Politics and Prose Presents

Houston, Texas, in the early 1970s was an exciting place--the home of NASA, the city of the future. But a string of missing teenage boys, many from the same neighborhood, hinted at a dark undercurrent that would go ignored for too long. While their siblings and friends wondered where they'd gone, the Houston Police Department dismissed them as thrill-seeking runaways, fleeing the Vietnam draft or conservative parents, likely looking to get high and join the counterculture.

It was only after their killer, Dean Corll, was murdered by an accomplice that many of those boys' bodies were discovered in mass graves. Known as the "Candy Man," Corll was a local sweet shop owner who had enlisted two teenage boys to lure their friends to parties where they would be tortured and killed, and then buried.

All of Corll's victims' bodies were badly decomposed; some were only skeletal. Known collectively as the Lost Boys, many were never identified. Decades later, when forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick discovered a box of remains marked "1973 Murders" in the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office, she knew she had to act. It would take prison interviews with Corll's accomplices, advanced scientific techniques, and years of tireless effort to identify the young men whose lives had been taken. But one by one, nearly all of their names have been returned to them.

Investigative journalist Lise Olsen immerses readers in this astonishing story, simultaneously bringing to life the teens who were hunted by a killer hiding in plain sight and the extraordinary woman who would finally give his victims back their dignity and their names. The upside-down murder mystery reveals new information about this case and astonishing facts about why these victims were forgotten in the 1970s--and why what happened to them remains relevant.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593595688?ic_referral=F02d9y_9zB5eGL2W-cwYqFNXD7Md23oo1RgK2BGlJKQwM0Z6uAS7OOTGdPzGcaJoL-lS3NUXV__kUjOzEkTm9Jfz2v-IjTGfCviVj07BLJRo_i94rV7sYqKSshMHF3uJfGmb4w

Lise Olsen is an investigative reporter, editor, and award-winning author of the books Code of Silence and The Scientist and the Serial Killer. Her reports have contributed to the prosecutions of a former congressman and a federal judge, inspired laws and reforms, helped solve cold cases, restored names to unidentified murder victims, and freed wrongfully held prisoners. Her writing has appeared in the Texas Observer, NBC News, the Houston Chronicle, Texas Monthly and elsewhere. She's featured in Netflix's The Texas Killing Fields, Paramount+'s The Pillowcase Murders, CNN's The Wrong Man, and the A&E series The Eleven. She lives near Houston, Texas and has two boys of her own.

Olsen is joined by special guest Dr. Sharon M. Derrick, an Austin, Texas native, who began an investigation to identify the teenaged victims of serial killer Dean Corll in 2006 as a Forensic Anthropologist for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Her groundbreaking investigation and discoveries are featured in The Scientist and the Serial Killer, as well as in Texas Monthly,  The Clown and the Candy Man docuseries, and in The Houston Chronicle. She is currently Coordinator of the Forensics Sciences Program and Associate Professor at Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi.

*recorded 4/4/2025

In Bad Law, the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution brings his trademark legal acumen and passionate snark to a brilliant takedown of ten of what he considers the most egregiously awful laws on the books today. These are pieces of legislation that are making life worse rather than better for Americans, and that, he argues with trenchant wit and biting humor, should be repealed completely.

On topics ranging from abortion and immigration to voting rights and religious freedom, we have chosen rules to live by that do not reflect the will of most of the people. With respect to our decision to make a law that effectively grants immunity to gun manufacturers, for example, Mystal writes, "We live in the most violent, wealthy country on earth not in spite of the law; we live in a first-person-shooter video game because of the law."

