According to the Washington Post, Politics and Prose will be bought by former Post journalists Bradley Graham and his wife, Lissa Muscatine for about $2 million in May. The current owners, Barbara Meade and David Cohen (husband of the late Carla Cohen, co-founder) said that price was not the main factor in finding the right buyer. Meade and Cohen said they believe Graham and Muscatine are specially qualified to carry on the store’s legacy as a place for ideas and meaningful discussion.

Graham is a graduate of Yale and Stanford and the author of two books. Muscatine is a former Rhodes scholar and aide and confidante to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Graham started working for the Post in 1978 and Muscatine wrote and edited there for twelve years.

“We understand that Politics and Prose is much more than a bookstore,” said Graham to the store’s staff in a meeting. “It is an integral part of the Washington community, a community that Lissa and I have served for much of our careers already as journalists, authors, and, in Lissa’s case, a senior government staff member. It is a very special culture here, a culture we want to see survive.”

Politics and Prose has been managed by Cohen and Meade for twenty-seven years. This will be the first time anybody else has run the store. A longtime patron of Politics and Prose had this to say: “They sound like people of the book, which is what the store needs. This store is in a class by itself, and I hope it stays that way.”