Live at Politics and Prose

Taking her title from Google’s early mantra, Foroohar, the award-winning CNN global economic analyst and Financial Times columnist and associate editor, chronicles how far Big Tech has fallen from its original vision of free information and digital democracy. Drawing on nearly thirty years of experience reporting on the technology sector, Faroohar traces the evolution of companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon into behemoths that monetize people’s data, spread misinformation and hate speech, and threaten citizens’ privacy. She also shows how we can fight back by creating a framework that both fosters innovation and protects us from the threats posed by digital technology. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781984823984Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Choi’s first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction; her second, American Woman, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and after that she was awarded the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award for A Person of Interest. Praised for narrative style, inventiveness, and keen insight, Choi in her latest work of fiction takes the novel to new places. At first a seemingly straightforward story of first love, the book follows two students at a performing arts high school who live, study, and fall in love in a competitive and rarefied world that has at its center a charismatic acting teacher. Then the off-stage dramas go too far, and the second half of the narrative puts into question all that preceded it. Choi is in conversation with Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250309884Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Machado’s electrifying Her Body and Other Parties—a finalist for the National Book Award—expanded our sense of what a short story could be and do. Her powerful new book draws on a similarly wide range of tones, cultural references, and formal innovations to redefine the memoir. Organizing each chapter around different themes—a haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—Machado explores an abusive lesbian relationship from multiple angles. As she chronicles her attraction to a charismatic and volatile woman, Machado looks back at the role of religion in her adolescence, interrogates the assumption that lesbian relationships are safe, and explores the history and reality of abuse within the queer community. Machado is in conversation with Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk about When I Was a Girl. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781644450031Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lindy West, New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Shrill, provides a brilliant and incisive look at how patriarchy, intolerance, and misogyny have conquered not just politics, but American culture itself in The Witches Are Coming. With her signature wit and in her uniquely incendiary voice, The Witches Are Coming lays out a grand theory of America that explains why Trump's election was, in many ways, a foregone conclusion. Whether it be the notion overheard since the earliest moments of the #MeToo movement that feminism has gone too far or the insistence that holding someone accountable for his actions amounts to a "witch hunt," this book exposes the lies that many have chosen to believe and the often unexpected figures who have furthered them. Along the way, it unravels the tightening link between culture and politics, identifying in the memes, music, and movies we've loved the seeds of a reactionary movement now surging through the nationhttps://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780316449885Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this engaging political history, Brown, senior U.S. senator from Ohio, tells the story of twentieth-century progressive politics through the profiles of eight of the senators who occupied his chair—desk 88—before him. In a series of insightful essays, Brown traces the achievements of Hugo Black, Robert F. Kennedy, Al Gore Sr., George McGovern, Herbert Lehman, Glen Taylor, Theodore Francis Green, and William Proxmire, extolling the men’s hard work and dedication, assessing and celebrating their communal legacy, and, drawing on his own experience, showing that progressive ideals are still vital to the life of our democracy. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780374138219Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There have been many theories about the fate of Jimmy Hoffa, the longtime president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, since he disappeared in 1975. Many involve Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, Hoffa’s aide and Goldsmith’s stepfather. In this compelling investigation-cum-memoir, Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University and author of Terror Presidency and Power and Constraint, recounts how his childhood affection for O’Brien became more complicated as he pursued a legal career. Then, with the perspective he gained from serving as assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, Goldsmith was moved to uncover the truth about O’Brien, Hoffa, the mob, the waning of labor’s power, and the rise of the surveillance state.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780374175658Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost, in Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.Farrow is in conversation with Sunny Hostin, the Emmy-nominated co-host of The View. Over her decade long career that has included working at CNN, Sunny has brought clarity and context to some of the biggest stories of our time. She also hosts and executive produces Truth About Murder with Sunny Hostin on Investigation Discovery.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780316486637Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Water Dancer is a bracingly original vision of the world of slavery, written with the narrative force of a great adventure. Driven by Coates’ bold imagination and striking ability to bring readers deep into the interior lives of his brilliantly rendered characters, this is the story of America's oldest struggle—the struggle to tell the truth—from one of our most exciting thinkers and beautiful writers.Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage—and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child—but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation family, Thena, his chosen mother, a woman of few words and many secrets, and Sophia, a young woman fighting her own war even as she and Hiram fall in love, he becomes determined to escape the only home he's ever known.Coates is in conversation with Ibram X. Kendi, author, historian, and the Founding Director of The Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University. He is the recipient of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780399590597Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, Flights is narrated by a compulsive traveler eager to analyze experience from the perspective of motion rather than stability, and she reports from a wide range of places, vehicles, and eras. The stories start and stop, interrupt each other, continue, and subtly comment on each other, from a plot involving a Polish tourist in Croatia whose wife and children disappear then mysteriously reappear, to another unfolding at Chopin’s funeral, and a third following a pioneering 17th-century Dutch anatomist whose story resonates with many socio-political questions of our own day. Tokarczuk’s evident delight in storytelling is matched by her penchant for questioning everything we take for granted. Tokarczuk was a psychologist before becoming one of Poland’s premier fiction writers, and her early training is evident throughout this insightful, masterfully observed, and utterly original novel.Tokarczuk is in conversation with Jennifer Croft, who translated Flights from Polish into English.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525534204Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2018-‘19 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Woodson is the award-winning author of dozens of books for children, young adults, and above, including the classic Brown Girl Dreaming. Her new novel, written for adults, and infused with her signature insight and rich, poetic prose, opens in 2001 in Brooklyn. The occasion is Melody’s sixteenth birthday, but it proves bittersweet as the assembled family recalls Melody’s mother—who never reached age sixteen. Charting the course of two families from different classes, Woodson’s affecting narrative tackles identity, ambition, desire, and parenthood as well as exploring how the decisions young people make change the generations to come. Woodson is in conversation with Lynn Neary, longtime NPR arts correspondent. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525535270Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades with The Testaments. When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her—freedom, prison, or death. With The Testaments, the wait is over. Atwood's sequel picks up the story fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.Atwood is in conversation with Rebeccca Traister, author of three books and writer-at-large for New York magazine and The Cut, and a contributing editor at Elle magazine.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780385543781Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bragg’s extraordinary career as a singer-songwriter and activist has spanned over thirty-five years. In both his music—which includes cover versions of iconic  protest songs and socialist anthems—and his politically-inflected lyrics, he’s dedicated himself to effecting social change and to moving others to get involved in grassroots activist causes. His new book is a direct and bracing call to action in which he shows that freedom is composed of three elements: liberty, equality, and accountability, and demonstrates that accountability is our most powerful tool against the rising tide of authoritarianism. Bragg is in conversation with David Weigel, a national political correspondent for The Washington Post and author of The Show That Never Ends.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780571353217Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Based on a series of frank and personal discussions with students and parents across the nation, Zaloom‘s book documents how the struggle to finance college education is transforming middle-class life. An associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, a founding editor of Public Books, and author of Out of the Pits, Zaloom reveals the hidden consequences of student debt, describes the wrenching moral decisions parents make having to choose between jeopardizing their own financial security or forcing their children into debt, and relates the frustrations of navigating a labyrinth of government-sponsored programs, for-profit funders, and university aid requirements. Zaloom is in conversation with Dorian Warren, president of Community Change and Community Change Action.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780691164311Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, Leonard’s monumental work of investigative reporting charts the five-decade rise of Koch Industries. One of the largest privately held multinationals in the country, and one of the most secretive, Koch owns companies in businesses ranging from energy to chemicals to banking; its CEO, Charles Koch, and his brother, David, are together wealthier than Bill Gates. As Leonard shows, the brothers have consolidated power by practicing a single-minded attention to the bottom line—which has also meant quashing unions, widening income inequality, thwarting action on climate change, and making capitalism a deeply alienating force for many Americans.