But, as the man Samantha Bee calls "irrepressible and righteously indignant" and Matt Levine of Bloomberg Opinion calls "the funniest lawyer in America," points out, these laws do not come to us from on high; we write them, and we can and should unwrite them. In a marvelous and original takedown spanning all the hot-button topics in the country today, one of our most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow most brilliant legal thinkers points the way to a saner tomorrow.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781620978580?ic_referral=4s-Ufhdxrm4e4I7lsJaRpmBJecBqWP06oI9g7lOWCNwwMzxMy8Jw6cujmQP0NSqznBbySngAOPyZXJ5pyUN6q3XruBnavyFc5z9PG0BAXYzWv3g3QUki_Rd6aS1dK0ylRykufQ

Elie Mystal is the New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution (The New Press) as well as The Nation's legal analyst and justice correspondent, and the legal editor of the More Perfect podcast on the Supreme Court for Radiolab. He is an Alfred Knobler Fellow at Type Media Center, and a frequent guest on MSNBC and Sirius XM. He lives in New York.

Mystal is in conversation with Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate and a regular MSNBC contributor. Based in Washington, D.C., he has covered the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state and local courts since 2013. Mark holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the Maryland Bar. He is the author of The Roberts Court Arrives, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. 

*recorded 4/3/2025

At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980's New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.

Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart's life and death.

The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.

Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart's life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980's New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250898227?ic_referral=OIA6_PmXnbE6Cj1NZcGpJbed7Ni5bI3Fj6MDJN7jxO4wM96wkxPq2DeeeOt-JE38rzDFwPT5B0mQOiaB3v3lTpu2RF6WBAESrHPCwmgTe8fGSSZf9RPv3oucuXFYVdcRQkmlQxk

Elon Green has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and appears in Unspeakable Acts, Sarah Weinman's anthology of true crime. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York was his first book and won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Green was an executive producer on the HBO series adapted from Last Call.

Green is in conversation with Nicole Chung. Chung is the author of the award-winning memoir A Living Remedy, which was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen other outlets. Her 2018 debut All You Can Ever Know was a bestseller and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time, Esquire, The Washington Post, and many other publications.

*recorded 4/2/2025

This event is in partnership with New Endeavors by Women.

The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America's booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country's "Black Mecca" after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children--and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation's working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation's hidden homeless--omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

By turns heartbreaking and urgent, There Is No Place for Us illuminates the true magnitude, causes, and consequences of the new American homelessness--and shows that it won't be solved until housing is treated as a fundamental human right.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593237144?ic_referral=kRRaI5FhUokZJyHFmW0o7RZVjXNGiLrCHJrXCxcr8uAwMy2oGw3_mU85V27sGyEx4Lqz3BbB5Z8qxIqsTmYR_Xqc2Ndf6LzO0I38iOMHLSF-vy09IQ-JIdJwK7Bvon238K5rcQ

Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.

Goldstone 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.

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New Endeavors by Women (NEW) is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to partnering with women experiencing homelessness to build brighter, more sustainable futures. Through tailored support and a comprehensive range of services, NEW works alongside women to break the cycle of homelessness. NEW’s initiatives include secure housing for mothers and their children, life skills development, access to education, and pathways to employment, all aimed at fostering long-term independence and success. Learn more at www.nebw.org.

*recorded 4/2/2025

This event is in partnership with Byrdland Records. 

Peter Wolf grew up in the Bronx, a child of "fellow travelers" whose artistic inclinations influenced both his love of music and his initial desire to become a painter. Stories of his loving and sometimes eccentric parents complement scenes depicting a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene. Reflections on Wolf's studies in Boston--where he shared an apartment with David Lynch--are braided with accounts of first love, an untraditional literary education, and early musical influences such as Muddy Waters.

After Wolf joined the J. Geils Band as their front man and his musical fame grew, he rubbed shoulders with other notables who left significant impressions on him, including members of the Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, and Van Morrison. Wolf's marriage to Faye Dunaway is presented in a clear yet balanced and nuanced light.

Told with gentle humor and often heart-rending poignancy, the word portraits in Waiting on the Moon provide a revealing glimpse of artists, writers, actors, and musicians as they work--the creative forces that drive them to achievement; the demons they battle; the patterns of their human relationships. They are meant to inspire not only empathy but also admiration. Like Isherwood, Wolf remains "a camera with its shutter open." 

