Politics and Prose Presents

More people traveled internationally in 2019 than in any year in history. After COVID began its rapid spread throughout the world, though, international travel plummeted, and nations across the world hardened their borders. For the first time, governments took the same tools that have been used against less privileged migrants and asylum seekers and turned them on citizens from countries that had long enjoyed relatively unfettered travel--and sometimes on their own citizens.

In When the World Closed Its Doors, Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman tell the story of how nearly every country in the world shut its borders to respond to an external threat and explain how this global shock to the system ended up transforming state border policies around the world. They detail the consequences of the COVID border restrictions--couples separated for years, children blocked from reuniting with their parents, container ship workers moving essential goods trapped at sea, pregnant citizens barred from returning home--and explain why governments used their harshest containment measures on those coming from outside. Throughout, Alden and Trautman focus on human stories to show the multiple impacts that states' increasing restrictiveness has had--economic, demographic, social, and political. And the fallout continues: governments left unchecked will continue to restrict borders with little regard to the collateral damage and disruption they cause.

A sweeping overview of the re-bordering of the world, both during and after 2020, this synthetic, wide-angle view of a singular shock to the international systems of travel and migration highlights why citizens need better protections and governments more robust guardrails.

PUCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780197697818?ic_referral=EGcjebHG8dGcTZKXdEetqMMvlF_Aq_0HMuQXqiqLhpUwM3hxWnx9suoyqWowexxmnPHisczX83U0rY6bY2byYuPtR4rOqEzmmJpIiiojtFMJ5tY1hVzeTVWuRftsStoxY2SI7A

Edward Alden is Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Alden's career spans more than three decades in journalism, think tanks, and academia. He was the bureau chief for the Financial Times newspaper in Toronto, Canada, and Washington, DC before joining the Council on Foreign Relations in 2007. In addition to his own books and articles, he has worked with senior US policymakers on in-depth investigations of issues such as US immigration policy, US trade policy, border security, and the future of work. Since 2019 he has also been a visiting professor at Western Washington University, and he currently writes a column for Foreign Policy.

Laurie Trautman is the Director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University--the only one of its kind in the United States. As a leading expert in Canada-US border policy issues, she works across academia, government, and the private sector to improve cross-border mobility and collaboration. In addition to authoring policy briefs and academic publications, Dr. Trautman is an active participant in cross-border working groups and a regular contributor to the media. She is also a Global Fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Center's Canada Institute and holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Oregon.

Alden and Trautman are in conversation with María Teresa Kumar, the co-founder and President of Voto Latino Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization, and its sister 501(c)(4 ) advocacy organization, Voto Latino.

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." This phrase, arguably Thomas Edison's most famous quote, has been drilled into the minds of generations of Americans. A fairly straightforward iteration of the idea that innovation, discovery, and ingenuity are the result of drive and grit above all, it has also come to represent much darker myths: that hard work always leads to success and that achievement is the product of individuals and not communities. In this model, those who come out on top are there because they earned it, and everyone else needs to buckle down, glove up, and, maybe one day, they'll get there too.

As the wealth gap widens, communities crumble, and Americans work more for less, Adam Chandler raises the question: What happens when perspiration isn't enough? To answer it, he crisscrosses the country interviewing mayors, teachers, generals, pastors, construction workers, and entrepreneurs, to reveal just how untenable relying on "perspiration" as a strategy has truly become. He also delves into America's past to reveal how our government, education system, and culture at large have woven the idea of meritocracy deep into the fabric of American society and how some of history's most famous so-called bootstrappers really built their wealth. From George Washington to Seattle, Washington, Jay Gatsby to Bill Gates, 99% Perspiration unpacks the misguided obsession with hard work that has come to define both the American dream and nightmare, offering insight into how we got here and hope for where we may go.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593700570?ic_referral=ypeLlj6PZliImFJx9SQmW4KQEAQrgfV7gNMJIm95COYwMxFaLz6ggJiQZhEEbU2OswRGUsp1Ey8BEi2UvTJn-OvtDVXR27njRq303actqLSn_1O_03S3bcwTb-CaDU65wHXPLA

Adam Chandler is a journalist and author based in New York. A former staff writer at The Atlantic, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WIRED, Vox, Slate, New York Magazine, Texas Monthly, Esquire, TIME, and elsewhere. Chandler is the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom and a recurring guest on The History Channel's The Food That Built America. He regularly appears across television, radio, and digital platforms including CBS Sunday Morning, NPR's Planet Money, Morning Edition, and Here & Now. 

Chandler is in conversation with Marcia Chatelain, an American academic who serves as a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, which also won a James Beard Award.

