Politics and Prose Presents

The orphan story has been mythologized: Step one: While a child is still too young to form distinct memories of them, their parents die in an untimely fashion. Step two: Orphan acquires caretakers who amplify the world's cruelty. Step three: Orphan escapes and goes on an adventure, encountering the world's vast possibilities.

The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow upends this. Pairing powerful critiques of popular orphan narratives, from Annie to the Boxcar Children to Party of Five, journalist Kristen Martin explores the real history of orphanhood in the United States, from the 1800s to the present. Martin reveals the mission of religious indoctrination that was at the core of the first orphanages, the orphan trains that took parentless children out West (often without a choice), and the inherent classism and racism that still underlies the United States' approach to child welfare.

Through a combination of in-depth archival research, memoir (Martin herself lost both her parents when she was quite young), and cultural analysis, The Sun Won't Come out Tomorrow is a compellingly argued, compassionate book that forces us to reconsider autonomy, family, and community. Kristen Martin delivers a searing indictment of America's consistent inability to care for those who need it most.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781645030348?ic_referral=Jj8uLTJF6vDpYACp24JFDRTeKA4qe3DSSDXL4ZfZShQwM1Y-0-Oc3t3wiKADyu9Z_c36oUNXpp14aA2akPVTG65oJZehlnRuqSxDJM3iH1EJusfuSoY63VQ7Eay348fzg0F4kg

Kristen Martin is a writer and critic based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, NPR, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow is her first book.

Martin is in conversation with Lily Meyer, a writer, translator, and critic. Her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso's story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Short War is her first novel.

*recorded 1/22/2025

This event is in partnership with the Washington DC ACS Lawyer Chapter. 

In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement's struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why?

In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools--and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit's students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight--and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth's landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs. The "metropolitan remedy" could have remade the landscape of racial justice. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the suburbs could not be a part of the effort to integrate--and thus upheld the inequalities that remain in place today.

Adams tells this story via compelling portraits of a city under stress and of key figures--including Detroit's first Black mayor, Coleman Young, and Justices Marshall, Rehnquist, and Powell. The result is a legal and historical drama that exposes the roots of today's backlash against affirmative action and other efforts to fulfill the country's promise.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780374250423?ic_referral=1Bad96OOxS7d0iWPbxmY1XHAVIHlbpULz4HHrb-lmakwM2Av4F3GtfKglOwABxva6iFEAfeAi1frFJW7_D-BBsPYdpM9aN-4xHbdpha-ksRNdH8kPNs5uC_VYch6F5teZOCtOA

Michelle Adams is the Henry M. Butzel Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. The former codirector of the Floersheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, she served on the Biden administration's Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court and as an expert commentator on the Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America and the Showtime series Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court. Her writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, and elsewhere. She was born and grew up in Detroit.

Adams is in conversation with Sheryll Cashin. Cashin is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University. She teaches Constitutional Law and Race & American Law among other subjects and is an acclaimed author. She writes about racial justice and democracy. Her most recent book, White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, is about the role of segregation and redlining in reproducing inequality. Her books have been nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction (2015), and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction (2005, 2009, and 2018). Cashin is a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. A contributing writer for Politico Magazine, she has also written commentaries for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, The Root, and others.

*recorded 1/21/2025

More than a century of civil rights activism reached a mountaintop with the arrival of a Black man in the Oval Office. But hopes for a unified, post-racial America were deflated when Barack Obama's presidency met with furious opposition. A white, right-wing backlash was brewing, and a volcanic new movement--a second civil rights movement--began to erupt.

In New Prize for These Eyes, award-winning author Juan Williams shines a light on this historic, new movement. Who are its heroes? Where is it headed? What fires, furies, and frustrations distinguish it from its predecessor?

In the 20th century, Black activists and their white allies called for equal rights and an end to segregation. They appealed to the Declaration of Independence's defiant assertion that "all men are created equal." They prioritized legal battles in the courtroom and legislative victories in Congress. Today's movement is dealing with new realities. Demographic changes have placed progressive whites in a new role among the largest, youngest population of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the nation's history. The new generation is social media savvy, and they have an agenda fueled by discontent with systemic racism and the persistent scourge of police brutality. Today's activists are making history in a new economic and cultural landscape, and they are using a new set of tools and strategies to do so.