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781476775388Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Obreht made an unforgettable literary debut with The Tiger’s Wife, an international bestseller that won the 2011 Orange Prize and earned her a slot on The New Yorker’s prestigious “20 Under 40” list. Her eagerly awaited second novel unfolds in the drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893. Drawing on little known historical episodes, Obreht follows the intertwined fates of Nora, an intrepid frontierswoman whose husband and older sons have gone in search of water, and Luke, a former outlaw haunted by more than just his past. Richly imagined and vividly told, Obreht’s story recreates the myth of the American West.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780812992861Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2016, has quickly become one of the most exciting and authoritative critical voices of the millennial generation. Praised for her fierce intelligence, formidable mix of skepticism and optimism, and her lyrical, lucid prose, Tolentino has written on a wide range of social and cultural topics, from music and marriage to female empowerment and race in publishing. Her eagerly awaited book presents nine new essays that see through the hype and contradictions of contemporary life to show us a clearer picture of ourselves and our historical moment.Tolentino is in conversation with Kat Chow, reporter for NPR and founding member of Code Switch, currently working on a memoir about grief and identity forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525510543Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Straczynski may be best known as the creator of the Babylon 5 and Sense8 TV shows, but his amazing four-decade career also encompasses screenwriting—Changeling, Thor, and World War Z—writing for several D.C. and Marvel Comics’ series, and creating his own award-winning graphic works. Now in this stunning memoir he tells his own story—perhaps his most fantastic feat yet. Straczynski grew up in the care of adults variously damaged by addiction, mental illness, and poverty. His only refuge from the misery was comic books, and he gradually realized that he, too, could invent alternate worlds. But even as he managed to take power over his future, a terrible secret in his family’s past continued to haunt him.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062857842In a series of deft, powerful memoirs beginning with the award-winning Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller has kept readers riveted with stories of her unconventional family’s life in southern Africa. Her moving new book, written with her signature brio and humor, focuses on her father, the adventurous, restless Tim Fuller, who, announcing at age 7 his plans to leave England, moved first to Rhodesia than to Zambia. Writing from the shock of his sudden death in 2015—in Pest, Hungary, of all places—Fuller profiles and pays tribute to a man who devoured life whole.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781594206740Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now available in paperback, Braithwaite’s spectacular debut novel is the story of two sisters, Ayoola and Korede, and the secrets that bind them together. As the book opens, Ayoola has just killed her boyfriend. She claims it was self-defense—as it was with the two previous boyfriends she killed. Korede, who works at a hospital, disposes of the body and tells no one. But her silent complicity is tested when Ayoola starts visiting her at work and attracts the attention of a doctor Korede is in love with. Fast-paced, smart, and chilling, Braithwaite ratchets up the tension to an explosive ending.Braithwaite is in conversation with writer and producer Tayla Burney.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525564201Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer for criticism,  Nussbaum writes about TV like the art that it is. Gathered from some fifteen years of work for The New Yorker, New York, and other publications—along with several new pieces—the essays in this collection wholeheartedly celebrate television and guide us to new ways of looking at it. Arguing that TV demands more than just watching, Nussbaum outlines her struggle with “prestige television”—an awakening she traces to Buffy the Vampire Slayer—and questions the breakdown of shows into high- and low-brow. She also examines programming in the light of #MeToo, explores how fans distort their favorite shows, profiles influential figures such as Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy, assesses the legacies of Norman Lear and Joan Rivers, and more.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525508960Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kellogg follows his revelatory study of medieval thought, The Wisdom of the Middle Ages, with a similarly wide-ranging and accessible look at the major intellectual and artistic advances during the Renaissance. Starting with Petrarch (1304-1374), the scholar and poet often considered the inventor of humanism, and closing with Shakespeare (1564-1616), Kellogg examines two centuries’ worth of poetry, philosophical treatises, essays, letters, and dramas, tracing how ideas evolved, how they drove and were in turn influenced by, the Reformation, and examining how pivotal figures such as Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, and the Bard brought us to the cusp of modernism.