Franklin Foer— How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization - with Ishaan Tharoor & Adam Harris

John A. Jenkins — Summer of '71: Five Months That Changed America - with David Meyers

From award-winning journalist and author John A. Jenkins comes a revolutionary exploration of the summer before Watergate—a parallel world of a half-century ago when America faced events and crises strikingly similar to those of today—told through the lives and words of those who lived it. Inflation rages. Crime is rising. Abortion rights take center stage at the Supreme Court. China poses an existential threat. Black lives are under attack. The president battles the press as he seeks to subvert not just the political order but the rule of law itself. This is the Summer of ’71 [https://politics-prose.com/book/9780806544465]—a pivotal, operatic season of hope and despair, missed opportunities and era-changing decisions. More than a half-century later, it’s difficult to overstate the importance of events that defined the American experience during that fateful five-month period spanning May to September 1971. On May Day, President Nixon orchestrates a massive police-military response to disrupt the biggest anti-war demonstration in history. Two days later, the Supreme Court announces that it will take up Roe v. Wade. In the weeks and months that follow, friction escalates between the police and the Black Panthers, Congress debates universal healthcare, Attica prisoners riot, and the New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers—a turning point that ultimately dooms Nixon’s presidency and his legacy. Summer of ’71 brings it all to the page through first-person accounts that are only now becoming available: the papers, diaries, and oral histories of key players. Award‑winning journalist and author John A. Jenkins witnessed many of the events himself, and draws on a multitude of sources, including Nixon’s White House tapes, to tell the story of that time as no one else could. Here is both a fascinating, brilliantly researched read in its own right, and a critical lens through which to view today’s political discord. John A. Jenkins is a multi-award-winning journalist, author, publisher, and entrepreneur. With a specialty in partisans and power, he’s written hundreds of features for major magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and The Washington Monthly. A 4-time recipient of the American Bar Association's Gavel Award Certificate of Merit, one of the highest awards in legal journalism, he is the founder of Law Street Media, the most widely visited and highly engaged law-and-policy site on the web. Prior to starting Law Street, Jenkins served for 15 years as President & Publisher of CQ Press, the leading political science textbook and reference publishers. Currently, he co-leads the predictive-AI start-up PoliScio Analytics, which he co-founded in 2022. He lives on the east coast and can be found online at JohnaJenkins.com. Jenkins is in conversation with David Meyers, long-time editor and newsroom leader focused on politics and democracy, David joined OpenSecrets in January 2025 to lead the media and communications operation. In 2019, he launched The Fulcrum, the first nonprofit media platform dedicated to covering democracy reform and the bridge building movement. He previously spent more than two decades in leadership positions across CQ Roll Call. David graduated from Tufts University in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in English and political science. He is a past president of the Washington Press Club Foundation and the Tufts University Alumni Association. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780806544465?ic_referral=77Rn_QbmS1NdFopGFsqA10uFS8flGvRlSo7CHb-akYkwMwIMTY7CBvhN5Li8tIT7Kic6ibJChu06hLtJPd2a0JcIwNkSqxhsmgStyc0CrkwOlfyQbpgYSbpTYNtQEAYLgjBLfK4

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan — Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump - with Tim Alberta

