Politics and Prose Presents

It was one of history's great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE--as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements--a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia's mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then...the meaning of the characters was lost.

London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public's imagination. Yet Europe's best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.

Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.

From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668015445?ic_referral=s0XTgtxUSR_maI4Gu2uqkYjezJxRXpg-MzCoJzphhV8wM_vBxhA1RgoH3DdOplBYKRGiA8I6BM2NpYoEaloqFMrTqAf8IT7sdbPmqfCzvwX9I8Lq8HHohJlAOwjDQCON5tVXDw

Joshua Hammer is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and The Mesopotamian Riddle. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Outside. He lives in Berlin.

*recorded 3/22/2025

Faruq Zaidi, a young journalist processing the recent death of his father, a devout Muslim, takes the opportunity to embed himself in a cult called "the nameless." Based in the California redwoods and shepherded by an enigmatic Vietnam War veteran named Odo, the nameless adhere to the 18 Utterances, including teachings such as "all suffering is distortion" and "see only beauty." Faruq, skeptical but committed to unraveling the mystery of the nameless, extends his stay over months, as he gets deeper into the cult's inner workings and alluring teachings. But as he gets closer to Odo, Faruq himself begins to unravel, forced to come to terms with the memories he has been running from while trying to resist Odo's spell.

Told in three seamlessly interwoven threads―Faruq's present-day investigation, Odo's time as an infantryman during the Vietnam War alongside three other Black soldiers before the formation of the movement, and a documentary script that recounts the nameless's clash with a Texas fundamentalist church― O Sinners! examines both longing and belonging. Ultimately the novel asks: What is it that we seek from the people we admire and, inevitably, from one another?

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593597446?ic_referral=W5o3TEG9o8qSvVeavd-ydfqicH5iZFLsqGcIDRQ-soYwMy-oEW2_qey6l7424CQ6M1yenE4zswYl9UGotlcxd9jDmLWMvDoDb1i_4bZ-STOLqRhr4ZwiKqi70myqo0XVAvQPyA

Nicole Cuffy is the author of Dances, longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Cuffy has an MFA from The New School and is a lecturer at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. Her work can be found in the New England Review; The Masters Review, Volume VI (curated by Roxane Gay); Chautauqua; and Blue Mesa Review. Her chapbook, Atlas of the Body, won the Chautauqua Janus Prize and was a finalist for the Black River Chapbook Competition. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Cuffy 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.

*recorded 3/22/2025

When Professor Bernadette Atuahene moved to Detroit, she planned to study the city's squatting phenomenon. What she accidentally found was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure, leaving once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes.

Through years of dogged investigation and research, Atuahene uncovered a system of predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity--a nationwide practice in no way limited to Detroit.

In this powerful work of scholarship and storytelling, Atuahene shows how predatory governance invites complicity from well-meaning people, eviscerates communities, and widens the racial wealth gap. Using a multigenerational narrative, Atuahene tells a riveting tale about racist policies, how they take root, why they flourish, and who profits.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780316572217?ic_referral=PNXTwFcfQaDuzUhamYHPQJsFrJPJ0kLsvbZUSpd1oRgwMw-vpVXJcPWEyuY6soT-FpmHPSflnTUcVldP-Es96gT2KW_f7Ody0Yfa6s23_wx_jK9OClRxq5OeV8hYIOwEmqblAA

Bernadette Atuahene is a Harvard and Yale trained property law scholar whose work focuses on land and homes stolen from Black people. She currently holds the Duggan Chair at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Atuahene has served as a judicial clerk at the South African Constitutional Court, worked as a consultant for the South African Land Claims Commission, and practiced at a global law firm called Cleary Gottlieb. She is the author of We Want What's Ours: Learning from South Africa's Land Restitution Program, and she directed and produced an award-winning short documentary film about one South African family's struggle to regain their land. Atuahene has won several accolades and has published extensively in both academic journals and news outlets such as the New York Times and LA Times. 

Atuahene is in conversation with Justin Hansford. Hansford is a Howard University School of Law Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. Professor Hansford was previously a Democracy Project Fellow at Harvard University, a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an Associate Professor of Law at Saint Louis University. He has a B.A. from Howard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a founder of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives. Professor Hansford also has earned a Fulbright Scholar award to study the legal career of Nelson Mandela, and served as a clerk for Judge Damon J. Keith on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 

*recorded 3/21/2025

Reaching back over a century of struggle, liberation, and gutsy play, Shattering the Glass is a sweeping chronicle of women's basketball in the United States. Offering vivid portraits of forgotten heroes and contemporary stars, Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford provide a broad perspective on the history of the sport, exploring its close relationship to concepts of womanhood, race, and sexuality, and to efforts to expand women's rights. 
Extensively illustrated and drawing on original interviews with players, coaches, administrators, and broadcasters, Shattering the Glass presents a moving, gritty view of the game on and off the court. It is both an insightful history and an empowering story of the generations of women who have shaped women's basketball.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469674780?ic_referral=SHCY76wQs3P92IYyqLJKrZandY-RHP3ITFebDU67MFUwM394GSyjFumV-X7hU3H_xGEfvxS_A4bAxN1k4S4dFopZPADm5uK0LfE8w0ZH4B8y0A2wepbjeUB4w5uNLIKPQjeRkA

Pamela Grundy is an independent scholar and author of the award-winning Learning to Win: Sports, Education, and Social Change in Twentieth-Century North Carolina (from the University of North Carolina Press).

