner of a National Magazine Award), and 2008. He has appeared on many TV and radio talk shows, including Meet the Press and The Colbert Report, and has been a guest on PBS’s Charlie Rose more than forty times. The author of dozens of book reviews for The New York Times and The Washington Post, Thomas has taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton, where, from 2007 to 2014, he was Ferris Professor of Journalism.

*recorded 6/21/2025

 When Jackie meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy in Georgetown, she is twenty-one and dreaming of France. She has won an internship at Vogue. Kennedy, she thinks, is not her kind of adventure: "Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy." Yet she is drawn to his mind, his humor, his drive. The chemistry between them ignites. During the White House years, the love between two independent people deepens. Then, a motorcade in Dallas: "Three and a half seconds--that's all it was--a slivered instant between the first shot, which missed the car, and the second, which did not. . . . A hypnotic burst of sunlight off her bracelet as she waved."

This vivid, exquisitely written novel is at once a captivating work of the imagination and a window into the world of a woman who led many lives: Jackie, Jacks, Jacqueline, Miss Bouvier, Mrs. Kennedy, Jackie O.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780812997217?ic_referral=E789l_N-r1XmeEIibV-J10wBWcK5Zb3yxb_d2jfZZTAwM4J9p1AC0NZdOEUjqqBOmqjDwKCXp0ABe8qcdwca0gKOhyfkIJe62koHIBchZVSWPJe0sak8a4YpZi3_fVf8_bgTHKA

Dawn Tripp is the author of the novel Georgia, which was a national bestseller, a finalist for the New England Book Award, and the winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. She is the author of three previous novels: Game of Secrets, Moon Tide, and The Season of Open Water, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, Conjunctions, and NPR, among others. Tripp lives in Massachusetts with her sons.

Tripp is in conversation with Mareen Dowd. Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and author of Notorious. She is known for her sharp and incisive commentary on politics and culture. She is the author of three additional bestselling books: Bushworld, Are Men Necessary?, and The Year of Voting Dangerously. She lives in Washington, DC.

*recorded 6/20/2025

Desi Arnaz is a name that resonates with fans of classic television, but few understand the depth of his contributions to the entertainment industry. In Desi Arnaz, Todd S. Purdum offers a captivating biography that dives into the groundbreaking Latino artist and businessman known to millions as Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy. Beyond his iconic role, Arnaz was a pioneering entrepreneur who fundamentally transformed the television landscape.

His journey from Cuban aristocracy to world-class entertainer is remarkable. After losing everything during the 1933 Cuban revolution, Arnaz reinvented himself in pre-World War II Miami, tapping into the rising demand for Latin music. By twenty, he had formed his own band and sparked the conga dance craze in America. Behind the scenes, he revolutionized television production by filming I Love Lucy before a live studio audience with synchronized cameras, a model that remains a sitcom gold standard today.

Despite being underestimated due to his accent and origins, Arnaz's legacy is monumental. Purdum's biography, enriched with unpublished materials and interviews, reveals the man behind the legend and highlights his enduring contributions to pop culture and television. This book is a must-read biography about innovation, resilience and the relentless drive of a man who changed TV forever.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668023068?ic_referral=zKgM3OF1IvV9sQU68S6go1QMAQWgST77dGQmppKxumMwM0kRAIPV6xTz2XNBq0dM41NzYbVXSiltYcmGbtTvjmZ4oes0pPalBovSbfoziwgRP9dl5TVjqariBMoanVKWMdGNXZY

Todd S. Purdum is a veteran journalist and author. In a career of more than forty years, he has written widely about politics and culture, starting at The New York Times, where he spent twenty-three years, covering politics from city hall to the White House, later serving as diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief. He has also been a staff writer at Vanity Fair, Politico, and The Atlantic. He is the author of Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution and An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, with whom he has two grown children.

Purdum is in conversation with Maureen Dowd. Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and author of Notorious. She is known for her sharp and incisive commentary on politics and culture. She is the author of three additional bestselling books: Bushworld, Are Men Necessary?, and The Year of Voting Dangerously. She lives in Washington, DC.

*recorded 6/20/2025

Mrs. Blossom has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when she finds a winning lottery ticket in a parking lot, everything changes. She is determined to see the world that she sometimes feels is passing her by.

When Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who's sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.

She also didn't expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn't supposed to be in.

Now Mrs. Blossom doesn't know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He is convinced that Allan was transporting a stolen piece of art, and Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan's death.

