Episodes
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Margaret Atwood: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Sep 27, 2019
Friday Sep 27, 2019
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/9780385543781 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Sep 20, 2019
Billy Bragg: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Sep 20, 2019
Friday Sep 20, 2019
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/9780571353217 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Sep 13, 2019
Caitlin Zaloom: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Sep 13, 2019
Friday Sep 13, 2019
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/9780691164311 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Sep 06, 2019
Christopher Leonard: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Sep 06, 2019
Friday Sep 06, 2019
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/9781476775388 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Aug 30, 2019
Téa Obreht: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Aug 30, 2019
Friday Aug 30, 2019
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/9780812992861 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Aug 23, 2019
Jia Tolentino: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Aug 23, 2019
Friday Aug 23, 2019
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/9780525510543 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Aug 16, 2019
J. Michael Straczynski & Alexandra Fuller: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Aug 16, 2019
Friday Aug 16, 2019
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/9780062857842 In 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/9781594206740 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Aug 09, 2019
Oyinkan Braithwaite: live at Politics and Prose
Friday Aug 09, 2019
Friday Aug 09, 2019
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/9780525564201 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Emily Nussbaum: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Aug 02, 2019
Friday Aug 02, 2019
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/9780525508960 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Friday Jul 26, 2019
Michael Kellogg: Live at Politics and Prose
Friday Jul 26, 2019
Friday Jul 26, 2019
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/9781633885189 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices