Ellen Prentiss Campbell — Vanishing Point - with Dorothy Reno

Ellen Prentiss Campbell — Vanishing Point - with Dorothy Reno

‘As all Pittsburghers know, Homewood Cemetery is full of stories.  Here Ellen Prentiss Campbell unearths not one but three, piecing together the fascinating yet little-known saga of the Hetzels.  VANISHING POINT is a smart, sharp historical novel that combines the shifting mores of art and the changing fortunes of one extraordinary American family.’ - Stewart O’Nan, author of EMILY, ALONE and EVENSO Vanishing Point [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781627206877], Ellen Prentiss Campbell’s newest historical novel, is a family epic spanning three generations and a hundred years, from the 1880’s to the 1980’s. The story of Pennsylvania artist George Hetzel’s complicated family explores their joys and sorrows, secrets and mysteries. Deeply researched and vividly imagined, it presents a family you will long remember as it celebrates the enduring strength of love and art. Ellen Prentiss Campbell grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland. A graduate of Smith College and The Bennington Writing Seminars, for many years Ellen practiced psychotherapy. Her novels The Bowl with Gold Seams and Frieda’s Song and her story collections Contents Under Pressure and Known by Heart have garnered awards, recognition and – best of all – many readers. Member of the National Book Critics Circle, her blog “Girl Writing” appears in The Washington Independent. Ellen lives walking distance from Politics and Prose. Ellen is in conversation with Dorothy Reno, classic-books columnist for the Independent. Her short fiction has been published in Canada and the United States; she is at work on a collection of essays. She lives in Washington DC and previously resided in Hanoi, Vietnam, and Tbilisi, Georgia. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781627206877?ic_referral=p-dpjxgNU-YLmm35MQDlee-9T16ntB3WTGs2YEL0-FgwM3Kt-gIcy4afK4OiL0XmQA2A02F7jZeP1wIEA89yGPbu0B14G3sTlChkqou9m81siHshgid4cIN9L7lBTWSwLLsJ7FQ

Ben Fountain — Rasputin Swims the Potomac: A Novel - with Stephen Kearse

From the award-winning, bestselling author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk comes a biting satire of American politics and a searingly intelligent novel about the cruel absurdities of contemporary life, centering on a world champion professional wrestler with presidential ambitions Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term. After an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation, threatening the president’s hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing. But as Rasputin’s appeal threatens to exceed the president’s, and the wrestler’s supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts. Hilarious, compelling, and tragically relevant, Rasputin Swims the Potomac [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250776549?ic_referral=Xw6p5zz-K5rAIImxG-Ai5W6PjdHRvnIH_JhGrS_Q_KowM1wC29vEUo8WGtqWX6xuAq7XMPP6RLHGRAyf8tx35oGNqMmczl1vc9p0naAqv6aZUq0wC6xcIatpmgRWml_V5vdeeF0] is both an escape and a warning, a scathing satire that explores the twists and turns of American democracy as it hurtles toward authoritarianism. Ben Fountain's most recent book is the novel Rasputin Swims the Potomac.  His work has received the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, among other honors, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award.  A former practicing attorney in Texas, he now lives in eastern North Carolina. Fountain is in conversation with Stephen Kearse, the author of Liquid Snakes, In the Heat of the Light, and Post, a forthcoming novel about the U.S. Post Office. His short fiction has been published in Joyland, The Deadlands, FIYAH, and Plotter. He works as a journalist and lives in metro Washington, D.C., with his family. He has never swam the Potomac, but he enjoys walking along it. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250776549?ic_referral=XZ-zO1miIU5-husD8gc0NQ5mTr7hjbA_5tNmH62lYbowM7_PBWTYMf43H6Bip_NlhMriJQRPpHZVKzUueeUeeuK6Fqo4iBKNc9vd8A-yZBRlfB1cpKO2rQz-HaNY6YeNIaNoxdE

Gautham Rao — White Power: Policing American Slavery - with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

Beginning in the colonial era and growing through the American Revolution and the Southern plantation system, slaveholders' violent police regime continued after Emancipation, through Reconstruction, to today. Moving across time, space, and place, White Power [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469694849] uncovers how slaveholders created their own white supremacist police and government to deny Black people rights, power, and humanity. Legal historian Gautham Rao introduces us to laws that empowered white people to forcibly exercise their desired racial superiority over Black people, shows how they spread from the South throughout the nation, and traces the rebellions, fugitivity, activism, and legal systems that challenged them. Rao's narrative includes slaveholders, lawmakers, and the Ku Klux Klan, dramatic escapes by runaway enslaved people, abolitionist activism in courtroom showdowns, and pitched battles between white paramilitaries and enslaved rebels. He offers a new interpretation of the history of policing in the US, centering the institution and legacy of slavery and speaking to the origins of today's persistence of white vigilance, white supremacist militia groups, and white racist cops determined to maintain power over Black people by force. Equally determined, however, was Black Americans' refusal to accept it. Gautham Rao is associate professor of history at American University in Washington, DC, and Editor-in-Chief of Law and History Review. Rao is in conversation with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, one of the world’s foremost historians and leading antiracist scholars. His books have been translated into multiple languages and republished throughout the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Dr. Kendi is Professor of History and the founding director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research enterprise examining global racism. He is author of many highly acclaimed bestsellers including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He is the author of the international bestseller How to Be an Antiracist. Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469694849?ic_referral=ek4ZSxcq-2GgaQE8QcLmx8CVRfffkIRbyUEJwvdIJbQwM2i_GlcSF8q_Fe8p5jSYPkot4SQ7IRASg6lAQ-iKZoB-4MiInC_Jmfo996OpJs_4CfdN69VZhN31bgBctTRsQUv-edU

