Lerone Martin — Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr. - with Kim Martin

Devlin Barrett — The Department of Revenge: How Trump Took Control of American Justice - with Evan Perez

Dear American, No part of life in the United States has been untouched by Donald Trump’s relentless weaponization of the Justice Department. This is a cautionary tale about how, once a president amasses such power, future presidents may never relinquish it. Whose votes get counted and whose get tossed out? Who gets prosecuted and who gets protected, like Jeffrey Epstein’s friends? Who gets to run our colleges and schools? How do citizens protest without getting killed? For generations, the Justice Department has sought to enforce the law fairly, without fear or favor. But Trump came into his second term with one obsession above all. “I was the hunted,” he said. “And now I’m the hunter.” In this shocking exposé, the three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Devlin Barrett reveals the systematic way the president’s men and women have dismantled the department as it once existed and retooled it to hunt Trump’s enemies. This time around, the president and his team have been far shrewder about getting what they want: revenge against the people who investigated and prosecuted Trump; revenge against a legal system he believes was set to ruin not just his career but also his life; and, ultimately, revenge against the parts of America he despises. In a book filled with bombshells, Barrett describes how Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller drives the department and the FBI on a daily basis; how the White House decimated the justice divisions that protect civil rights and punish tax cheats; how prosecutors deploy a “charge first, ask questions later” approach against those they don’t like; and how lawyers are hired for the purpose of going after Trump’s personal targets, such as James Comey, Jerome Powell, Chuck Schumer, and even the mayor of Newark. Most concerning, Barrett shows how the Trump administration has shut down a program used to monitor and react to election security threats, raising concerns that future elections could be chaotic and that the Justice Department, rather than ensuring the integrity of the results, may instead serve as a megaphone for unfounded claims of fraud. This is the inside story of the damage—and a road map for putting our justice system back together. Devlin Barrett has covered federal law enforcement for more than twenty-five years. He writes about the Justice Department and FBI for The New York Times, and previously worked for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, and the New York Post. In the past decade, he has been part of three Pulitzer Prize–winning reporting teams—for Public Service, for National Reporting, and for Breaking News—and was a cofinalist for Pulitzer Prizes for International Reporting and Feature Writing. He is also the author of October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election, an account of the FBI's role in the 2016 presidential election. Barrett lives in Virginia with his wife and children. Barrett is in conversation with Evan Perez. Perez is a CNN Senior Justice Correspondent based in the Washington, D.C. Bureau, reporting on legal, crime, and national security issues. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668065129?ic_referral=stiGUG9PxoILBCvlC0EgWyXEU5OCCGn4BL-nru8qpIcwMwG-eGozPe9BKtIsdQoHYrm60_ftji-opbE9btkJKvn7XJ_XhHLHiqCu7stMmXLWXHV7-WgR3VYSzvJvK6Ef1ckSvz0

Stephanie Green — AMERICAN CROWN: From Revolutionaries to Royalty: The Story of Prince William's American Ancestors - with Amy Argetsinger