Mrs. Blossom's questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780062998101?ic_referral=c2Gh0uaH9bFHlRxGIXw890R3M8-bn0Jx6ssHZIwsbzkwM10ACcmRgodZS5QzXcT4_iwP034MTqAXFys5_EuoksB3O6A4I2EBWbLrkPp0aYdcI4TVotBRekoBHZlP4-i9RLtucA

Since Laura Lippman's debut, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the "essential" crime writers of the last 100 years. Stephen King called her "special, even extraordinary," and Gillian Flynn wrote, "She is simply a brilliant novelist." Her books have won most of the major awards in her field and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her teenager.

*recorded 6/18/2025

To many, the term "Black Capitalists" is oxymoronic. Black people were the labor force that built the infrastructure of American capitalism through the violent enforcement of legalized slavery, so they cannot, and should not, aspire to be the beneficiaries of it. But Wall Street professional and Yale-educated anthropologist Dr. Rachel Laryea poses a provocative question: What if there was a way to thrive within capitalism without diminishing someone else's life chances through exploitative practices? There is--and Black Capitalists are showing us how.

Told through Rachel's own compelling narrative--growing up the child of a single mother who immigrated to the United States from Ghana and rose to the Ivy league and on Wall Street--with original on-the-ground reporting and rigorous historical analysis, Black Capitalists challenges readers to reconsider who gets to be the beneficiary of capitalism and reckons with the responsibility that comes with using the tools of our imperfect economic system to advance social good.

Dr. Laryea reveals in detail how race profoundly shapes the way we participate in capitalism--and how understanding these differences can guide us toward a more inclusive and equitable future. From newly minted undergraduates who find themselves working twenty-hour-days to prove their worth on Wall Street to Nigerian startup founders working to build global credit scores, spanning the streets of Accra to the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs, Black Capitalists' stories and analysis of innovators who are as ambitious as they are altruistic demonstrate the resilience, creativity, and ingenuity of Black people who have long been excluded from the full benefits of the American economic system. At its core, Black Capitalists shows a more productive, and more inclusive, way forward.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593735046?ic_referral=GNH141jj8nuH2dJKUXT8GbmxV2dUxl6bEuy-6OST4y0wM8MnmylQwNXDcZiyENnx2isRZDV4Q_SdM_snGlDEZ7pw-emSp4gWpZFtSRkbsWTMoYUav8kzbvpr1I4Uqne9zT9C1nM

After cutting her teeth on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs, Dr. Rachel Laryea left to pursue a dual PhD in African American studies and sociocultural anthropology at Yale University. Her ethnographic research aims to understand nuanced forms of Black participation in capitalist economies. Rachel has held appointments at NYU Stern Business School and is currently a Wealth Management researcher at JPMorganChase. Prior to her current role, Rachel was a racial equity investment strategist, supporting the strategic implementation of the JPMorganChase $30 billion Racial Equity Commitment in service of closing the racial wealth gap for Black, Latino, and Hispanic communities. Rachel is also the founder and CEO of Kelewele, a plantain-inspired food startup based in Brooklyn, New York.

Laryea is in conversation with Mike Amezcua, the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University and the Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. and Annette L. Nazareth Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ. He teaches and writes about 20th century U.S. history, Latinx history, urban studies, capitalism, race, inequality, politics, and immigration. He has written for The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Chicago Sun-Times, and Zócalo, and has discussed his work on NPR, PBS, ABC, Univision, and other programs.

*recorded 6/17/2025

An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It's just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he's still reeling from the tabloid spectacle--as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it's not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life--drawn back into the city's underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668077436?ic_referral=Ec0d7rmJxTgm-eFmdKQRWjZGv8zpqQRLCZs44R3-4-IwMwHE6BKaqqhSUYRitW8bQQ51n6xNRi10xF6MpXULggTQc1Sqr-6d4S0FAm9-BLDVZKMJMTc9_CjiKLTKx3-Kg997rbM

Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Great Black Hope is his first novel.

Franklin is in conversation with Ayesha Rascoe. Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the Saturday episodes of Up First. Prior to her role as host, Rascoe was a White House Correspondent. She covered three presidential administrations. As a part of the White House team, she was also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast. Before joining NPR, Rascoe spent the first decade of her career at Reuters, rising from a news assistant to an energy reporter to eventually covering the White House. While at Reuters, Rascoe covered some of the biggest energy and environmental stories of the past decade, including the 2010 BP oil spill. Rascoe is also the editor of HBCU Made: A Celebration of the Black College Experience, a book of essays about the impact of historically Black colleges and universities. She's a proud graduate of Howard University.

*recorded 6/16/2025