Bobuq Sayed — No God but Us - with Lupita Aquino

In this wry, provocative debut, two gay Afghan men—cast out of their respective countries of birth by circumstances beyond their control—collide in Istanbul, a city that will test their willingness to sacrifice everything for the ones they love. When Delbar—a hapless twenty-something with dreams of becoming a drag queen—is spectacularly outed, he flees the insular immigrant-dense suburbs of Washington, DC to seek refuge with his sympathetic aunt in Istanbul. There, he discovers a vibrant community of dissidents, sex workers, activists, poets, and heretics. Among them are Leif and his boyfriend, Mansur, with whom Delbar quickly develops a blazing fascination. But Mansur also nurses a wounded heart, having left his own family, and his first love, behind in Iran. This time, Mansur’s learned not to dream bigger than his own survival. He’ll keep a low profile, work hard to send money back, and remain faithful to Leif—at least until his refugee status is granted. When riot police descend on attendees of the annual Istanbul Pride march, Mansur and Delbar are thrust into dangerous proximity. With the country surging into authoritarianism, each person must ask themselves: what constitutes a life well-lived, and how high is the price of freedom? Told through the alternating viewpoints of Delbar and Mansur, Bobuq Sayed’s debut is a story of borders and boundaries transgressed, and a seductive exploration of what it means to make a home at the margins of society. At once an immigrant family saga, a thwarted love story, and a searing portrait of politics made intimately personal, No God but Us [https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063419469] is an ambitious introduction to a bold new voice. Bobuq Sayed is the author of A Brief History of Australian Terror and the novel No God but Us. They were a 2022–23 Steinbeck fellow at San José State University, a Lambda Literary scholar, and an award-winning James A. Michener fellow in the University of Miami's MFA program. Bobuq currently lives in New York City. Sayed is in conversation with Lupita Aquino, better known as @Lupita.Reads on Instagram and TikTok, who passionately spreads her love for books online. She has moderated numerous book events and founded La Comunidad Reads, an author-inclusive book club in partnership with the DC Public Library. Alongside her vibrant online presence, she has contributed insightful book coverage to outlets such as TODAY.com, Aster(ix) Literary Journal, She Reads, The Washington Independent Review of Books, and many more. Notably, Lupita has served as a judge for the 2024 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Prize for the Feminist Press, and was on the Selection Committee for the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021. She enjoys exploring local bookstores and libraries with her wife and son when not immersed in books. PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063419469?ic_referral=-cjTpakf4ONOrL2lBTj9xpsk7cWpomeAG2o6KEA_KF8wMxTvbeI7c9BK87pEYY5CtB1sv9zC2UCpM0zebgO7NjRFILr_uU-E2v8NIZasYWigKYFBbxb8zPnxTsb5pH6x3N8e5GM

Deb Haaland — A Voice Like Mine: A Memoir - with Jonathan Capehart

New Mexico 2026 gubernatorial frontrunner, organizer, congresswoman, and former cabinet secretary Deb Haaland shares her story, offering a powerful and personal look at what it means to be “the first.” Nothing about Deb Haaland’s upbringing or family history set her up for a life of firsts: the first Native American woman elected to chair a state political party in the United States; one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress; the first Native American to serve in a presidential cabinet. Yet Haaland has embraced every opportunity, knowing that each step forward lifts up those who are too often left out of the conversation. A 35th-generation New Mexican and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland has lived a remarkable life shaped by poverty, alcoholism, and single parenthood. After a late but meteoric rise in politics, she stepped down from her cabinet position as Secretary of the Interior in January 2025 and is now running for Governor of New Mexico in the 2026 election. In A Voice Like Mine [https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250434227]—titled after Haaland’s congressional campaign slogan, “Congress has never heard a voice like mine”—she shares the personal history that shaped her courage to organize, run for office, and lead. She tells the stories that have defined her life in politics and beyond, from her grandfather’s cornfield, where she learned the importance of hard work and care for the earth, to the oak-paneled halls of Washington, D.C. Throughout her journey, Haaland has drawn on her heritage in her activism and service, leading with humility, purpose, and a commitment to “leave the ladder down” for those who follow. Deb Haaland, a 35th-generation New Mexican who organized for President Obama, led the New Mexico State Democratic Party to victory and made an unprecedented run and win as one of the first Native women to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. She also made history as the first Native American appointed to a U.S. President's cabinet. Drawing on her experience as a military kid, a single mom, and a Pueblo woman, Deb has championed working families, fought to give underserved communities a voice, and taken action to address the climate crisis. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Haaland is in conversation with Jonathan Capehart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is co-host of the morning edition of “The Weekend” on MS NOW (7am - 10am) and the New York Times bestselling author of “Yet Here I Am: Lessons from A Black Man’s Search for Home.” At PBS, Capehart serves as a political analyst on “PBS News Hour” and is featured on the popular Friday segment “Brooks and Capehart.” Capehart is a former Associate Editor at The Washington Post, where he was an opinion writer for 18 years. Capehart was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News (2002-2004) and served on its editorial board (1993-2000). They won the 1999 Pulitzer for Editorial Writing for their campaign to save the Apollo Theater.  PURCHASE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250434227?ic_referral=nz1AMR-SbrqAXq-ilN5YuMIKA-u717DKMyFXxZnQqrMwMw5C9mR2iJrS8sFDljeAx8KiDvujEonO5fwcOTMOuCBE3Xu4a-nGF_IQG7C0n3dAPuHzgqxuoArTyutog855awHL8ZE