The fascinating story of Prince William’s American ancestors, and how this often-rebellious lineage will help shape the future King of Great Britain. In this fresh and perspective-shifting narrative, American Crown is an absorbing blend of American history and royal biography that brings to life the past generations who will shape the Prince of Wales’s role in the future of Britain, America and the world. For the first time, Britain will have a monarch whose ancestors fought against the very crown he bears. It all goes back to the roots of Diana, Princess of Wales whose Spencer family has a friendship with the Washington clan of Sulgrave Manor that produced the founding father of America, but more fascinating is Diana’s maternal side whose American ancestors fought in the Revolution in New England, became successful in the new nation, and then (like many Gilded Age families) sent a daughter across the ocean to marry into the British elite. Other Spencers on the British side had bucked social trends in the 1770s even raised funds for the American rebels themselves. Embodying more interconnected history than any of his predecessors, William’s sense of his own role in the world is markedly different from anyone who’s ever held the throne.  With sweeping locations from battlefields to Buckingham Palace and featuring grand personalities like Nathan Hale, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Winston Churchill, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, Stephanie Green’s American Crown tells the story of a very new kind of royal family—one with the potential to bring two countries closer together in times of turmoil and bring the “special relationship” into next century. Stephanie Green is a cultural journalist and features writer. A longtime contributor to The Washington Post, she is a former reporter for Bloomberg News and The Washington Times. Her freelance work has appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, WWD, and a wide variety of print and online publications. She lives in Washington, DC.  Green is in conversation with Amy Argetsinger. Argetsinger is an editor for The Washington Post’s acclaimed Style section, where she has overseen coverage of media, popular culture, politics and society. A staff writer since 1995, she covered local DC-area communities, higher education and the West Coast before authoring the paper’s signature Reliable Source gossip column for eight years. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and daughter. Her first book, There She Was: The Secret History of Miss America (SIMON & SCHUSTER, 2021) explored the subculture of the century-old beauty contest and the pageant's lingering impact on the larger culture. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798897101054?ic_referral=zpttQY8ZU_abkI-TroT6iUy2EnuFNDnGGy4hSgfEJ-8wM4Hnisd9tlfUkU6Bdf7K_OK1WH_J_SZg466E1NL4sXfEt4c4bhHWh-nNsZ4URlGEjA96crZ1CeJDdz-e7UdLnls_xxo

Crystal Simone Smith — Common Sense (1776), Addressed to Today's Citizens of America: An Erasure -with Gloria Browne-Marshall

A revolutionary work of erasure poetry that exposes the contradictions in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—calling for a new definition of citizenship that embraces all Americans In his famous cry for inhabitants of the thirteen colonies to seek independence from Britain, Thomas Paine claims to call for total freedom and equality, yet his arguments are directed only at white men, excluding women and people of color. Crystal Simone Smith, known for writing poetry about the human condition and social change, offers a new poetic work that calls out the contradictions in one of the foundational texts of American democracy. Britain’s oppressive rule, while strongly criticized throughout Paine's text, was subsequently repeated by the founding fathers who, when forming our nation, established laws that oppressed racial groups and women. Smith uses the power of redaction to revise Pain’s approach, inviting readers to critically engage with the text and reimagine it anew. Retaining the original text as a translucent background, Smith highlights specific words and phrases to reveal new meanings that reflect not only the totality of America’s founding, but the ensuing fragile, if not failing, democracy of our present times. Perfect for students and US history buffs alike, this highly interactive collection functions as a textual reveal of historical biases and makes a case for a new, inclusive definition of citizenship that recognizes all Americans. Crystal Simone Smith is the author of three poetry chapbooks. In 2019, she won the North Carolina Poetry Society Bloodroot Haiku Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. Her latest book, RUNAGATE: SONGS OF FREEDOM BOUND, a collection of Japanese forms of poetry written in response to slave artifacts including ads for runaway slaves, will be published by Duke University Press in Spring 2025. Crystal Simone Smith is in conversation with Gloria Browne-Marshall, an EMMY Award-winning writer, a professor of constitutional law at John Jay College (CUNY), playwright, legal commentator, and author of five books. Her previous works include She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power and The Voting Rights War as well as essays and short stories. She was an Institute of Politics Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Browne-Marshall has received numerous accolades, including the 2024 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780807023389?ic_referral=qrmn2Qz1glVUhV--2zCQwsWbBSP8GyUvEF2xkQ9bO5cwM3xeewinpJ0_Uac7eJcPEBJNW4RwjyKBNBnQBMzPWdVAw9EITG4tyWVXHGbBZ4isSaEsuCdY8ZiGf5PVxIdHkZ4Qu40

Thomas Levenson — A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines - with Jennifer Ouellette