Susan Shackelford has written about sports for the Miami Herald and the Charlotte Observer and now runs a freelance writing and editing business. Both authors live in Charlotte, North Carolina.

*recorded 3/20/2025

It is virtually impossible to turn on CNN, read the Wall Street Journal, go to a hospital, attend a university, or browse a bookstore without encountering a sea of Indian names and faces. In her new book, Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America (Harper360; February 28, 2025), author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed provides fascinating portraits of the Indian Americans at the forefront of the wave of Indian success stories.

Ahamed's brilliant portraits of such well-known figures as Satya Nadella, Vinod Khosla, Shantanu Narayen, Chandrika Tandon, Nikesh Arora, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Deepak Chopra, Nikki Haley, and Fareed Zakaria populate the pages of her book. Based on a series of interviews and full of fresh and surprising stories, Indian Genius reveals the private strengths that made possible each individual's public achievements.

What accounts for Indian Americans' remarkable ability to break into mainstream American culture and their meteoric rise within its ranks? Other immigrant groups have found success in the U.S., but none have rocketed so far and so fast, reaching heights in a single generation that have taken other groups the better part of a century to achieve. In Indian Genius, Ahamed focuses on three areas where Indian Americans have had a singular impact: tech, medicine and public policy.

The per capita income of Indian Americans far exceeds that of any ethnic group. According to a 2018 survey by the Pew Research Center, the median annual household income for Indian Americans is $100,000 higher than other Asian Americans ($75,000) and the general population ($53,600). Indians were also the most highly educated; 72 percent are college graduates, compared to 51 percent of other Asians and 30 percent of the rest of the population.

It is essential reading for anyone interested in the path to success in America. 

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/product/indian-genius-meteoric-rise-indians-america-meenakshi-ahamed?v=344637&ic_referral=WFYSnLIb7i35sSG0Fvh01hawyyXvnboTYbuePaz7WqgwM5g1YNgA5g8T5pHUQ4-ljpSZikm5Fnp-YyY9KvgFO_4CLh7-MkESRsXZPag55lIDdbuR4P0i1P1XSRdO3n4VRdRBIw

Meenakshi Ahamed is a freelance journalist and the author of A Matter of Trust: India-U.S. Relations from Truman to Trump, a sweeping narrative history of the turbulent seventy-year relationship between the two countries. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Seminar, and Asian Age. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and for New Delhi Television, and has served on the boards of Doctors Without Borders, Drugs for Neglected Diseases, and Vellore Christian Medical College Foundation. Ahamed was born in Calcutta and received an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She divides her time between New York, Los Angeles, and New Delhi.

Ahamed is in conversation with Evan Osnos. Osnos is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Based in Washington D.C., he writes about politics and foreign affairs. Osnos was the China Correspondent at The New Yorker from 2008 to 2013. His first book, Age of Ambition, won the 2014 National Book award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2020, he published the international bestseller, Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now, based on interviews with Biden, Barack Obama, and others. His latest book, Wildland was published in September 2021. Prior to The New Yorker, Osnos worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

*recorded 3/21/2025

This event is in partnership with Solas Nua. 

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train's crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

From an author whose "writing is superb alchemy" (Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author), The Paris Express is an evocative masterpiece that effortlessly captures the politics, glamour, chaos, and speed that marked the end of the 19th century.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668082799?ic_referral=-ink4cFDdN0WRmcP0Sz8LK20oSap_MO3_DeQ81rUz-AwM87vTrNjjLybbGBhoehxwZwxmFa4XX_kkzcQeoSLketg0Yvvu0H1034PYJrw5Saod0VsbmbsIjtvogcs0gZ5q8NZpQ

Emma Donoghue is the author of sixteen novels, including the award-winning national bestseller Room, the basis for the acclaimed film of the same name. Her latest novel is The Paris Express. She has also written the screenplays for Room and The Wonder and nine stage plays. Her next film (adapted with Philippa Lowthorpe from Helen Macdonald's memoir) is H Is for Hawk. Born in Dublin, she lives in Ontario with her family. Find out more at EmmaDonoghue.com. 