Peter Wolf, born in the Bronx NY, became a rock 'n' roll convert at the age of eleven after attending an Alan Freed revue that included performances by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. Although at first, he aspired to a career as a painter and studied at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, he experienced a life-changing epiphany after jumping onstage with a band of fellow art students at a loft party forming one of Boston's early rock bands, the Hallucinations.

Shortly thereafter, Wolf secured a job as an all-night DJ on the fledgling FM radio station WBCN, where he adopted the persona of the "Woofa Goofa" and spun obscure rock 'n' roll and early rhythm and blues. His encyclopedic musical knowledge came in handy when he and some like-minded Boston players formed the J. Geils Band, much of whose early repertoire was drawn from Wolf's vast record collection. In 1970 the band was signed by Jerry Wexler for Atlantic Records where they went on to release nine influential albums and earned a reputation as one of rock's most exciting live acts. In 1979 they were signed by EMI America topping the charts world-wide with their hit songs "Freeze Frame," "Love Stinks," and "Centerfold."

With the 1984 album Lights Out, Wolf began his career as a solo artist. In the ensuing years he collaborated with Aretha Franklin, Merle Haggard, John Lee Hooker, and Mick Jagger, among others. His album Sleepless was voted one of the top five hundred albums of all time by Rolling Stone. He currently tours with his band 'The Midnight Travelers' and will be releasing his ninth solo album in 2025. He lives and works from his home base in Boston, Massachusetts. 

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780316571708?ic_referral=VdYyEg81G2jkm2RzW-orGWPLt5WyVadhctskcXZZBQMwM98p0FmXl11yVH-6vbX3ExYxYfiS1W9grCaDj5cwe3EpW9xfCEqHhVMEzjKSQPrMS1JXpeyL8RwBObPdJEHgboEHeZI*recorded 4/1/2025

Wife to a well-known actor, the mother of two, a sister, daughter, and general meddler, Tess Sanchez's life was like a #1-rated sitcom. But the loss of her career as a highly successful casting executive equaled series cancellation. Now, with humor and insight, Sanchez examines the aftermath of a major shift that forever changed the course of her life, and the resilience that came from reframing loss into possibility.

"We've decided to go in a different direction" was a phrase Sanchez rattled off to countless agents, actors, producers, and many more. But in the fall of 2020, the tables turned as she was on the receiving end of that phrase, when she lost the long-held job she adored. She quickly discovered how much that career defined her identity, from her personal relationships to her own perception of herself. In the midst of facing this upheaval, her father was diagnosed with a devastating illness and suddenly, Sanchez had to learn what it means to parent her parents.

Moving, witty, and fun, We've Decided to Go in a Different Direction offers you both welcome comedy and empowering strength when it comes to tackling life's challenge.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668060858?ic_referral=es8BSJNGeqxES7YL3YXntoiVANYGc67_Zeh91BCpSsMwMxwEn9fYa51zZv5gRThWEHxpNtcd6X-11dispHpglagqzc2_y_9heEy7aMFtjAKt7ARPFvswxluyiZtknysr0m1G6DU

Tess Sanchez has spent twenty years in the entertainment industry as a casting director. We've Decided to Go in a Different Direction is her debut book. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband, actor Max Greenfield, and their two children. Follow her on Instagram @TessSanchezGreenfield.