Since the advent of smallpox inoculation in the eighteenth century, the idea that a disease introduced to the body in some lesser, weakened form might prevent full-blown infection has been one of the greatest public health insights of the modern era, inspiring the invention of numerous vaccines and saving countless human lives. But, just as humanity acquired the god-like power to stop infectious disease in its tracks, some feared we had gone too far, leading to the skepticism that has hijacked public health discourse today. In three sweeping essays written for our current moment of scientific mistrust, Thomas Levenson searches for the origins of the most common arguments against vaccines: that they are unnatural; that they are more dangerous than the illnesses they claim to prevent; and that they are an affront to freedom. Each arose from the earliest development of particular vaccines and the campaigns to distribute them. Even as the pattern repeats, Levenson reveals how innocent that skepticism initially was and, in each case, how very human fears and questions ultimately turned into something darker, where no truth would be enough to overcome the doubt. Searing but ultimately empathetic, A Pox on Fools [https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217155002] explores the human impulse to question and wonder—sometimes past the point at which the very act of questioning turns deadly. Thomas Levenson is a professor of science writing at MIT. He is the author of several books, including So Very Small, Money for Nothing, The Hunt for Vulcan, Einstein in Berlin, and Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist. He has also made ten feature-length documentaries (including a two-hour Nova program on Einstein) for which he has won numerous awards. Levenson is joined in conversation with Jennifer Ouellette, a senior writer covering science and culture at Ars Technica. She has been writing professionally about physics and related topics for more than two decades, and was the founding director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange from 2008-2010. Her work has appeared in Discover, Slate, Smithsonian, Nature, Physics World, and Quanta, among other publications. She previously worked as science editor for Gizmodo, and is the author of four popular science books, most recently The Calculus Diaries (2010) and Me, Myself And Why (2014). PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798217155002?ic_referral=6B7Cl7b6BKx0NOohnUDV37ABUTlhTnseKJ-9HbdsT4YwM2t4Cg81EliLouTPbgdr1OlVt_t_jKYw_BjsntCeWpvMDrIDq3en0mJozcoX5s0knRyGA4ayMJL1cZrYjfvxeVpJ6fk

Brad Ryan — Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing, One National Park at a Time - with Jennifer D. Roberts

A heartrending, transformative true story following Brad Ryan and his grandmother Joy Ryan as they embark on a seven-year journey to visit every US National Park. Raised in Appalachia, Grandma Joy lived a life shaped by constraints and hardships, while Brad grappled with the weight of family rifts and unresolved pain. Together, they embarked on a quest not only to witness the majesty of America’s wild landscapes but also to heal generations of struggles and misunderstandings. Over seven years, they sought to visit all sixty-three US National Parks. From the towering peaks of Denali to the otherworldly beauty of the Everglades, each park became a classroom, teaching them profound lessons about nature, resilience, and each other. Grandma Joy and Me [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668099261] follows a seven-year adventure of intergenerational healing, wherein a grandmother and grandson find themselves released from the injustices—real and imagined—that had long held them hostage. An emotionally charged exploration of love, forgiveness, and resilience, this unique bond between a young man and his ninety-year-old grandmother—the oldest person to visit every US National Park—is more than just any travel tale; it is a testament to what makes us deeply human. Brad Ryan is a veterinarian, wildlife conservationist, social media influencer, mental health advocate, and writer from Southeastern Ohio. He earned his BA from Miami University, an MSc in mammalian biology from the University of Pretoria, and both a DVM and MPH from The Ohio State University, specializing in wildlife medicine and veterinary public health. Ryan is in conversation with Jennifer D. Roberts, a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Her scholarship focuses on the impact of built, social and natural environments, including the institutional and structural inequities of these environments, on physical activity and public health outcomes of marginalized communities. She is also the Executive Founding Director of the Wekesa Earth Center, Co-Founder/Co-Director of NatureRx@UMD, and Chair of the Nature and Health Alliance. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668099261?ic_referral=TAznzTJEx9w3vlrRjR-IU-Y4JeBtsQucr6Vud99aoh0wM81vBjm1PQGf5rXzgQTW7nH_euQ2FoL5rnPbfC7WNVoGuSrQh1INK8Yvux-I-4bEexXI-G6Uhb6TJ6UfDwkQtZuFSJQ