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781633885189Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A religious liberties lawyer, founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com, and executive producer for the docuseries, The Secret Life of Muslims, Uddin has devoted her career to defending people of all faiths. In recent years, however, along with a trend toward secularizing and politicizing faith in general, she has seen an increase in attempts to criminalize Islam. In this timely and important book, Uddin intertwines legal arguments with her own experience, showing how a loss of religious liberties for one group affects all the rest, and proposing ways individuals and communities can preserve this valuable constitutional right. Uddin is in conversation with Michelle Boorstein, religion reporter for The Washington Post.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781643131313Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bennet has represented Colorado in the U.S. Senate since 2009, earning a reputation as an independent thinker and a pragmatic centrist. In his closely observed analysis of today’s dysfunctional political landscape, he focuses on five key issues: the process for appointing judges, the recent tax cuts, the demise of the Iran nuclear agreement, the role of big money in politics, and immigration policies, examining each to illustrate exactly how and why partisan gridlock is undermining government. As he shows how much we’ve lost due to hyper-partisan politics, Bennet proposes specific ways we can re-establish a collaborative approach geared to helping all Americans rather than to benefiting one political party.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780802147813Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Hulse has covered legislative and judicial events for more than three decades. His important new book is a deeply reported account of the struggle over the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016. Drawing on exclusive interviews with key figures including Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Trump campaign operatives, court activists, and legal scholars, Hulse traces the polarizing political battle that began with Senate Republicans’ refusal to grant a hearing to Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, and concluded with the confirmation in April 2017 of Trump’s candidate, Neil M. Gorsuch. Putting this episode in the larger context of governmental paralysis, Hulse traces the judicial wars of the last twenty year and charts the loss of bipartisan procedures across all three federal branches.Hulse is in conversation with Maureen Dowd, op-ed columnist for The New York Times.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062862914Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fifield, Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post and former Seoul correspondent for the Financial Times, has visited North Korea a dozen times, becoming one of our most knowledgeable journalists on that cryptic nation. In her new book she draws on her experience and connections to penetrate the layers of myth and propaganda surrounding Kim Jong Un. Granted exclusive access to Kim’s inner circle—including the aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied Dennis Rodman on his visits, and the Japanese sushi chef who pointed to Kim as the most likely successor to his father—Fifield gives a detailed and insightful portrait of one of the world’s most secretive dictators.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781541742482Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his debut collection of stories, the creator and executive producer of the hit show BoJack Horseman—named by Thrillist magazine Netflix’s best original show ever—applies his distinctive dark humor to the mysteries of love.  Combining romance, whimsy, and sharp cultural commentary, Bob-Waksberg plunges into the world of lonely commuters looking for—and failing to find—connections; follows a couple whose wedding plans founder on their relatives’ argument over how many goats to sacrifice; and maps a woman’s history of romantic failure by the sites she visited with her exes. Quirky and surreal, these pieces are as wryly insightful as they are hilariously entertaining.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781524732011Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like the stunning poems of his collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Vuong’s kaleidoscopic first novel speaks from the heart of multi-generational PTSD, charting the fate of a Vietnamese-American family struggling to settle into life in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong frames his novel as a letter from Little Dog, a young gay writer, to his mother. The only one of his family fluent in English, Little Dog sees language as the key to belonging in America, and his determination to record all he knows of his relatives’ lives infuses his every word with life-or-death urgency. Along with stories of his mother and grandmother, he recounts his own coming-of-age as a gay man, becoming a moving elegy to his first lover—dead of an overdose at 22. Vuong is in conversation with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525562023Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ensler is a Tony-award winning playwright, author, performer, and activist, best-known for The Vagina Monologues, which examined consensual and nonconsensual sex, reproduction, sex work, body image, and other issues from the perspectives of women of various ages, races, and sexualities. Premiering in 1996, this groundbreaking performance piece has been published in nearly fifty languages and performed in more than 140 countries. Its popularity helped Ensler found V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. In her powerful new memoir, Ensler writes the apology she never received from her abusive father, attempting to transform the experience into a revolutionary call for courage, honesty, and forgiveness. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781635574388Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tam founded his Asian-American dance rock band, The Slants, in 2006. Known for their community activism, the band dedicated itself to overturning stereotypes—a mission that started with the name, which refers not only to individual perspectives and guitar chords, but to Asian ethnic identity. Seeking to reclaim this derogatory term as a badge of pride, Tam applied to register “Slant” as a trademark. When the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected his application, Tam pursued his case to the Supreme Court—where he won a unanimous victory in 2017. In this spirited and inspiring memoir of his fight for free speech, Tam reflects on questions of identity as he moves from anime conventions and cultural festivals all the way through the U.S. legal system.Tam is in conversation with Robert Barnes, reporter for The Washington Post covering the U.S. Supreme Court.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After writing To Kill a Mockingbird and helping her lifelong friend Truman Capote research In Cold Blood, the late Harper Lee set to work on a true-crime book of her own. Never completed, the work was based on the case of Willie Maxwell, a rural Alabama preacher accused of killing five members of his family in the 1970s. Lee spent a year in Maxwell’s town reporting on the story, which took a further turn when Maxwell was shot at the funeral of his last victim, and his killer, despite many witnesses, was acquitted. Drawing on Lee’s research papers and some fifty of her unpublished letters, Cep offers a detailed portrait of the reclusive writer’s working methods, including her struggles with drinking; recounts a fascinating real-life Southern Gothic; and gives us a tantalizing glimpse of the book that might have been.https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/casey-cep-furious-hours-murder-fraud-and-last-trial-of-harper-leeLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke (1941-2010) is also the story of the United States from the Vietnam War, where Holbrooke gained his first experience as an advisor, to the conflict in Afghanistan, which Holbrooke, by then a seasoned diplomat, sought to end. For both the man and the nation, the period was a series of crises, frustrations, and victories that showcased both strength and heedless self-confidence. Drawing on Holbrooke’s journals and letters, diaries of key government officials, and interviews with figures including Hillary Clinton, Hamid Karzai, David Petraeus, and Bosnian war criminals, Packer, an Atlantic staff writer and author of the National Book Award-winning  Unwinding, not only portrays a brilliant and complicated man but shows how his ideas and temperament helped shape several decades of U.S. foreign policy.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780307958020Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Caro’s collection of personal essays is both a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of his award-winning books and an engaging self-portrait of sorts by one of our most accomplished biographers. Writing with his signature grace, humor, and vigor, Caro recalls what it was like to interview a man as powerful as Robert Moses and how it felt to confront the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. He details how he plans and composes his books and recounts how he decided to write not just about pivotal individuals, but to focus also on the people and politics those dominant figures shaped. And for the many readers who have always wanted to know why Caro’s books take so long, he has both a short answer—intensive research—and a longer one based on advice from an editor early in his career as a journalist.Mr. Caro is in conversation with Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press and the Political Director for NBC News.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525656340Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It wasn’t until she was in graduate school that Bhagwati, now a writer and activist, rebelled against the expectations her family had imposed on her and left the Ivy League to join the Marines. She deliberately chose the toughest branch of the military, determined to prove herself in new ways. The experience turned out to be harder than she’d expected, and her memoir recounts her battles against racism, misogyny, and abuse of power. When she left the service she vowed to change the system, and by founding the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), she did. Working to call attention to sexual violence in the military, SWAN has helped initiate substantial policy reforms with the Departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs, including overturning the ban on women in combat. Bhagwati is in conversation with Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781501162541Anuradha Bhagwati is a writer, activist, yoga and meditation teacher, and Marine Corps veteran. She founded the Service Wom­en’s Action Network (SWAN), which brought national attention to sexual violence in the military and helped overturn the ban on women in com­bat. Anuradha is a regular media commentator on issues related to national security, women’s rights, civil rights, and mental health, and is the recipient of numerous awards. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washing­ton Post, Politico, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic. She lives in New York City with her ser­vice dog, DukeLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Doing Justice, one-time federal prosecutor Preet Bharara uses case histories, personal experiences, and his own inviting writing and teaching style to show the thought process we need to best achieve truth and justice in our daily lives and within our society. Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it; he believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature. Ultimately, Doing Justice is an inspiring, thought-provoking, and entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system–and in our society.Bharara is in conversation with Bianna Golodryga, journalist and CNN contributor.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525521129PREET BHARARA served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. Bharara oversaw the investigation and litigation of all criminal and civil cases and supervised an office of more than two hundred Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who handled cases involving terrorism, narcotics and arms trafficking, financial and healthcare fraud, cybercrime, public corruption, gang violence, organized crime, and civil rights violations. In 2017, Bharara joined the NYU School of Law faculty as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence. He is the Executive Vice President of Some Spider Studios and the host of CAFE's Stay Tuned with Preet, a podcast focused on issues of justice and fairness. Bharara graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and from Columbia Law School, where he was a member of the law review.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leadership is hard. Convincing others—and yourself—that you're capable of taking charge and achieving more requires insight and courage. Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by political leader, entrepreneur, and nonprofit CEO Stacey Abrams is the handbook for outsiders, written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, the working class, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and millennials ready to make change. Abrams uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Abrams has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business, and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change.Stacey Abrams is an author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Minority Leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. She has founded multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at both the state and national levels; and she is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Abrams is the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award and the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250214805Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Finding My Voice, Valerie Jarrett recounts her work ensuring equality for women and girls, advancing civil rights, reforming our criminal justice system, and improving the lives of working families. From a single mother stagnating in corporate law, to finding her voice in Harold Washington's historic administration, to ultimately becoming one of the most visible and influential African-American women of the twenty-first century, Jarrett shares her forthright, optimistic perspective on the importance of leadership and the responsibilities of citizenship in the twenty-first century, inspiring readers to lift their own voices. Jarrett is in conversation with Anita Dunn, White House communications director and senior adviser to President Obama’s presidential campaignsValerie Jarrett was the longest serving senior adviser to President Barack Obama. She oversaw the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. Before joining the White House, she served as the chief executive officer of The Habitat Company in Chicago, chairman of the Chicago Transit Board, commissioner of Planning and Development, and deputy chief of staff for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley. Jarrett has received numerous awards and honorary degrees, including Time's "100 Most Influential People." She received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1978 and her J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. She is currently a senior adviser to the Obama Foundation and Attn and a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525558132Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Convicted of armed robbery in his twenties, Woodfox was sentenced to fifty years in Angola prison. There he learned about the Black Panther’s code of living and commitment to social justice and joined the party. Then in April 1972 he was accused of killing a white guard and, without evidence, put into solitary confinement. For more than forty years, until he was freed in February 2016, he spent 23 hours a day in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell. In this extraordinary memoir, Woodfox, who began his activismfor prisoners’ rights while still in solitary, recounts his harrowing experience as one of the Angola Three. His book is both a searing indictment of the criminal justice system and a tribute to the Black Panther Party, whose principles helped keep him hopeful and compassionate during his long ordeal.Woodfox is in conversation with Katherine M. Kimpel, current Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and formerly one of Woodfox's legal representatives.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780802129086Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of our most respected and experienced futurists, Webb argues in her new book that the main danger posed by artificial intelligence is the power it gives the big corporations that control it. Each time we speak to Alexa or click on a link, the data is collected and used by one or more of the big nine: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM, and Apple. The ordinary people who supply the data have no say over how it’s used and little information about the system if fuels. And that system is largely unregulated. Webb, professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business, and the founder of the Future Today Institute, gives an eye-opening look at how AI is being misused for the sake of short-term financial gain, and proposes a strategy to change that.