Williams brilliantly traces the arc of this new civil rights era, from Obama to Charlottesville to January 6th and a Confederate flag in the Capitol. An essential read for activists, historians, and anyone passionate about America's future, New Prize for These Eyes is more than a recounting of history. It is a forward-looking call to action, urging Americans to get in touch with the progress made and hurdles yet to be overcome.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668012352?ic_referral=wJhifcepzwtoov-k8Gg7HphNyqMO6WCDBZSLHItQ7wcwM9d3h4c12B3UUusHhA9slVSmAIDqkoeDKKV7NHsc48oAVvD8jLkRkbSSmaeIE-vsrxmS5BSXrh510lFx1o_NBB_dqg

Juan Williams is a prizewinning journalist and historian. He is the author of the bestselling civil rights history Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965, which accompanied the PBS series of the same name. He also wrote the landmark biography of the first African American on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, as well as the New York Times bestsellers Enough and Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate. Williams worked for The Washington Post as a celebrated national political correspondent, White House correspondent, and editorial writer. His NPR talk show took ratings to a new high. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Ebony. He is currently senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a columnist for The Hill.

This event is in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

This powerful collection of essays brought to life with more than 150 illustrations investigates the intertwined legacies of slavery, freedom, and capitalism. In Slavery's Wake frames the history of slavery in a global context to show how it created systems of oppression that continue to shape the world today. Compelling essays from key historians and scholars trace the contemporary resonances of slavery but also the history of freedom-making, from abolitionism to enslaved and colonized people asserting their humanity to the Black Lives Matter movement. The history is humanized by:

This book posits that current matters of freedom and equality are only made possible by understanding how past injustices have defined the present, making it an essential read for anyone engaged in social justice. Poignant and insightful, In Slavery's Wake examines the long shadow of slavery and looks toward building a freer future beyond it.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781588347794?ic_referral=fmioBOMIoqxIynOi4RfMSYT_3x1wf4rqSeoELnOCYkMwM9epVHmLk-_ATs_83kHckoseycwmG0eFjtHgYkdahpDoG_bU--WPJvOLKtRP4oMRuuWqh5Eqr1KrcDxue3bL_dqvkQ

Paul Gardullo is a historian and curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and director of its Center for the Study of Global Slavery. Johanna Obenda is a curatorial specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture who explores stories of the varied African diasporic experience through the lens of art, history, and culture. Anthony Bogues is Harmon Family Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world's most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies' female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.

In House of Huawei, Washington Post technology reporter Eva Dou pieces together a remarkable portrait of Huawei's reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, and how he built a sprawling corporate empire--one whose rise Western policymakers have become increasingly obsessed with halting. Based on wide-ranging interviews and painstaking archival research, House of Huawei dissects the global web of power, money, influence, surveillance, bloodshed, and national glory that Huawei helped to build--and that has also ensnared it.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593544631?ic_referral=EbUoYyRWkeehvZFEQVvQKw4UkCh0ByBs9ODIyrezhJkwMwNeBYxjYRiRFx7TXrY8-igwynj5K7OThv7nJgyj1nBXyKeT7ughDq5PVLgIciJF1v3R6_Xpmm8BXxRCm2JWb0_ysg

Eva Dou is a technology policy reporter for The Washington Post. A Detroit native, she was previously China business reporter at The Post and spent seven years covering politics and technology for The Wall Street Journal in China and Taiwan. She is based in Washington, DC.

*recorded 1/18/2025

Big Goals: The Science of Setting Them, Achieving Them, and Creating Your Best Life delves deeply into effective goal setting practices for both personal growth and corporate excellence, empowering individuals across all ages to pursue their ambitions with a newfound sense of confidence and mastery. Readers of this book will gain a nuanced understanding of the little-known science of goal setting, with practical tools and unique worksheets to use on their goal-achieving journey.

