Laura Zigman — The Author Weekend - with Nora Krug

Deborah Kalb — Everything She Most Admired: A Mystery Novel - with Susan Coll

Lauren Green never expected to be a suspect in a murder investigation on her first day at D.C.-based Lens magazine. But then again, nothing had been going well lately. Dumped by her fiance, her academic career floundering, and her living situation up in the air, she's barely holding things together. She knows she didn't kill reporter Tony Mandel. But who did? Surrounded by murder suspects-including one whom she finds surprisingly intriguing-Lauren tries to piece the clues together, not only about Tony Mandel's death but also about her own life. Deborah Kalb is a freelance writer and editor. She spent about two decades working as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for news organizations including Gannett News Service, Congressional Quarterly, U.S. News & World Report, and The Hill, mostly covering Congress and politics. Her book blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb [https://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/], which she started in 2012, features hundreds of interviews she has conducted with a wide variety of authors. Kalb is in conversation with Susan Coll, the best-selling author of eight novels, including The Literati, Real Life and Other Fictions, Bookish People, and The Stager, a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice. Her novel Acceptance was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com. She is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781627206426?ic_referral=ei73PTKl6loUw63pU6Vkyh0A-65zb0ysorHeN2ipJ9wwMyw5ch6OyoKhiXIpb5WSaq3QV2VDgB-YTGfVYIjqgUbSU6qb9vfIVifCNxcxu8-1Yqq_pZPTZ_JBNKS9IuyOfmxCfkk

Danielle Crittenden — Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable - with Mary Haft

On a February morning, Danielle Crittenden's world cleaved in two: the life before her daughter Miranda was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment, and the life after. With unflinching honesty and unexpected grace, she chronicles the shattering impact of a child's death and the strange afterlife of grief itself: how it infiltrates grocery stores and dinner parties, transforms friendships, and ultimately reshapes the mourner as fundamentally as the world. Here is grief in all its terrible specificity: the police call that changes everything, the surreal task of choosing a burial dress, the well-meaning friends who "griefsplain." But here too is love distilled: a mother's meditation on a daughter who commanded dinner tables at twelve, who interviewed Dick Cheney with a child's notebook, who transformed into a luminous young woman living her dreams in New York. She writes of joining "the world's worst club"--parents who have lost children--and the terrible wisdom its members share. Written with the narrative power that has made Crittenden one of our most incisive observers of family and culture, Dispatches from Grief [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781964378114] brings a journalist's eye to the landscape of loss. For those walking through grief, for those who love someone grieving, and for all who dare imagine how precious and precarious our time together is, this book stands as both singular portrait and universal truth. Danielle Crittenden is a journalist, author, and former host of the podcast The Femsplainers, known for her incisive and original commentary on women, family, and modern life. In addition to writing a popular monthly newsletter on Substack, her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and more. She is the author of four previous books, including What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, praised by Vanity Fair as the work of "one of the most important new thinkers about women and family." Born in Toronto, she now lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, journalist and author David Frum. Crittenden is in conversation with Mary Haft, a writer, producer, and founder of HAFT PRODUCTIONS, LLC, specializing in documentaries for nonprofits. A Vice President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and Co-Founder of the Nantucket Book Festival, she is the author of Nantucket: Portrait of an American Town, and a recently completed memoir: Staying the Course: The Making of a Marine Mom. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781964378114?ic_referral=EX2Qg-4fY39AbNtpZ0fGHMiebqen6rvfewaaXhriklswMxiIOg8YRcXWWE6hxe_uAW2pn_E85vgPHOr_UAdeUt60PEACG_U0j45xYQ_OhrV0YkMOflB4duKhTNxu8wbV_PMpcaU

Laura Zigman — The Author Weekend - with Nora Krug

The Devil Wears Prada meets The White Lotus in a story of colliding egos and shocking betrayal, as intoxicatingly ice cold as the pink prosecco that flows all weekend. Everything needs to be just right for bestselling mystery writer Faye Wader's first-ever fan weekend. Her sales might be slipping--only a little --but her readers still love her enough to pony up for three days and two nights on Great Misery Island. The retreat is precisely planned, from the small-batch artisanal doughnuts to the perimenopausal Mermaid Meditation, by Faye and her beleaguered assistant, Jade--an aspiring author who can't seem to finish her own novel. Faye's longtime agent and editor will be there, as well as Faye's number one fan, Peggy Mercer, who has been first in line at every one of Faye's events. When news comes that the weekend will be crashed by glamorous, charismatic rival novelist Abby Schuss, Faye thinks things can't get worse ... until one of the attendees is found dead in her room, setting off an unexpectedly murderous chain of events that makes prepub anxiety seem like a day at the beach. How far is Faye willing to go to get exactly what she wants from her Author Weekend? The Author Weekend [https://politics-prose.com/book/9798228330412] is a thrilling and hilarious dive into the dark heart of envy, and a glorious exploration of a woman of a certain age desperate to survive the dog-eat-dog world of publishing and control her own narrative. Laura Zigman is the author of Small World (a New York Times Group Text pick and Editor's Choice), Separation Anxiety, Animal Husbandry (which was made into the movie "Someone Like You," starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd), Dating Big Bird, Her, and Piece of Work. She has collaborated on several works of non-fiction--including Eddie Izzard's New York Times bestseller, Believe Me--and has been a contributor to the New York Times and other publications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zigman is in conversation Nora Krug, a writer and editor based in Washington, DC. For nearly two decades she worked at The Washington Post, primarily as an editor in Book World. Prior to that she was an editor at The New York Times, Architectural Digest and Little, Brown.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798228330412?ic_referral=Tj6AQlm6_2Vb20sykRAlDkXuYgCbSlOaNYHeIslra9gwMzivd3CWiAH4HJx0QF61p1Gcx5V-FkH6qcqBj_REtCIK2ZuCTTJ2Dbz-3ePccBghSRXZHQK1-lJJUOYcf2VPpj6UlBk