US Senator Ron Wyden is widely praised for coming up with sensible-sounding ideas no one else had thought of and making the counter-intuitive political alliances that prove helpful in passing bills. In It Takes Chutzpah, he offers a progressive leader's manifesto for being a courageous warrior during turbulent times. It is an inspirational guide to get important things accomplished with a combination of strong allies, persistence, and attention--that is, chutzpah.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780306835872?ic_referral=XwKlr_iL8GeMJWxz5vWNn9E_yvyNP6t1vAE329F7W2wwMx2dkfKUmy-Iv_WmQ__2CgQMRtwBhUmKnWstxTJU4A240vvvabW6ZApJH6ErLXavyAh6xjTXNOlBlfjiKpLz_9UkcQ

"Chutzpah" is a Yiddish word that describes a trait that many Jews consider in-born. Ron explores chutzpah's long history and many interpretations and reclaims the word chutzpah for a new American generation, showing how it can be used for good to reclaim idealism and enact positive change. He shares "Ron's 12 Rules of Chutzpah" that enable any individual or group to achieve their objectives: 

Ron identifies several key values--free speech, health care, reproductive rights, a clean environment, and reigning in Big Tech--and draws on his decades of public service to stress that preserving those values means that loud brashness and boldness will be needed now more than ever.

Ron Wyden, a Democratic Senator from Oregon, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 until his 1995 election to the U.S. Senate. Oregonians--and all attentive Americans--know Wyden as a senator who listens and innovates. The son of two refugees from Nazi Germany, he was born in Wichita and lived in Chicago, St. Louis, and Washington D.C., as his father Peter Wyden, a journeyman journalist and later a best-selling author, pursued his career and curiosity.

Senator Wyden is in conversation with Senator Cory Booker. A United States Senator from New Jersey since 2013, Cory Booker has worked tirelessly to advance economic opportunity and equal justice, including leading efforts to advance criminal justice reform, increase wages and drive down costs to ensure hard work is fairly rewarded, address the scourge of gun violence, and protect all Americans’ ability to make their own healthcare decisions. As a tenant lawyer, city councilman, mayor, and now in the Senate, Cory has spent his career bringing people together to take on the problems we face and deliver real results.

*recorded 1/16/2025

Partisanship is a dirty word in American politics. If there is one issue on which almost everyone in our divided country seems to agree, it's the belief that the intense loyalty within the electorate toward Democrats and Republicans is the source of our democratic ills--division, dysfunction, distrust, and disinformation. The possibilities that responsible partisanship can offer were at the heart of an important intellectual tradition that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, one which was institutionalized through a sweeping set of congressional reforms in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Defense of Partisanship reimagines what partisanship might look like going forward from today. A new era of party-oriented reforms has the potential to pay respect to the deep differences that divide us while simultaneously creating a more functional path on which two responsible political parties compete to shape policy while still being able to govern.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798987053683?ic_referral=hej166tFGLfJu_etE-1lGVH-UcTgRI-geWzUPTfTyGAwM-D_qu3VK2iC-GH4LDElONo2vynnkZkQKEdV0MmcBb2qLDaf2YCiGONtlZuvBMmlvofGI_V-2rvsyWDHqEHphwwi2w

New York Times best-selling author Julian E. Zelizer has been among the pioneers in the revival of American political history. He is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst, a regular guest on NPR’s "Here and Now," a guest host on POTUS Sirius XM, and a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the award-winning author and editor of 26 book, and is currently working on a new book about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the 1964 Democratic Convention entitled ‘Is this America?.

Zelizer is in conversation with E.J. Dionne Jr.. Dionne is a distinguished university professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and a senior fellow and W. Averell Harriman Chair in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is also a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post. He is the author or co-author of nine books including, most recently, 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting, coauthored with Miles Rapoport. Others include New York Times Bestseller Why the Right Went Wrong, Our Divided Political Heart, and Why Americans Hate Politics. He is the co-editor with John DiIluio of What’s God Got to Do With the American Experiment?  His media career also includes 20 years with NPR, and 14 with the New York Times, including stints in Paris, Beirut, and Rome.

*recorded 1/15/2025

When writer Paula Whyman climbs to a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of an empty-nester home in the country, her plans for a tidy backyard ecology project quickly morph into a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, Whyman struggles with conflicting advice from experts, an influx of invasive species, delayed plans, and the occasional rattlesnake--but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place.