The insight in this book is powered by 15 years of exciting findings of positive psychology, along with Caroline Adams Miller's extensive experience as an executive coach. In this book, readers will learn about:

No matter whether you're scared to start, sick of failure, or somewhere in between, Big Goals explains the new approach you need to more confidently and effectively move forward towards achieving your goals in your personal and professional life.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781394273317?ic_referral=dHPTJdEteQlXb8sEq-hzND-Y10U51w-nkE6VHZqV7iwwM3CBpYVZmU7Qhks7DHke_97L179evZgjzQmOMYf9wWTsMQSIliC1c-O-TGc4ysXajfzLUkc-6lJZgkzTVty4Fa0Ecw

Caroline Adams Miller is one of the world’s leading experts on the science behind successful goal setting and the use of ‘good grit’ to achieve hard things. For more than 30 years she’s been a pioneer in the self-help and Positive Psychology worlds. Her best selling books, executive coaching, educational courses, motivational speaking and personal stories bring audiences research-based, actionable strategies to help them cultivate more grit and dig deeper to clarify and achieve their toughest and most important goals.

Miller is in conversation with Rob Sayre, a receiver and bookseller at P&P, a Masters swimmer (with Caroline and Nicole), and a retired Army officer.

*recorded 1/18/2025

In this book, Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva offer an existential challenge to one of America's favorite pastimes: college football. Drawing on twenty-five in-depth interviews with former players at some of the country's most prominent college football schools, Kalman-Lamb and Silva explore how football is both predicated on a foundation of coercion and suffused with racialized harm and exploitation. Through the stories of those who lived it, the authors examine the ways in which college football must be understood as a site of harm, revealing how players are systematically denied the economic value they produce for universities and offered only a devalued education in return. 
By illuminating the plantation dynamics that make this a particularly racialized form of exploitation, the book makes legible the forms of physical sacrifice that are required, the ultimate cost in health and well-being, and the coercion that drives players into the sport and compels them to endure such abusive conditions.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469683461?ic_referral=FWgqlJlKE4MF8Dd0hvCWGpuqbydIz8XZ-ieQhcz9vZ8wMwxpqPZckx6i--lT2sVBUYB2FJMTYehvsEdjvKKiqrIhf4SGu_Lt2IcPo8TIJrsBe1eSGE9CfNYT8OnYclwKMF8yGQ

Derek Silva is associate professor of sociology at University of King's College and is the coauthor of Power Played: A Critical Criminology of Sport.

Silva is in conversation with David Zirin, the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL.

"You're as likely to be hit twice by lightning on a Monday as see a wood chipper pull a man into its maw."

So begins North of Ordinary, John Rolfe Gardner's virtuosic story collection of survivors getting by despite the odds in a shifting world. In these pages, we meet a nervous young apprentice to a weathered tree climber; a dangerously obsessed student at a Southern Bible college; an attractive schemer trying to build an audience for her tiny radio station; an undercover, cross-dressing lawman whose friendship changes the life of a deaf child in a suburban cul-de-sac; and an elderly Black mason whose knowledge of the town's history harbors truths that shake his visitor's foundation.

Surprising, touching, and deeply humane, the ten stories of North of Ordinary offer an intimate, revelatory look at our fractured society and pull us together through the power of art.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781954276321?ic_referral=fJaorNrZmh1gd7JYr3kUIqs4lOBUa-SlJBua8aKHhL8wM5lKWUkNt9l03FUE8yfF5qW00f8Km4Y8e0mfnLpnOAIV9CgJ5gVwsrNpO5ON4QEmqpXDxIDZNXbUxMdXOZlqmQHUUQ

John Rolfe Gardiner was born in New York and grew up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia during World War II. Recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he is the author of six novels and four collections of short fiction, including North of Ordinary. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, American Scholar, Oxford American, One Story, Pushcart Prize anthology, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Gardiner lives in Middleburg, Virginia, with his wife, ceramic artist Joan Gardiner.

Gardiner is in conversation with John Lescault. Lescault is an actor/narrator who been living and working in the DC area for nearly 50 years.  His stage work includes performances at: The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre, The Folger Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Round House Theatre, among many others.  John has narrated over 400 (and counting) audiobooks. He is delighted to be reunited with John Rolfe Gardiner. 

In 1972, Martha "Marty" Goddard volunteered at a crisis hotline, counseling girls who had been molested by their fathers, their teachers, their uncles. Soon, Marty was on a mission to answer a question: Why were so many sexual predators getting away with these crimes? By the end of the decade, she had launched a campaign pushing hospitals and police departments to collect evidence of sexual assault and treat survivors with dignity. She designed a new kind of forensics tool--the rape kit--and new practices around evidence collection that spread across the country. Yet even as Marty fought for women's rights, she allowed a man to take credit for her work.

When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593314715?ic_referral=3CBLAZgM2xvrxosJvICulY2w9dB2LTMpNY9nM8k7jB0wM0EdwZdT9uIiwfR6glwj2-4isxCq935gm5hn50eoWKKQGQBjO33P8Lmbugp43F4eQIAgvWak_ZRFbWcMdIjuM55AHg

Pagan Kennedy is the author of eleven books. Her journalism has appeared in dozens of publications, and she has worked as a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, and The Village Voice. She has co-produced and authored a serial podcast for Radiotopia network that won a Webby Award. She has also been awarded a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, an NEA Fellowship, a Smithsonian Fellowship, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships.

Kennedy is in conversation with Hanna Rosin, a journalist and podcast host, currently of Radio Atlantic. Previously she was the editorial director of audio at New York magazine. She started her audio career at NPR, serving as co-host of Invisibilia. Prior to making the switch to podcasts, she was a magazine and newspaper outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic and New York magazine. She is also the author of two books, most recently The End of Men. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her partner, teenage son and a ragtag collection of pets with human names. She recently started doing pottery, badly.st served seating.

*recorded 1/16/2025

How many times have you wanted to object, disagree, or opt out of something--but ended up swallowing your words, shaking your head, and just going along? Analyzing cases from corporate corruption to sexual abuse to everyday acquiescence at work, the doctor's office, and in our personal lives, award-winning organizational psychologist Dr. Sunita Sah delves deep into why the pressure to comply is a corrosive and often invisible force in our society. With her own revelatory research, she radically transforms our idea of defiance from a misunderstood negative trait into a crucial, positive force for personal and societal change. Taking us through her five stages of defiance, Dr. Sah equips readers with simple tools to make decisions that align with their values. Defy is the essential playbook for how to speak up and act when it matters most.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593445778?ic_referral=gxTBPjQwCJrIAhdqZnwVra6xPt1i4MScoffWaLLQ4zowMx-gaVySBZD_PyZjCNGOQHQcI_PrEzo3OfJX5g0CH2G7Dvxj_-nGQZL1FdWECnOa6XFC-3dO0t8EZIhTEEg4_oA_5Q

Dr. Sunita Sah is an award-winning professor at Cornell University and an expert in organizational psychology. She leads groundbreaking research on influence, authority, compliance, and defiance. A trained physician, she practiced medicine in the United Kingdom and worked as a management consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. She currently teaches executives, leaders, and students in healthcare and business. Dr. Sah is a sought-after international speaker and consultant, advisor to government agencies, and former Commissioner of the National Commission on Forensic Science. Her multidisciplinary research and analyses have been widely published in leading academic journals and media entities including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. She lives with her husband and son in New York.

Sah is in conversation with Joanna Lohman. Lohman is a global keynote speaker, former pro soccer player, and performance ignitor who excels at unlocking human potential and authentic excellence. A member of the U.S. Women's National Team and Washington Spirit's first jersey retiree, Joanna has a rich background in leadership and social impact. She authored "Raising Tomorrow's Champions" and serves as a human rights activist and Sport Diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, using sports to address critical global issues. With 20 years of experience applying elite sports lessons to business, Joanna helps organizations excel through transformational leadership, resilience, and collective engagement. She has traveled to over 50 countries working with the world's top companies and is a frequent television and radio personality. A Penn State standout, Joanna is a Springbrook High School and Montgomery County Sports Hall of Fame inductee. She is also a wife to Melodie and a parent to Luna.

*recorded 1/15/2025