Carlos Lozada — The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians - with Mark Leibovich

Watch author Carlos Lozada's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose book store in Washington, D.C.

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As a long-time book critic and columnist in Washington, Carlos Lozada dissects all manner of texts: commission reports, political reporting, Supreme Court decisions, and congressional inquiries to understand the controversies animating life in the capital. He also reads copious books by politicians and top officials: tell-all accounts by administration insiders, campaign biographies by candidates longing for high office, revisionist memoirs by those leaving those offices behind. With this provocative essay collection, Lozada argues that no matter how carefully political figures sanitize their experiences, positions, and records, no matter how diligently they present themselves in the best and safest and most electable light, they almost always let slip the truth. They show us their faults and blind spots, their ambitions and compromises, their underlying motives and insecurities. Whether they mean to or not, they tell us who they really are.

In his memoirs and speeches, Barack Obama constantly invoked the power and meaning of his life story, Lozada notes, a sign of how the former president capitalized on his personal symbolism, trying to transform it from inspiration on the campaign trail into an all-purpose governing tool. In a soliloquy about his hair in a self-help book published two decades ago, Donald Trump revealed not just his vanity, Lozada explains, but his utter isolation from the world, long before he entered the bubble of the White House. In deft and lacerating prose, Lozada interprets the unresolved tensions of Hillary Clinton's ideological beliefs. He imagines the wonderful memoir George H.W. Bush could have given us but instead left scattered in throughout various books and letters. He explores why Kamala Harris has struggled to carve out a distinctive role as vice president. He explains how Ron DeSantis's pitch to America is just a list of enemies. And he even glimpses what Vladimir Putin fears the most, and why he seeks conflict with the West. He does so all through their own books, and their own words.

Lozada reads these books so you don't have to. The Washington Book is the perfect guide to the state of our politics, and then men and women who dominate the terrain. It explores the construction of personal identity, the delusions of leadership, and that mix of subservience and ambition that can define a life in politics. The more we read the stories of Washington, Lozada contends, the clearer our understanding of the competing visions of our country.

Carlos Lozada is an opinion columnist at the New York Times and co-host of the "Matter of Opinion" podcast. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and is the author of What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era.

Lozada will be in conversation with Mark Leibovich. Mark Leibovich the author of five books, including three New York Times best sellers, and two No. 1 Times best sellers, This Town (2013) and Thank You for Your Servitude (2022). He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for profile writing. Before joining The Atlantic in 2022, he spent 16 years at The New York Times, based in Washington, serving as the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. Prior to that, he worked at The Washington Post, where he covered technology and national politics. He is also a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC.

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Founded by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, Politics and Prose Bookstore is Washington, D.C.'s premier independent bookstore and cultural hub, a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books. Politics and Prose offers superior service, unusual book choices, and a haven for book lovers in the store and online.