April 2010 6 Tuesday, April 6, 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 14, 7 p.m. 14 Sunday, April 25, 1 p.m. Apr 10 Michael O’Brien Sixth & I Historic Synagogue Apr 10 25Apr 10 Chester Hartman and Mrs. Adams In Winter Yann Martel Gregory D. Squires (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27) Beatrice And Virgil The Integration Debate From the Cambridge professor of American intel- (Spiegel & Grau, $24) (Routledge, $36.95) lectual history, this profile of Louisa Adams, wife of Martel won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for The Life From “race fatigue” to “integration exhaustion,” race John Quincy, is a rich look at the woman and her of Pi, his story of a boy and a tiger adrift at sea. His continues to plague American society. In their timely times. O’Brien focuses on Louisa’s solo journey from new novel, featuring a donkey, a howler monkey, and colloquy, Hartman, Director of Research for the Pov- St. Petersburg to Paris after the Napoleonic wars. an enigmatic taxidermist, is an equally whimsical and erty & Race Research Action Council, and Squires, a philosophical consideration of truth and deception, responsibility and professor of public policy and public administration at George Washing- Wednesday, April 7, 7 p.m. complicity. This is a ticketed event. Two admission tickets are free with ton, explore both ongoing and emerging controversies surrounding race Christopher Moore Apr7 10 book purchase from P&P or are $12 each without purchase of the book. in education, housing, jobs, and the legal system. Bite Me (William Morrow, $23.99) Thursday, April 15, 7 p.m. Sunday, April 25, 5 p.m. Jennifer Gilmore 25 Continuing his Blooksucking Fiends series, Moore’s 15Apr 10 2010 Big Read with Gayle Wald Apr 10 latest love story picks up where You Suck left off. Nar- Something Red Faith and Doubt in rated by Abby Normal, still with Foo Dog in the love (Scribner, $25) “A Lesson Before Dying” lair, this latest installment of the vampiric goings-on in Gilmore follows her well-received Golden Country Ernest Gaines’s novel stages a fascinating argument San Francisco is funny, suspenseful, and full of surprises. with a book that should have wide appeal in the D.C. area. between doubt and faith. This argument unfolds in the Set in 1979, the novel focuses on the Goldsteins, a Wash- relation between the teacher-narrator, Grant, and his Wednesday, April 7, 8:15 p.m. ington family with left/liberal roots. As the two teenagers antagonist, the Reverend, but it also involves the women Apr7 10 The Avalon Theatre struggle to establish independent identities, the adults in the novel and the imprisoned young man, Jefferson. David Remnick work to define themselves politically in the shifting landscape of the times. GWU English Professor Gayle Wald, a specialist in 20th-century African The Bridge American literature and culture and author of Shout, Sister, Shout!, a 2007 (Knopf, $29.95) 16 Friday, April 16, 7 p.m. biography of the gospel performer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, will lead this ses- Using interviews and letters, Remnick, editor of The Apr 10 Craig Yoe sion, which includes opening remarks and a community discussion of skepti- New Yorker, has expanded his magazine profile of The Great Anti-War Cartoons cism and belief, secular and sacred, in Gaines’s award-winning book Obama to tell the 44th president’s life story and trace (Fantagraphics, $24.99) the remarkable political journey that led to the White House. Remnick Yoe, a historian of cartoons, has assembled a vast array 26 Monday, April 26, 7 p.m. will be in conversation with Michele Norris of NPR. This is a ticketed of anti-war comics that span the globe and date back to Apr 10 Nick Bunker event. Two admission tickets are free with book purchase from P&P or are the 1600s. These comics run the gamut of emotions, Making Haste From Babylon $10 each without purchase of the book. from Bill Mauldin’s humor to Francisque Poulbot’s (Knopf, $30) sorrow. Yoe’s presentation will include source material from Warren Told from the British perspective, this history of the Thursday, April 8, 7 p.m. Bernard’s private collection. Pilgrims is rich in details newly unearthed from U.K. Roxana Saberi Apr8 10 archives. Bunker, a British former investment banker Between Two Worlds Saturday, April 17, 1 p.m. 17 and descendant of a Pilgrim, considers the Plymouth (HarperCollins, $25.99) Carl Hoffman Apr 10 Colony of the 1620s in terms not only of the Puritans’ faith, but also of Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist raised in North The Lunatic Express the wider context of the global politics and economics of the time. Dakota, returned to Iran in 2003. In January 2009 she (Broadway, $24.99) was arrested, interrogated, convicted