Donoghue is in conversation with Tayla Burney, a long-time public radio producer who worked for years on author interviews and book events. Now on the Programming team at NPR, she helped launch - and still occasionally guest edits - the Book of the Day podcast. Tayla's writing and reviews have appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books and the Washington Post, among other publications. She is currently debating whether or not to bring back her bookish newsletter and hopes you spend all of your book dollars at local indies and have at least two library cards to your name.

*recorded 3/20/2025

Tony Malik is a half-Irish, half-Arab New York-based FBI agent, specializing in money flowing from drug and arms deals. The novel opens in shocking fashion, and Malik's life changes radically. A long-term relationship ends, and his job is on the verge of being taken away from him. During this period he learns more about his roots and becomes interested in his father's past and family--his father came to America years ago from Palestine. Malik decides to make a trip to his father's homeland to attend the wedding of his niece, whom he has never met. As a result of his plans, he is given a simple assignment by his boss at the FBI, partly to see how well he can still do his job. That simple assignment becomes anything but simple.

As soon as he arrives in Gaza, the Israeli police chief overseeing the area is murdered. Malik is at first a suspect. Then, due to his superior investigative skills, he is invited into the Israeli investigation, seeking the murderer. At the core of this novel is Malik's relationship with Yossi, the hard-line anti-Arab Israeli police officer leading the investigation. They must learn to trust each other because, as they move closer to solving the case, they realize there is no one else they can trust on either side.

Extraordinary three-dimensional characters populate this novel: Yossi's daughter, studying in Paris, trying to escape the violence that surrounds her in Israel; Malik's niece, whose wedding and life are shattered by the murder; her fiancé, a peacenik whose existence is complicated by the fact that his cousin is high up in the Hamas command; religious leaders on both sides; corrupt Israeli cops; Palestinians thirsting for violence against Israel; Israelis determined to crush the Palestinians. Lawrence Wright brings a wide and complicated tapestry to life, one that culminates on October 7, 2023, with the deadly Hamas attack on Israel. But he has written more than just a thriller, or even just an examination of all these complicated lives. He has written a novel that manages to explore and explain much of the devastating history that encompasses the relationship between Israel and Palestine--and shows it to us in a way that poignantly reveals the tragic human scale that is involved.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593537831?ic_referral=1c7s4v6msdbxelWnyuDHONfgo1e1yH0Y1nJVZZp_tG4wM5pBjIvOHrRctO3o13n9lBXtiZs_2SnSnIBm0qy2cFskp2bQUmgYR6fufUGtqxIWeeYw6MF5JN0smRUybWqKMdiTkg

Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker, a playwright, a screenwriter, and the author of ten books of nonfiction, including The Looming Tower, Going Clear, and God Save Texas, and three previous novels, Mr. Texas, The End of October, and God's Favorite. His books have received many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower. He and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas.

*recorded 3/19/2025

Told as a series of conversations, Optional Practical Training follows Pavitra, a young Indian woman who came to the US for college from Bangalore, India, and graduates in 2006 with a degree in physics. Her student visa grants her an extra twelve months in the country for work experience--a period known as Optional Practical Training--so she takes a position as a math and physics teacher at a private high school near Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What Pavitra really wants, though, is the time and space to finish a novel--to diverge from what's expected of her within her family of white-collar professionals and to build a life as a writer. Navigating her year of OPT--looking for a room to rent, starting her job--she finds that each person she encounters expects something from her too. As her landlord, colleagues, students, parents of her students, friends of her family, and neighbors talk to and at her, they shape her understanding of race, immigration, privilege, and herself.

Throughout the book, Pavitra seems to speak very rarely; and yet, as she responds to the assumptions, insights, projections, and observations of those around her, a subtle and sophisticated portrait emerges of a young woman and aspiring artist defining a place for herself in the world.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781644453247?ic_referral=PQH8zT5b434gwKkSVlTlPbJ9CRhCPCc30C02UBl2L50wM33kYkBEqlBL2LPTDRaSx8C3TXWTLwGC5lMgl4Ym5rgL0vH4SCA1F4be1CRdj4_XzQQWyC7vlkAPLrBFteVsnX3lYQ

Shubha Sunder is the author of Boomtown Girl, a story collection set in her hometown of Bangalore, India, that won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her family.

Sunder is in conversation with Koye Oyedeji. Oyedeji is a fiction and non-fiction creative based in Washington D.C. His work is often centered around the Black diaspora. His writings have appeared in a number of publications including Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Wasafiri Magazine, The Believer and elsewhere.

*recorded 3/19/2025

In The Pacific Circuit, the award-winning journalist Alexis Madrigal sculpts an intricate tableau of the city of Oakland that is at once a groundbreaking big-idea book, a deeply researched work of social and political history, and an intimate portrait of an essential American city that has been at the crossroads of the defining themes of the twenty-first century.

