Before my trip to Washington DC, I sent out a twitter message requesting recommendations for bookstores to visit and review. The resounding favorite was Politics and Prose. Thomas Heath of the Washington Post wrote a terrific article describing the store, so I’ll just add my personal insights. I resisted visiting Politics and Prose during previous trips to DC because it felt difficult to get to from the directions on the website, at least to a person relatively unfamiliar to the area. So here’s the most important fact I can add about Politics and Prose, it’s easy to reach from the closest Metro stop. While Keith and I took a taxi to the store, due to my directions concerns, we enjoyed a lovely stroll back to the Metro station, it’s a quick walk through a nice area of the city.
Heath described the event calendar at Politics and Prose as jammed packed and ”hardly a week goes by when a Washington Post journalist isn’t reading from his or her book.” I thought it was an exaggerated comment until I pulled up the event calendar for the week I was in town and found a reading every night. We attended a discussion by Bradley Graham, former military and foreign affairs reporter for the Washington Post, and author of By His Own Rules, a biography of Donald Rumsfeld. Walking in 10 minutes before the talk, Keith and I took two of the last four available seats. I estimated at least 80 people attended. Graham started his talk by noting that people in favor of Rumsfeld tended to think the book was too harsh, while those who weren’t fans felt it was too gentle. Presumably, Graham knew where the Politics and Prose audience would fall. Read the rest of this entry »
night of uninterrupted sleep. My next favorite part is, if I’m lucky to have a friend in the city I am in, I get to have an evening of uninterrupted conversation with a grown-up I adore. Washington DC is full of friends that I miss terribly.
Claire
Kim
