This past weekend I went to Washington D.C.'s famous independent bookstore Politics and Prose for the first time. Several visits later my grasp on D.C. geography is still not stellar, so I can only place P&P in a neighborhood called "not near the monuments and close to the Maryland border without going over" -- but its reputation so precedes it that you can probably just ask for directions by name.
P&P has been in the news lately because its owners put it up for sale last year, but happily it was recently purchased by the ghostwriter of Hillary Clinton's LIVING HISTORY and her husband. The store doesn't specialize in reads for policy wonks, but instead offers the full range of fiction and nonfiction, including handsome shelves of local bestsellers in the front window and tables of recent paperback fiction in a side room. I appreciated the table of authors who had appeared on "This American Life" (including signed copies of Sarah Vowell's latest, UNFAMILIAR FISHES); that's a clever idea.
The basement holds a coffeehouse, the children's books (including a nook with a beanbag perfect for hiding out and reading -- check under the stairs!) and a fairly good bargain section, although there aren't any crazy deals. If you like audiobooks and biographies/memoirs, you'll probably be most pleased at it. I ended up walking away with a used copy of A TRAGIC HONESTY: THE LIFE AND WORK OF RICHARD YATES myself. There was a panel going on about the new Smithsonian jazz anthology, but it was too sunny for us to linger and eavesdrop.
Photo: notbrucelee
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