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD — The Overseer Class: A Manifesto - with Victor Ray

The author of the critically acclaimed The Viral Underclass (one of Kirkus Reviews best books of 2022) is back with The Overseer Class [https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063399419], which explores what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are selected for high-visibility positions of power within existing institutions—but under the conditions of a kind of Faustian bargain. Our society places so much weight and attention on those who become the first or only of their identifying group that we miss one of the inherent issues in that model. This book is about the kinds of compromises made by a small but influential group of people from minoritized groups in the United States as they have entered segregated institutions in highly visible positions. People in the overseer class wield enormous institutional power, even necropolitical power over who lives and who dies; it’s just that their power is predicated upon repressing other people who look (or speak/have sex/come from places) like them. The most obvious contemporary overseer is the Black police officer. The Overseer Class begins with this quote from James Baldwin from 1967: “The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days, ‘for God's sake, make sure it's a white one.’ We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder--on your head--to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n******.” But this dynamic does not only exist within law enforcement, it exists in many different spheres and The Overseer Class explores what it looks like in mass media, universities, corporate America, the military, and government. The Overseer Class aims not only to educate us and start this discussion but to provide a framework for challenging that dynamic. It is a weighty topic but one that Dr. Thrasher is well-equipped to handle. Steven W. Thrasher, PhD is the author of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, which was a New York Times's Paperback Row Editors' Pick, named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews, was longlisted for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Literature, and won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature. He is also the inaugural Daniel Renberg Chair for Social Justice in Reporting at the Medill School of Journalism and a faculty member of Northwestern University's Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. An internationally renowned scholar on race, gender, and infectious disease, Dr. Thrasher's writing has been published by the Guardian, Atlantic, New York Times, Scientific American, Literary Hub, and in many academic journals.  Thrasher is in conversation with Victor Ray, the F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and at the University of Iowa and Vice President of the American Sociological Association. His research applies critical race theory to classic sociological questions, including social notions of progress and organizational theory. His work has won multiple awards, including the early career award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and the Southern Sociological Society’s Junior Scholar Award.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063399419?ic_referral=7MV_S95eHf4h4YjDPrUZlI8bYovvKoanMVbeHv88P2QwM3zEX-zkUHkOH5Z6xHhDdi0oPl9AjCTSQCe83oiVNGRLlAaomlCLlZFt7girMVwB6-yT1mhoK6bV4FJqcc7WE6MUVfc

Ben Rhodes — All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches - with Susan Page

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? This sweeping history of the United States told through fifteen speeches relives the battle over American identity, from a New York Times bestselling author and one of President Barack Obama’s former speechwriters. For 250 years, we have debated what it means to be American. This question shaped the compromises in our Constitution and the arguments we’ve been having ever since—spawning abolitionism, secession, and civil war; populism, mass migration, and global leadership; movements for reform and the backlashes to them. In All We Say [https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593595121], Ben Rhodes tells the story of fifteen speeches—some iconic, others long forgotten—which have both shaped and reflected the argument Americans have been having from our founding to the intense divisions of our time. Through riveting and beautifully rendered accounts of the people, movements, and moments that produced these speeches, Rhodes traces the history of our battle over identity. The result is a singular and revealing portrait of America itself: a nation divided between two stories—one of inheritance, power, and exclusion, the other of equality, striving, and belonging. Drawing on a decade writing for Barack Obama, Rhodes also shows us how words can redirect a nation, what makes a speech enduring, and why oratory is a unique form of persuasion in American democracy. From Benjamin Franklin’s call for compromise at the Constitutional Convention, to Alexander Stephens’ case for white supremacy as the cornerstone of the Confederacy; from Martin Luther King’s dream of true equality to Donald Trump’s rallying cry against democracy itself, these speeches remind us that history is a living argument. At a time when American identity—and truth—is contested, All We Say offers a fresh and powerful look at who we really are and who we could still become. Ben Rhodes is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall and The World as It Is; co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for NBC News and MSNBC; the co-chair of National Security Action; and an advisor to former president Barack Obama. Rhodes is joined in conversation with Susan Page, the award-winning Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY. She is also the New York Times best-selling author of The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty (Twelve, 2019); Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power (Twelve, 2021), and The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Her latest book is The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History [https://politics-prose.com/susan-page-041626], being published by Harper in April 2026. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593595121?ic_referral=Yq6EfQGeR6CJfzHEsWjM8qrhLGPYzM_eNU3cJs2rtkUwM8bMoODge29eXfGm85hj-8y2U27LhIWOIVx6h_LNzCZj6gMgiRrr0xo3vnUXvl7YhC_fdHpb_34Nv_yaJ1aW8TmVXtQ