Sanchez is in conversation with actor and author Max Greenfield. He currently is in production on Season 7 of the hit-CBS sitcom, The Neighborhood, in which he stars opposite Cedric the Entertainer. Next up, he can be seen opposite Kate Hudson in the Netflix series Running Point, which is produced by Mindy Kaling. Last year, he was featured in Chelsea Perretti’s directorial debut First Time Female Director, as well as Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix comedy Unfrosted opposite Amy Schumer. Previous film credits include the Lionsgate/Hulu feature The Valet, Emerald Fennell’s Promsing Young Woman, What Men Want, Hello, My Name is Doris, and About Alex. In television, Max is widely known for his starring role of “Schmidt” in the FOX sitcom New Girl, for which he was nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe. Additional television credits include American Crime Story, Veronica Mars, Ugly Betty, and Greek. Max has authored 4 successful children’s books I Don’t Want to Read This Book, This Book is Not a Present, I Don't Want to Read This Book Aloud & the NY-Times Bestseller Goodnight Thoughts.

*recorded 4/1/2025

The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.

Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.

An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781982141806?ic_referral=Pnu2dZ-49no_XXixaycTE7yP2fNT9DrSyqEIK_4NeaowM8Myx9N4NKdwUx3wf9_bg4lo14AiUmwuNG_u5oI9QCxbE19w4uGYksbVMdP3lx5U6etXMQQTv0l7bpOyatZZypKk2Q

Clay Risen, a reporter and editor at The New York Times, is the author of The Crowded Hour, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and a fellow at the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of two other acclaimed books on American history, A Nation on Fire and The Bill of the Century, as well as his most recent book on McCarthyism, Red Scare. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two young children.

Risen is in conversation with Michael Kazin, a Professor in the Department of History. He is an expert in U.S. politics and social movements, 19th and 20th centuries. His most recent book is What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) which was named an Editor's Choice by the NY Times Book Review and one of the best ten books published on U.S. history in 2022 by Kirkus Reviews. His previous book War Against War: The American Fight for Peace1914-1918 (Simon and Schuster, 2017) was also named an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review and was awarded the Elise M. Boulding Prize for the best book in peace history by the Peace History Society. His previous books include American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (Knopf, 2011), which was named a Best Book of 2011 by The New Republic, Newsweek/Daily Beast, and The Progressive.

*recorded 3/30/2025

Naema, an elderly princess dedicated to her pet causes, is in a bind: struck by a malady that maroons her in Montreux, she's unable to host an exclusive gala dinner in Berlin to honor the author Masud al-Huzeil for his lifetime achievement in Arabic literature. Not only is she unable to attend, RSVPs have been slow to materialize, and she's reduced to begging the ancient award winner to find some attendees at the last minute. Masud invites his old friend Demian, a native Berliner, who in turn invites his two best friends: the troubled innocent Livia and an American publisher, Toto, who will do anything for a free meal.

But Toto doesn't come alone. In tow are his younger Internet date--she's stood him up often enough to be nicknamed "the Flake"--and Demian's fifteen-year-old daughter, Nicole. Not to mention the cop who's been trailing Nicole since she left the red-light district. Presiding over the affair is Naema's infinitely rich, endlessly disaffected grandson, Prince Radi, whose pass at Nicole culminates in an epic midnight food run that changes all their lives.

With sophistication and tenderness, Nell Zink weaves a vividly colored tapestry of a milieu at odds with itself, taking her trademark ambiguity, daring, and humor to new heights.

Nell Zink grew up in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She did a variety of service and administrative jobs before becoming a professional novelist at age fifty. Before then, her publications were confined to an indie rock fanzine and short-lived blog, both titled Animal Review. Her books to date include The Wallcreeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist (two novellas written for her friend Avner Shats), Nicotine, Doxology, and Avalon. Three of her books became New York Times Notable Books, and one was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Granta, and Harper's Magazine. In 2022, she served as the Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor for World Literature at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She lives near Berlin.

*recorded 3/29/2025

The American government was faced with an unprecedented challenge: where to house the nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war plucked from the battlefield and shipped across the Atlantic. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Department of War hastily built hundreds of POW camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps--which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California--have all but vanished. Forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place within them: Nazi power games playing out in the heart of the United States.

