The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and weakened America
One of America's most admired journalists offers a manifesto for enlightened reform of the nation's military-industrial complex.
Jun 13, 2008•1 hr 11 min
ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library
ALOUD is the Library Foundation of Los Angeles' award-winning literary series of live conversations, readings and performances at the historic Central Library and locations throughout Los Angeles.
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Episodes
Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
A page-turning chronicle of the rise of the secretive think tank--born in the wake of World War II--that has been the driving force behind American government for the last half-century.
Jun 12, 2008•1 hr 9 min
All You Can Eat: Panel Discussion
Rising concerns over food safety and the environmental impact of industrialized agriculture suggest that the true costs of \"cheap\" calories are unsustainably high. As our food economy fast approaches its limits, California's innovative food community offers hope and a salad bar full of possible solutions.
Jun 10, 2008•1 hr 4 min
Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America
A candid account of a year in the life of four TFA recruits at Locke High School in South Central L.A. as they attempt to fulfill their mission to overcome the inequities in our educational system.
Jun 05, 2008•1 hr 12 min
The Garden of Last Days
The author of House of Sand and Fog offers a new novel that explores sex and parenthood, honor and masculinity.
Jun 04, 2008•1 hr 7 min
The Bishop's Daughter
An acclaimed poet offers an unsparing portrait of her father-a civil rights leader and Episcopalian bishop of New York City- that explores the consequences of sexual secrets on one American family.
May 30, 2008•1 hr 11 min
The Story of a Marriage
Greer (The Confessions of Max Tivoli) looks at the climate of repression in 1950s America and asks how far we are willing to go to escape that which confines us.
May 29, 2008•1 hr 3 min
ALOUD Science Series: On Seeing and Being - "What Do You See?"
How do our brains construct a world from a confounding and often conflicting mass of visual cues? According to Koch, professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at Caltech, understanding how we see helps us understand how we arrive at a sense of a conscious "self."This series made possible by a generous contribution from K&L Gates.
May 22, 2008•1 hr 16 min
The Post-American World
\"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else,\" begins the new work by Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and one of our most distinguished thinkers.
May 21, 2008•1 hr 5 min
The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport
After a 32-year absence, the bestselling author and popular Miami Herald columnist returns to the fairways-with hilarious consequences.
May 15, 2008•1 hr 1 min
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
Drawn from a three-decades-long conversation with the Dalai Lama, Iyer's book explores the hidden life, the singular thinking, and the daily challenges of a global icon.
May 14, 2008•1 hr 18 min
Notes on a Life
Coppola-award-winning documentary filmmaker, artist, wife and mother-employs the same insight and wit as she used in her Notes on the Making of Apocalypse Now to this account of the next chapters in her life.
May 09, 2008•1 hr 13 min
Bowl of Cherries
McSweeney's, publisher of the young and hip, brings us a debut novel of breadth, glee and sharp consequence by a 90-year-old ex-Marine who is also a two-time screenwriting Oscar nominee (\"Bad Day at Black Rock\") and co-creator of Mr. Magoo.
May 07, 2008•1 hr 11 min
An Afternoon with Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry-Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-winning, screenwriter, essayist, and bookseller-will receive the 2008 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award on April 30. As part of the tradition of the Literary Award, the recipient delivers a free public lecture. Join Mr. McMurtry for an afternoon of insights into his work and his life. \"No other author has so thoroughly and delightfully debunked the ill-advised romanticism of the American West. An American landmark in the worl...
May 02, 2008•58 min
Our Story Begins
One of America's \"most exquisite storytellers\" (Esquire), a master of the memoir and the short story, reads from and discusses his first collection in over a decade.
Apr 29, 2008•1 hr 11 min
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of the bestseller Ghost Wars presents the story of the Bin Laden family's rise to power and privilege, revealing how American influences changed the family and how one member's rebellion changed America.
Apr 17, 2008•1 hr 4 min
BONK: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Few things are as fundamental to human happiness as satisfying sex. America's funniest science writer (Stiff) offers an ode to a fascinating and vital pursuit and a reminder that there is still much to learn.
Apr 16, 2008•56 min
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet
From the author of the bestseller The End of Poverty, a vivid map of the road to sustainable and equitable global prosperity and an augury of the global economic collapse that lies ahead if we don't follow it.
Apr 08, 2008•1 hr 11 min
The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature
Rosen, novelist and New York Times contributor, sets out to explore birdwatching's centrality--historical and literary, spiritual and scientific--to a culture torn between the desire both to conquer and to conserve.
Apr 02, 2008•1 hr 12 min
The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification
Millner, a young African-American woman, grew up in predominantly Hispanic and working class San Jose and went on to Harvard. In her memoir she tours the landscapes of possibility carved by race, class and culture for young Americans.
Mar 28, 2008•1 hr 5 min
Lush Life: A Novel
From a great American realist-the author of Clockers and co-writer of The Wire-an X-ray of the streets of New York City in the age of no \"broken windows\" and \"quality of life\" police squads.
Mar 26, 2008•1 hr 18 min
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It
In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture was first created in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. Join us for a discussion of the lost world of comic books, their creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority.
Mar 20, 2008•1 hr 16 min
The Senator's Wife
In her new novel, the author of the now classic The Good Mother and While I Was Gone brings emotional power to her most transfixing themes: the meaning of loyalty, history, forgiveness and grace.
Mar 19, 2008•59 min
Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East
Drawing on 35 years of reporting-through wars, revolutions and uprisings-one of America's most prescient journalists offers an insightful reckoning of the changes wracking the Middle East and their impact on its and America's future.
Mar 14, 2008•1 hr 19 min
The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa
Seeking a place where his deafness would be irrelevant, Josh Swiller volunteered for the Peace Corps and spent two years in a remote and impoverished village in Zambia. His hilarious and harrowing memoir recounts what he found there.
Mar 13, 2008•1 hr 3 min
The Enigma of Iran (or Why American Policy-makers Should Read More Fiction)
Iran, as any civilization, is defined most thoroughly by the stories it spawns. Join us for a candid conversation between novelist Gina Nahai (Caspian Rain) and Robert Scheer (editor-in-chief, Truthdig.com and host of KCRW's Left, Right and Center) about faith, modernism, and the emotional ties that bind the people of Iran and America.
Mar 07, 2008•1 hr 4 min
The Dancer and the Thief (El Baile de la Victoria)
The prize-winning novelist (Il Postino)-for whom "neither life nor literature outside politics" is imaginable-sets his exuberant love story against the backdrop of the new Chile, free from the Pinochet dictatorship but prey to the perils of globalization.
Mar 06, 2008•1 hr 17 min
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author reveals the powerful legacy of the incomparable humanitarian who lost his life in a terrorist attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq in 2003.
Feb 28, 2008•1 hr 19 min
The Age of American Unreason
From the author of Freethinkers, a dazzlingly insightful-and occasionally hilarious-analysis of the anti-rationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-scientism that increasingly characterizes the cultural and intellectual life of this country.
Feb 27, 2008•1 hr 9 min
Basic Brown: My Life and Our Times
The two-term mayor of San Francisco and longest-serving speaker of the California Assembly lays down some candid rules about surviving and manipulating Big Money and Big Media in today's politics.
Feb 21, 2008•1 hr 13 min
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