From the two reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this definitive portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Regime Change covers the first year of Trump’s second presidency—a term liberated from every constraint that defined his first. The generals who once told him “no” are gone, and the lawyers who remain have learned to pick their battles. His administration has flouted court orders and he has claimed powers that Congress once checked. What remains is a President willing to take enormous risks that have upended global markets and toppled heads of state; an imperial President operating almost entirely on instinct alone. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. A New York City native, Haberman worked at the New York Post, New York Daily News, and Politico, before joining the Times in 2015. She has covered six US presidential elections and several gubernatorial and New York City mayoral races. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. In 2021, she was part of a team that was a Pulitzer finalist for coverage of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. She has received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award, as well as the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year. She is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children. Jonathan Swan is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Originally from Sydney, Australia, he has reported on Donald Trump since 2015, covering all three of his campaigns and his first term in office. Previously at Axios and The Hill, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Trump and received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award. He began his career as a teenage copy boy at a Sydney newspaper and later covered federal politics in Australia’s capital for The Sydney Morning Herald. He became a US citizen in 2024 and lives in Virginia with his wife and two children, with a third on the way. Haberman and Swan are in conversation with Tim Alberta. Tim Alberta is an award-winning journalist, best-selling author, and staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. Hailing from Brighton, Michigan, he attended Schoolcraft College and later Michigan State University, where his plans to become a baseball writer were altered by a serendipitous stint covering the legislature in Lansing PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668067246?ic_referral=1X6QLUFM9u63XINLMYTV4f6U4k-sUQhbwClXCA_VcdcwM8JK7DrDkl7p1I52Uy7vDM-Bq7CV0An6Gr2ukXaRkHuWv3eQHOaOhP3MlaEMjZJFxe0w1OhNHbfBO4wCy-KM-dc_AEQ

Stephen O'Connor — We Want So Much to Be Ourselves - with David Ebenbach

A German psychoanalyst, his Jewish wife, and their young daughter are swept up in the rising tide of fascism Günter Zeitz, psychoanalyst-in-training and the son of a Catholic country doctor, and Josine Rosen, Sigmund Freud's patient and the daughter of a Jewish shipping magnate, first meet in 1924, in Freud's Viennese waiting room. As their intense affair develops, Freud arranges for Günter's appointment to the newly created Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Shortly after the move, their daughter Hannah is born. But less than a decade later, all their hopes and ideals are profoundly challenged by political realities so horrific that they are, initially, beyond comprehension. A heartrending story of love in a time of hatred, an absorbing investigation into the Nazis' exploitation of psychoanalysis, and a cautionary tale about self-deception and the failures of a people to recognize the lies of their charismatic leader, We Want So Much to Be Ourselves [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781954276581] examines the ways science can be corrupted and one's very identity transformed by historical circumstance. Stephen O'Connor is the author of seven books including two novels, Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings and We Want So Much to Be Ourselves, and the short story collection Here Comes Another Lesson. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and his nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Nation, Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Manhattan. O'Connor is in conversation with David Ebenbach, the author of ten books of fiction, and non-fiction, winner of such awards as the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, and the Orison Books' Fiction Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, where he teaches creative w and literature in Georgetown University's Center for Jewish Civilization and where he researches and promotes whole student and inclusive education through Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. You can find out more at https://www.davidebenbach.com/ [https://www.davidebenbach.com/].  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/stephen-oconnor-062926

Luke Burgis — The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion - with Anne Snyder