Bad Naturalist is woven with Whyman's lyrically deft, delightful storytelling as she attempts to coax a beautiful piece of land back into shape. Readers meander with her through orchards and meadows, forests and frog ponds as Whyman's hair fills with broomsedge and she gets lost in her own woods. Preconceived notions about nature fall by the wayside when she discovers that fire can be good, and certain plants can be bad. The mountaintop is, after all, teeming with life and hope amid the seeming chaos of nature, and some of Whyman's plans for the place eventually go right. In the end, she forms a deep connection with her own corner of the natural world and is reminded that the quest for control is a fool's errand.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781643262178?ic_referral=PWm_SNxI-q_EsGXMS4a4ya_wan5GUSzU3JiTjwG5e38wMwQpKrBMWWPEdtFXqmrRN2yNa94RIw5L1O6-5lkypWGuwKPQh-lfbLA1vdeVh3W_PADaXatyOEtu_LqS7Fqovc8YsA

Paula Whyman's first book of nonfiction is Bad Naturalist. Her earlier book, You May See a Stranger, is an award-winning linked short story collection. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post and The American Scholar, and in journals including McSweeney's Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Hudson Review. She was awarded residencies by MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, The Studios of Key West, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Her work on this book was supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council. She spends her time on a mountain in Virginia with her husband and a mercurial standard poodle. Visit Paula online at paulawhyman.com

Whyman is in conversation with Dana Milbank, a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist with The Washington Post and a New York Times bestselling author. His column appears in the Post and hundreds of other newspapers. Milbank also has provided political commentary for MSNBC, CNN and various other TV and radio outlets, and he is the author of four books on politics, including the New York Times bestseller The Destructionists and the national bestseller Homo Politicus. He is a graduate of Yale University.

*recorded 1/14/2025

Gangsters and presidents have long captured the American imagination, but how much does the underworld actually affect presidential power? How deep are their "connections"? As Eric Dezenhall reveals in this eye-opening history, in some instances, one couldn't have functioned without the other. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Joseph R. Biden, the mob has done presidential dirty work, including attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, harass America's enemies, and put our chief executives in office.

Wiseguys and the White House documents when mobsters and presidents have traded favors--and double-crossed each other, including:

Combining exhaustive research, including newly released government records and the private recollections of leading gangsters, Wiseguys and the White House offers insight into the myths about the power in America and the drive for recognition and respectability that unites consiglieri and commanders-in-chief alike.

Wiseguys and the White House includes 65 black-and-white photographs throughout.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063390614?ic_referral=VQ_0-f2MsG3Wp94IFGOm1LHm0AJMn5qEc9ZFq4ho9mQwM-8GhKih9A166sLxoOVMzL19JOJF4yARDVYve-3C8-3FA3guNI5nUBUWuuTHX0M_Xhtuz7GHeoTMijoeH8gh5T3rKg

Eric Dezenhall is an award-winning author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War (with Gus Russo), which is being made into a feature film. He founded one of the nation's first crisis management firms and worked in the White House, where President Reagan once called him "Derek." His organizational skills were deemed insufficient for membership in organized crime, but he's really trying.

*recorded 1/13/2025

"In this book, I have sought to blend personal experience, journalism, and scholarship. It is history written by a journalist who was there."-Peter L. W. Osnos

LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail details how President Lyndon B. Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made choices central to U.S. strategy in Vietnam, ending in defeat. The portrait emerges of men who knew that conventional victory was impossible but who could not or would not reverse the policies that they and the military pursued.

In their own words, especially McNamara's, how and why this happened is a story never before told with such immediacy and insight. The lessons for today's policymakers are clear-and could have avoided the outcomes of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781953943552?ic_referral=sELiEG2ekoNg6dLWYlmqA_0xxKdJDHmwsYFa0f6QtZ0wM3DlHTmofBAPeSp-Icr3Zo6kyFDR9-HhfZbH8mqBqUm2hl1zgYYLFZIWibLoYzsUJYIzpmL81MZpnrQ9QbVWw-bA1Q

Peter L. W. Osnos is the author of An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen, the coauthor of Would You Believe . . . The Helsinki Accords Changed the World? and the editor of George Soros: A Life in Full. He is the founder of the publishing house PublicAffairs and a former publisher of the Times Books imprint at Random House, where he was previously a senior editor and associate publisher. Prior to his career in book publishing, he spent eighteen years at The Washington Post, where he was a correspondent in Saigon, Moscow, and London and served as foreign editor and national editor. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and the Columbia School of Journalism, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

Peter is in conversation with Evan Osnos, 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. His latest book, Wildland: The Making of America's Fury 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 1/12/2025

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday - the 1940's, 50's and 60's - this extremely wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents - Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. After Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, Irving Berlin wrote an entire hit musical based on Perle's life - "Call Me Madam" - which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie.