of espionage, and Hoffman, a contributing editor at National Geographic Trav- Tuesday, April 27, 7 p.m. 27Apr 10 given an eight-year prison sentence. After an inter- eler, has written a hair-raising account of his six-month global Daniele Mastrogiacomo national outcry, she was released. Her account offers an eloquent and trek on the world’s most dangerous conveyances. He embarks Days Of Fear insightful portrait of Iranian society, from its hard-line regime to her on ferries that kill some 1,000 people a year, takes overcrowded (Europa Editions, $15) fellow prisoners. commuter trains in Mumbai, traverses washed-out roads in the Amazon, and In his powerful memoir, Mastrogiacomoa, a foreign cor- goes Greyhound from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., all the while meeting respondent for La Repubblica, recounts how he and his Friday, April 9, 7 p.m. an amazing variety of people. driver were abducted by the Taliban in 2007. When Italy Apr9 10 Seth Stevenson refused to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, their Grounded 17 Saturday, April 17, 6 p.m. abductors executed the driver but let Mastrogiacomoa live, moving him (Riverhead, $15) Apr 10 Aviva Goldfarb around the country to elude detection. A travel columnist for Slate, Stevenson decided to see SOS! the world the old-fashioned way. Eschewing airplanes, (Griffin, $17.99) 28 Wednesday, April 28, 7 p.m. he circumnavigated the globe by shoe leather, bicycle, The author of The Six O’Clock Scramble offers Apr 10 Bruce Feiler rickshaw, bus, railroad, and boat. His charming travel- a year of weekly menus that not only reduce the The Council Of Dads ogue evokes the pleasures of slow, ground-level meanderings, which let stress of getting family dinners on the table but of- (William Morrow, $22.99) him savor time and distance. fer more healthful and environmentally conscious Diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Feiler, author of diets. Goldfarb’s advice includes tips on what “organic” means and when Walking the Bible, worried that his young daughters Saturday, April 10, 1 p.m. it matters; on how to eat seasonally; and on how to shop efficiently and might have to grow up without him. He asked six men Laura Skandera Trombley store foods in bulk. who had been important in his life to stand in for him 10Apr 10 Mark Twain’s Other Woman as a collective surrogate. Feiler’s memoir of this difficult time is a moving (Knopf, $27.95) Sunday, April 18, 5 p.m. 18 meditation on family, illness, and fatherhood. Isabel Van Kleek Lyon was Mark Twain’s Jacqueline Winspear Apr 10 personal assistant, social secretary, and confidante The Mapping Of Love And Death Thursday, April 29, 7 p.m. during the last years of his life. But she was distrusted (HarperCollins, $25.99) Andrew Young and Kabir Sehgal 29Apr 10 by Twain’s daughters, who called her manipulative and The seventh installment of the Maisie Dobbs series Walk In My Shoes forced their father to fire her. Trombley’s account of the finds the London psychologist and investigator em- (Palgrave Macmillan, $24) Lyon-Twain relationship is the first to draw on the complete archives of broiled in a case of love and murder that leads back to One of the great civil rights leaders, Young has long Lyon’s papers. 1914. Hired by the parents of a soldier who died on a acted as a mentor to his godson, Kabir Sehgal. Now French battlefield, Maisie uncovers the cause of his death, the identity of those lessons in leadership, along with Young’s thoughts Saturday, April 10, 3:30 p.m. the unnamed woman he loved, and much more, including secrets of her on race, justice, and his many rich experiences, have 10Apr 10 Julian E. Zelizer own heart. been collected in this book, which Young describes as “my attempt to Arsenal Of Democracy humbly pass along a few anecdotes, life lessons, and insights to prepare (Basic Books, $35) 19 Monday, April 19, 7 p.m. you for the long journey ahead.” A Princeton professor of history and public affairs, Apr 10 Anchee Min Zelizer shows that partisan fighting has always shaped Pearl Of China Friday, April 30, 7 p.m. (Bloomsbury, $24) Robert V. Remini American foreign policy, while national security has 30Apr 10 always been part of our domestic conflicts. Rather than a Min, specializing in historical novels with strong women At The Edge Of The Precipice new phenomenon of the Bush/Obama years, U.S. domestic politics and characters (Becoming Madame Mao, The Last Empress) (Basic Books, $24) foreign affairs have been intertwined for the last six decades. here tells the story of Pearl Buck. Told from the perspec- The latest work from the venerable scholar of tive of Willow Yee, Buck’s devoted friend, the narrative American history recounts the Compromise of 1850, Saturday, April 10, 6 p.m.