Protected by the Geneva Convention, German POWs were well-fed and housed. Many worked on American farms, and a few would even go on to marry farmers' daughters. Ardent Nazis in the camps, however, took a dim view of fellow Germans who befriended their captors.

Soon, the killings began. In camp after camp, Nazis attacked fellow Germans they deemed disloyal. Fifteen were sentenced to death for murder by secret U.S. military tribunals. In response, German authorities condemned fifteen American POWs to the same fate, and, in the waning days of the war, Germany proposed an audacious trade: fifteen German lives for fifteen American lives.

Drawing on extensive research, journalist and author William Geroux shines a spotlight on this story of murder and high-stakes diplomacy, and on the fifteen American lives that hung in the balance--from a fearless P-51 Mustang fighter pilot to a hot-tempered lieutenant colonel nicknamed "King Kong.

Propulsive and vividly rendered, The Fifteen reminds us that what happens to soldiers after they exit the battlefield can be just as harrowing as what they experience on it.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593594254?ic_referral=JlIH5o2J_8kFhyQWV_Jpc4CX08A8uNTYX_MEQ8QwmeAwMzNLqk0lVKXCR9gRmK_qreYchMq7wx8r2mWIaUjF8IeitMDfZkwZjbGe6KVxQuudD_TXB1VcYU-7zmf74sy3RDUNMQ

William Geroux is the author of The Ghost Ships of Archangel and The Mathews Men. He has spent twenty-five years as a journalist, writing often about the military and winning awards for breaking-news coverage, investigative journalism, and feature writing. A native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of the College of William and Mary, Geroux lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Geroux is in conversation with Tom Kapsidelis. Kapsidelis is a freelance journalist who worked at the Richmond Times-Dispatch for twenty-eight years. He supervised the newspaper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings as the on-site editor in Blacksburg on April 16, 2007. In 2016, he was selected as a one-year residential fellow at Virginia Humanities to complete work on After Virginia Tech. In 2020, he was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. Before joining The Times-Dispatch, he worked as an editor and writer for United Press International and The State of Columbia, South Carolina. Kapsidelis is a graduate of the University of Maryland and the master of fine arts creative nonfiction program at Goucher College. He lives in Richmond.

*recorded 3/29/2025

During the Cold War, the Smolensk Archive held the only collection of Communist Party documents available to Western scholars, becoming the foundation for generations of scholarship on Soviet history. Crucibles of Power returns to the Smolensk Region with fresh eyes and fresh sources. Prizewinning historian Michael David-Fox traces the experiences of Smolensk residents between the interwar years and the end of World War II, a period during which the city and region passed from Stalinist rule to Nazi occupation and back. The result is a revelatory examination of choice and power under dueling forms of murderous totalitarianism.

Exploring the life-and-death decisions of a fascinating cast of characters--from young women in the Communist Youth League to a defense lawyer during Stalin's Great Terror who became Smolensk's collaborationist mayor during the German occupation--David-Fox shows how deeply the Stalinist and Nazi regimes relied on the cooptation of average citizens motivated by greed and need, but always within the orbit of ideology. Challenging today's Russian nationalist narrative of heroic WWII resistance, he finds that large numbers of Russians aided the Nazi occupation of Smolensk in order to protect themselves, secure their own self-interest, or pursue vendettas against a Soviet state they found no less corrupt or oppressive than its German foe.

At a time when much of the world is tilting away from liberal democracy and toward authoritarianism, Crucibles of Power masterfully unravels the threads of dictatorial rule. Smolensk emerges as a laboratory for understanding the mechanics of both outright coercion and subtler forms of power, as well as the enabling behavior of ordinary citizens acquiescing to extraordinary crimes.

Michael David-Fox is the author or editor of fifteen books, including Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union and Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941. He is Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and Professor of History at Georgetown University.

David-Fox will be in conversation with Michael Kimmage. Kimmage, Director of the Kennan Institute, is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy. He writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and other publications.

*recorded 3/28/2025