Dubbed by Berlin as the "hostess with the mostes'," Perle inherited serious money (Texas oil) and married even more money (a Pittsburgh steel magnate). She had a rollicking life outside of Washington, befriending such Broadway legends as Merman, Angela Lansbury and Pearl Bailey. She also had a serious side. A pioneering supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment dating to the 1930's and influential champion for working women, she was a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and rescued Harry Truman's financially flailing 1948 campaign.

In this intensely researched biography, author Meryl Gordon chronicles Perle's lavish life and society adventures in Newport, Manhattan and Washington while highlighting her important, but nearly forgotten contribution to American politics and the feminist movement.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781538751244?ic_referral=mVVk4HH-tyqFA3P7JgU7yRxnKYANv9q2xZiOp7xb4GIwM7uyqTKRz6HuXaxpNeiKd8PGBRLt7fqfT9cuNL64PTO-ys_5VK4p32ZWBqSsRf9VhZs1jtorP3lXBZtUvGDGjIz2aA

Meryl Gordon is the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of A Family Beyond Reproach, Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue. An award-winning journalist, she is a tenured journalism professor at New York University. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine and The New York Times.

*Recorded 1/11/2024

Griffin Hurt is in over his head. Between his role as Peter Proton on the hit TV show The Nuclear Family and the pressure of high school at New York's elite Boyd Prep--along with the increasingly compromising demands of his wrestling coach--he's teetering on the edge of collapse.

Then comes Naomi Shah, twenty-two years Griffin's senior. Unwilling to lay his burdens on his shrink--whom he shares with his father, mother, and younger brother, Oren--Griffin soon finds himself in the back of Naomi's Mercedes sedan, again and again, confessing all to the one person who might do him the most harm.

Less a bildungsroman than a story of miseducation, Playworld is a novel of epic proportions, bursting with laughter and heartache. Adam Ross immerses us in the life of Griffin and his loving (yet disintegrating) family while seeming to evoke the entirety of Manhattan and the ethos of an era--with Jimmy Carter on his way out and a B-list celebrity named Ronald Reagan on his way in. Surrounded by adults who embody the age's excesses--and who seem to care little about what their children are up to--Griffin is left to himself to find the line between youth and maturity, dependence and love, acting and truly grappling with life.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780385351294?ic_referral=zfr8466SqRKZZr_eDcMoZzJvtMjlcgMiVdCaKVJIlY4wMxuPCrOdph_jOSIB3aqEPE84DGoyqwsb3n0mY35HeDF00YkbG0C8k8AdDfVIcHAJWSoZ92zDRGfPCOOznohg4YjBjQ

Adam Ross is the author of Mr. Peanut, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He has been a fellow in fiction at the American Academy in Berlin and a Hodder Fellow for Fiction at Princeton University. He is editor of The Sewanee Review. Born and raised in New York City, he now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his two daughters. 

Ross will be in conversation with Elliot Ackerman, author of the novels Halcyon, Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, and Green on Blue, and the memoirs The Fifth Act and Places and Names. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is both a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. He is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

This dramatic, revealing book offers an insider account of the planning and aftermath of the racist riot in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017, and the insurrection at the US. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781586424015?ic_referral=H6P1Qa2zjJunL9oyeC7KGbiwkoS5tJAYSshnyIUkH4cwMz2nIYRA4-9a51v-pJP_M_Lqez1IiGbkLFzrKjXYhp7Vt959WUFiwm6AnaE1_FgFzrbiO2dfE5Y1IPw0VeLQsQZYew

As the lead investigator into both tragic days, Tim Heaphy has an absolutely unique perspective. Readers will travel alongside Heaphy as he organized his team and structured the massive investigations they were about to take, as he interacts with politicians and members of law enforcement, interviews planners, perpetrators, and bystanders, gathers and sorts evidence, and compels and records testimony in order to create a record for today's voters as well as future generations.

In his page-turning book, he shares what he saw and came to understand about what those events say about state of American democracy. He examines how and why they took place with the hope that understanding the contexts of these events will be a crucial and helpful step toward avoiding similar episodes of political violence in the years ahead. 

Timothy J. Heaphy was Chief Investigative Counsel of the House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He also oversaw the independent investigation into the August 12, 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is currently partner at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP and previously served as the Obama-appointed US Attorney for the Western District of Virginia. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his family. 

Heaphy is in conversation with Jonathan Karl. Karl is ABC News chief Washington correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. The former president of the White House Correspondents' Association, Karl served as ABC's Chief White House Correspondent from 2012 to 2021. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers on the Trump White House -- Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.

*recorded 1/9/2025