How to become yourself without losing everyone else. We’re living in a time when it’s harder than ever to become a whole person—and to stay in authentic community. Some people dissolve into their group identities and lose themselves entirely. Others withdraw into ephemeral, online collectives they can float into and out of without consequence. Both are symptoms of the same problem: a fragmented sense of self in an age of social contagion. This fragmentation is more than a personal crisis—it’s the soil in which hollow and often dangerous mass movements take root, offering counterfeit belonging to those desperate for meaning. The One and the Ninety-Nine [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250373038?ic_referral=TZHrRlQmDUZTCxWWX0lkCQFGnG2fJD47FqSl8luITn8wM-5m8D4EpRfldbbA7x_0ns3Rs7MXflqOoz4vQfZwKt-wSkFeoUSKxCm4Zlvh2XLNcgGNDv0H-QrBfUNM2EPDchaqg0k] is a timely and inspiring exploration of what it means to forge a stable identity in the face of coercion, conformity, and the contagious desires of the crowd. Through compelling and original insights drawn from philosophy, psychology, and personal experience, author Luke Burgis examines how our lives are shaped by the groups we belong to—and how we, in turn, shape those groups. He offers a roadmap for engaging with modern society without losing our unique sense of personhood, and reveals the essential rites of passage and personal challenges that differentiate a life of meaning from one dictated by societal expectations. People who are able to find their solid self and thrive in the space between the one and the many—who can act with integrity while being part of a community—live freer and more comfortable lives and become models for others. The One and the Ninety-Nine is a call to reject passive conformity, rediscover the depth of personality, and choose a life that is both truly personal and deeply connected. Luke Burgis is the director of The Cluny Institute and a professor at The Catholic University of America, where he studies the invisible forces that shape human behavior. He is the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Michigan with his wife, Claire, and their children. Burgis is in conversation with Anne Snyder, the editor-in-chief of Comment, a magazine of public theology for the common good that is becoming a vibrant ecosystem of conversation and community. Rooted in the Christian humanist tradition, Comment now encompasses a growing podcast network, gatherings that span grassroots to institutional settings across North America and the U.K., and a three-day festival at the Washington National Cathedral. Anne also hosts The Whole Person Revolution podcast and co-edited Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year (2022). The author of The Fabric of Character (2019), she writes widely and delights in weaving worlds together—in print, around the table, and across different sectors and ways of knowing. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250373038?ic_referral=4HQZcoItn8ZonVX8DFUVFYTRW9i1uwPdkJni0gOx6uQwM-rhSzje2tfUZOIaXearSkudWydtklZpYnHozShxhAtpdXZmNZGLXSV87MY0UhBW80iWoKX0bMUhpbtIgZGY7PW3xuA

Dara Levan — Shaken to the Core - with Abby Maslin

When life is cut short, what do we do with the time we have left? Joy Stern, a free-spirited photographer, thought she had it all together. She built a traveler’s life with her husband, Andre, an architect who designed their days like the buildings he created. Children weren’t part of the plan. When Joy’s mom dies suddenly, everything changes. Being behind the lens, capturing photos of families, doesn’t feel like enough anymore—until Joy discovers a hidden key to her mother’s diary. One entry inspires a choice that could transform the trajectory of her life. Then the unthinkable happens: Andre receives devastating news, which upends their carefully constructed world. As Joy struggles to pursue her own dreams while supporting the man she loves, Joy wonders: Can she do it all? An uplifting story of hope amid heartbreak, Shaken to the Core [https://politics-prose.com/book/9798895652534] explores motherhood, chosen family, and love that transcends life’s greatest hardships. Dara Levan is an author, speaker, and the founder of Every Soul Has a Story, an inspiring podcast in which she interviews guests from around the globe. Dara is the author of the award-winning novel, It Could Be Worse, and a contributor to the USA Today bestselling anthology, On Being Jewish Now. She is a graduate of Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in English and certificate in journalism. Dara earned her master’s degree in communication sciences and Disorders at Nova Southeastern University. Actively involved in her community, Dara is a board member of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital Foundation/Memorial Foundation, board trustee of Interlochen Center for the Arts, and involved in several other organizations. She is a founding member of the Circle of Friends for the Alvin Sherman Library at Nova Southeastern University and a member of the Authors Guild and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. When she’s not writing in South Florida, you’ll find Dara with her family and fur babies, traveling, capturing moments through photos, and talking to strangers who become friends. Levan is in conversation with Abby Maslin, is the Washington Post bestselling author of Love You Hard and a contributing essayist in Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids. A writer and national speaker on caregiving and resilience, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Sunday Paper, and other outlets. She also serves as COO of Amore Learning, where she supports young writers and learners.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798895652534?ic_referral=keCWYB18VWf6c7WEqDBLC20qmP4P0QbaVr3_E0G8RF8wMx2nZUxPNqQT826FSnExTQeMAD43xT2hNjkGhISejALwGB-LpiBTCKuHUwyYF2nauZE-LqoSM0HCyVBOx0IVq3KWBkw