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781541773752Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A veteran investigative reporter and author of Desperados, the basis for Michael Mann's NBC miniseries Drug Wars, Shannon has written a riveting account of the career and eventual downfall of Paul Calder LeRoux. A new kind of outlaw, LeRoux used encrypted mobile devices, cloud sharing, and other digital tools to build a global criminal network. This Cartel 4.0 raked in hundreds of millions of dollars by selling arms, drugs, chemicals, and more. But LeRoux met his match with a team of DEA operatives as willing as he to use unorthodox methods. With the suspense of a thriller, Shannon chronicles the five years it took the 960 Group to bring down their quarry. Shannon is in conversation with Karen Tumulty, columnist for The Washington Post.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062859136Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taking his title from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," Jones chronicles the arduous struggle to punish those responsible for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four girls. Though the FBI strongly suspected four especially radical KKK members, investigators were thwarted by reluctant witnesses, lack of physical evidence, and racial bias and the case was closed. When it was re-opened years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley convicted one of the bombers in 1977. Jones, the first Alabama Democrat to win a Senate seat since 1992, followed Baxley as Attorney General from 1997 to 2001, convicting two others in 2001 and 2002 (the fourth died in 1994).https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250201447Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Winslow’s crime thrillers have won audiences world-wide, and many—Savages, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, The Force—have been turned into acclaimed films. His latest book joins The Power of the Dog and The Cartel to conclude his award-winning trilogy on the drug trade. Again featuring Art Keller, now in the top ranks of the DEA after a forty-year career, the novel follows the agent from his successful efforts to defeat the Mexican drug kingpin Adán Barrera into an even more dangerous fight against the heroin epidemic. Moving at a fast pace from south of the border and the slums of Guatemala to Wall Street and Washington, D.C., the story pits Keller against not only a new generation of narcos, corrupt cops, and street traffickers but an incoming administration that’s as much his enemy as the old drug cartels were.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062664488Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

McCabe started working at the FBI in 1996 and served in many capacities, from street agent on the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force to leading the Counterterrorism Division, the National Security Branch, and the Washington Field Office as well as serving as the first director of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group. Yet that estimable career came to a sudden end when Trump fired McCabe on March 16, 2018. In this book McCabe refutes Trump’s assertion that the firing was “A great day for Democracy.” In fact, as McCabe shows, Trump’s action was just the opposite. Giving a detailed insider’s view of the FBI, McCabe charts the Bureau’s last twenty years, during which time its most important task became protecting the country from terrorists—though now perhaps the major threat to Constitutional rights is the Trump administration itself.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250207579Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Buttigieg left a successful business career to return to South Bend, Indiana, his hometown had been declared a “dying city” by Newsweek magazine. Elected mayor in 2011 and re-elected in 2015, Buttigieg, a Harvard-educated Rhodes Scholar and U.S. Navy veteran, was determined to change that. Going directly to the community, he met with residents, reclaimed abandoned houses, confronted gun violence, and attracted high-tech industry. Today South Bend is a shining success, and Buttigieg’s candid and compassionate account is both an inspiring story of how politics can and should work and an introduction to one of today’s rising political figures.Buttigieg is in conversation with Jonathan Allen of NBC News.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781631494369Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Awarded the 2016 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, Luxenberg’s second book is a deeply researched account of events leading up to the infamous “separate but equal” Plessy v. Ferguson decision. Announced on May 18, 1896, the decision had a deceptively quiet reception. But as Luxenberg shows, the case went to issues at the heart of the nation’s unresolved image of itself. Focusing on the individuals involved in bringing, arguing, and deciding the case as well as on the broader separatist currents throughout the era of westward expansion and industrialization, Luxenberg, a longtime Washington Post senior editor, forces us to see both how entrenched racism has been as well as how some have always struggled to root it out. https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780393239379Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drawing from African history, mythology, and his own rich imagination, Marlon James’ new book, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, is a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, it is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both. Author of The New York Times’ bestseller A Brief History of Seven Killings and winner of the Man Booker Prize, James’ first installment in the Dark Star trilogy combines myth, fantasy, and events of the past to create an epic, awe-inspiring thriller.