Oakland's stories encompass everything from Silicon Valley's prominence and the ramifications of a compulsively digital future to the underestimated costs of technological innovation on local communities--all personified in this changing landscape for the city's lifelong inhabitants.

The Pacific Circuit holds a magnifying glass to the scars etched by generations of systemic segregation and the ceaseless march of technological advancement. These are not just abstract concepts; they are embedded in the very fabric of Oakland and its people, from dockworkers and community organizers to real estate developers and businesspeople chasing the highest possible profits. Madrigal delves into city hall politics, traces the intertwining arcs of venture capital and hedge funds, and offers unprecedented insight into Silicon Valley's genesis and growth, all against the backdrop of Oakland--a city vibrating with untold stories and unexplored connections that can, when read carefully, reveal exactly how our markets and our world really function.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374159405?ic_referral=mlio1VFw2EHfC-FYcYr_i5YFPsmFnk1CNHvBinAx34owM3lmaTiACclSfPnBSDmk5CsnENzKQhdFdkczkPc2cHX5naB9UOMTihraNf2lgvvIs8AzigCwvosW6-gwczF-mipikdk

Alexis Madrigal is a journalist who lives in Oakland, California. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a cofounder of the COVID Tracking Project. Previously, he was the editor in chief of Fusion and a staff writer at Wired. He has been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Information School and its Center for the Study of Technology, Science, and Medicine as well as an affiliate with Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the author of Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology.

Madrigal is in conversation with Adam Harris, a senior fellow with the Education Policy program at New America and the author of The State Must Provide: Why America’s Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—and How to Set Them Right. Before joining New America, he covered higher education and national politics for six years on staff at The Atlantic, where he is now a contributing writer. He was previously a reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, focusing on federal education policy and historically black colleges, and the social editor at ProPublica. He served as the 2022-2023 writer-in-residence at North Carolina A&T University. In 2021, Adam was a National Fellow at New America and was named to that year's Forbes "30 Under 30" list. He is currently working on his second book, Is This America?, a history of the South’s role in politics and how the region shapes us as a nation—but not always in the ways we assume it does, which will be published by Pantheon.

*recorded 3/17/2025

It was a quiet way to announce a revolution: In an obscure 2019 case that the Supreme Court refused to even hear, Justice Clarence Thomas raised the prospect of overturning the legendary New York Times v. Sullivan decision. Though hardly a household name, Sullivan is one of the most consequential free speech decisions, ever. Fundamental to the creation of the modern media as we know it, it has enabled journalists and writers all over the country--from top national publications to revered local newspapers to independent bloggers--to pursue the truth aggressively and hold the wealthy, powerful, and corrupt to account.

Thomas's words were a warning--the public awakening of an idea that had been fomenting on the conservative fringe for years. Now it was going mainstream. From the Florida statehouse to small town New Hampshire to Donald Trump himself, this movement today consists of some of the world's richest and most powerful people and companies, who believe they should be above scrutiny and want to silence or delegitimize voices that challenge their supremacy. Indeed, many of the same businessmen, politicians, lawyers, and activists are already weaponizing the legal system to intimidate and punish journalists and others who dare criticize them.

In this masterwork of investigative reporting, David Enrich, New York Times Business Investigations Editor, traces the roots and reach of this new threat to our modern democracy. Laying bare the stakes of losing our most sacrosanct rights, Murder the Truth is a story about power--the way it's used by those who have it, and the lengths they will go to avoid it being questioned.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063372900?ic_referral=-UvaVYnqADB68YBTlSgQHiTvVoHaX1ENDlscbmX7MAYwM-qrSPpGTmksvgL_NOn_ht1h736SKCPz6_-caC2-eodR2f-EmZy1tOCMJeVOkeHt_XvzIcOdaVtinA_kmjm9F9QHng

David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor at the New York Times and the bestselling author of Dark Towers and Servants of the Damned. The winner of numerous journalism awards, he previously was an editor and reporter at the Wall Street Journal. His first book, The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off One of the Greatest Scams in History, was short-listed for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. Enrich grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons.

Enrich is in conversation with Carol Leonnig. Leonnig is a four-time Pulitzer winner, author of three New York Times bestselling books, and investigative reporter who has worked at The Washington Post since 2000. Two of her books document the unprecedented presidency of Donald J. Trump with co-author and fellow Post reporter Philip Rucker. The first, A Very Stable Genius, chronicles Trump’s first 30 months as president, and the second, I Alone Can Fix It, tells the story of his catastrophic and final year in office. Leonnig previously worked on the staff of The Charlotte Observer in North Carolina and The Philadelphia Inquirer. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and MSNBC contributor, she lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and two daughters.

*recorded 3/16/2025