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780735220171Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In July 2014, Washington Post Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian was arrested by Iranian police and accused of spying for America. Initially, Rezaian thought the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding, but soon realized that it was much more dire as it became an eighteen-month prison stint with impossibly high diplomatic stakes. In Prisoner, Rezaian writes of his exhausting interrogations and farcical trial, his bond with his Iranian father, and his life-changing decision to move to Tehran. Written with wit, humor, and grace, Prisoner brings to life a fascinating, maddening culture in all its complexity.Rezaian is in conversation with Frank Sesno, author, former CNN correspondent, and director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780062691576Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

April Ryan, Washington Bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks and author of Under Fire, At Mama’s Knee, and The Presidency in Black and White returns for the sixth in an ongoing series of discussions focusing on race in America.  As in previous presentations, Ryan will moderate a panel of leading writers and commentators to examine recent and longstanding issues. Panelists include Donna Brazile, Democratic political strategist, TV commentator, and co-author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics; Jason Riley, member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute; and Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer-winning national correspondent for The Washington Post and author of They Can't Kill Us All.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, The Truths We Hold, Senator Harris draws on her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her to offer a master class in problem solving, crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Known for being a voice for the voiceless, Senator Harris will explore the themes of The Truths We Hold and share her vision of our shared struggle, purpose, and values. Sen. Harris is in conversation with Jonathan Capehart, writer for The Washington Post's PostPartisan blog and contributor for MSNBChttps://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780525560715Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now in paperback, Pink’s fascinating study of timing starts with intriguing and seemingly inexplicable observations: why are prisoners eligible for parole more likely to get a favorable ruling earlier in the day? Why are adolescents who start school before 8 a.m. at an academic disadvantage? Drawing on research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink shows that timing has strong and predictable effects on people’s thoughts and emotions, and that by understanding these patterns, we can maximize our potential by planning the timing of important events and decisions. Pink, the award-winning author of bestsellers including Drive, To Sell Is Human, and A Whole New Mind, makes the science of time compelling as well as useful, telling many stories and interweaving tips from his own “Time Hacker’s Handbook.”https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9780735210639Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At once a mystery, a cultural history, and a deeply personal love letter to reading, Orlean’s compelling new book starts with a disaster. On April 29, 1986, the Los Angeles Public Library went up in flames. The worst library fire in American history, the blaze destroyed more than 400,000 books and damaged another 700,000. It lasted for more than seven hours and temperatures reached 2,000 degrees. Over thirty years later, the cause of the fire is still unknown. Adding her own investigation to existing theories, Orlean, a New Yorker staff writer since 1992 and the author of The Orchid Thief, profiles the library’s staff and patrons, looks at the global history of libraries and the challenges these institutions face today, and irrefutably demonstrates the national and personal value of these truly public places.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781476740188Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly a thousand authors visited Politics and Prose last year; here’s a collection of some of our favorite moments from 2018- including Michael Arceneaux, Kristin Hannah, Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Gary Trudeau, Lorrie Moore, Olga Tokarczuk, and Adam Hochschild.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Congo Stories, John Prendergast and Fidel Bafilemba reveal how the people of Congo are fighting back against a tidal wave of international exploitation and governmental oppression to make things better for their nation, their communities, and their families. The book contains stunning photographs taken by actor Ryan Gosling, Bafilemba's profiles of heroic Congolese activists, and Prendergast's narratives of the extraordinary history and evolving social movements that directly link the Congo with the United States and Europe. Congo Stories provides windows into the history, the people, the challenges, the possibilities, and the movements that could change the course of Congo's destiny.JOHN PRENDERGAST is a New York Times bestselling author who founded and runs both the Enough Project and The Sentry.FIDEL BAFELIMBA is a Congolese field researcher who coordinates a civil society network called GATT-RN.RYAN GOSLING is an actor and filmmaker.CHOUCHOU NAMEGABE is a Congolese journalist and activist, who founded and directs AFEM – South Kivu Women’s Media Associationhttps://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781455584642Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices