When the Personal Becomes Political
The acclaimed poet and columnist for The Nation discusses her new book of essays dealing with sex, death, ex-lovers, politics, motherhood, aging, and learning to drive.
Feb 20, 2008•1 hr 13 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
The Flowers: A Novel
From one of this country's most original voices comes a masterful new novel about a young Mexican-American who falls in love while sweeping the decks of an apartment building named The Flowers. In the midst of exploding racial violence, he must decide what he values and what he can do about it.
Feb 14, 2008•1 hr 10 min
In Defense of Food
The author of the national bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma returns with a manifesto for our times: what to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health.
Feb 12, 2008•1 hr 16 min
The Commoner: A Novel
The author of Reservation Road sets his mesmerizing new novel in 1959 Japan when Haruko, a non-aristocratic woman, marries the Crown Prince and enters the sealed-off and mysterious Japanese monarchy.
Feb 07, 2008•1 hr 3 min
Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir
The author's mother, Susan Sontag, died of a particularly acute form of leukemia in 2004. \"This,\" he writes, \"is a book of questions about what we know and, perhaps more importantly, what we can take in when confronted by the death of a loved one.\"
Feb 06, 2008•1 hr
A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford
The award-winning historian offers a new intellectual biography of the twentieth century's greatest experimental physicist, whose revolutionary discoveries included the orbital structure of the atom.
Jan 31, 2008•1 hr 5 min
The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance
Drawing on more than 6,000 pages of Leonardo's surviving notebooks, Capra reveals Leonardo-whose studies ranged from the flight patterns of birds to the mechanics of light-as the unacknowledged \"father of science.\"
Jan 30, 2008•1 hr 7 min
The Height of Ambition: New Development Downtown
Key voices in the development of downtown Los Angeles discuss their visions for the future.
Jan 24, 2008•1 hr 34 min
Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
In his explosive new book, Kennedy--a Harvard law scholar--shows how current fears of \"selling out\" are expressed in thought and practice and clarifies the effect they have on individuals and on American society as a whole.
Jan 18, 2008•1 hr 18 min
Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again
Frum-former speechwriter for President Bush-argues that Republicans, like the Democrats before them, have been the victims of their own success. He outlines a fresh vision of a GOP that can rebuild the conservative majority and elect the next Republican president.
Jan 17, 2008•1 hr 16 min
Creating a World without Poverty
What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But the Nobel Peace Prizewinner who invented micro-credit is doing exactly that. Yunus's \"Next Big Idea\" offers a pioneering model for nothing less than a new, more humane form of capitalism.
Jan 16, 2008•1 hr 20 min
The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved
In her unconventional biography, Freeman illuminates the psyche and mystery of Chandler and his relationship with his much older wife as well as the City of Angels, to which Chandler's work is forever wed.
Jan 11, 2008•1 hr 5 min
Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves
Slaves harvest cocoa in Ivory Coast, make charcoal used to produce steel in Brazil, weave carpets in India. The list goes on. Bales recounts his 15-year journey in search of real world solutions to ending slavery. Bales will introduce special guest Maria Suarez, an immigrant victim of sex trafficking.
Jan 10, 2008•1 hr 18 min
An Evening with Poet Robert Hass
Known also as an essayist, translator, and activist on behalf of poetry, literacy, and the environment, the former United States Poet Laureate (1995-1997) is a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and force. About Hass's work, poet Stanley Kunitz wrote, \"Reading a poem by Robert Hass is like stepping into the ocean when the temperature of the water is not much different from that of the air. You scarcely know, until you feel the undertow tug at you, that you have entered into another element.\"
Dec 04, 2007•1 hr 30 min
Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire
The longtime New Yorker writer--who once spent an evening with Jackie Onassis, smoking cigarettes and talking about men--culls from 20 years of probing and delightful cultural critiques of fashion, its personages, trends and history, to celebrate the lasting significance of its ephemeral qualities.
Nov 29, 2007•1 hr 30 min
Lost and Found: Writing in the Woods
Two writers discuss their experiences writing at the historic MacDowell Colony then read from work begun or completed there. www.macdowellcolony.org
Nov 28, 2007•1 hr 6 min
Theories of Everything
The New Yorker cartoonist who can explain phenomena such as \"The Museum of One's Kitchen\" (including the Refrigerator Door Gallery and the Cabinet of Many Teas) recently collaborated with Steve Martin on The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z.
Nov 27, 2007•1 hr 3 min
Memorial Reading for Mutanabbi Street
On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Mutanabbi Street, the lively center of Baghdad bookselling, filled with bookstores, cafes, and book stalls. 30 people were killed; more than 100 were wounded. Join poets and writers to memorialize this wounding of Baghdad's literary and intellectual heart.
Nov 20, 2007•2 hr
An Evening with Poet Galway Kinnell
In the 2003 National Book Award judges' citation for his New Selected Poems, Kinnell was called \"America's preeminent visionary,\" with work in 12 collections that, \"greets each new age with rapture and abundance ... [and] sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman and Frost.\"
Nov 16, 2007•1 hr 10 min
A Free Life
In this new novel by the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting, an émigré Chinese writer opens a restaurant in Atlanta in a daunting attempt to find his voice as a poet, support his family, and realize the American Dream.
Nov 15, 2007•1 hr 30 min
Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans & Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America
The iconoclastic Los Angeles Times columnist discusses how the mestizo legacy of Mexican-Americans, the largest immigrant group in the country's history, will forever change how Americans think about race and ethnicity.
Nov 14, 2007•1 hr 30 min
A Life Decoded
A riveting account of the unparalleled drama of the quest for the human genome by the scientist who went on to be the first to read and interpret his own genome.
Nov 09, 2007•1 hr 30 min
Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place
Evoking places as far flung as Iowa and India, Self-cultural provocateur, writer and long distance walker-teamed with legendary Gonzo illustrator Ralph Steadman to explore the intimate effects of geographical environment on human emotion and behavior.
Nov 02, 2007•1 hr 10 min
The Principles of Uncertainty: Illustrations, Parables, Films
The illustrator, author and designer-known for her many New Yorker covers (including the famous map of \"Newyorkistan\")-contends with existential questions like: \"What is identity?\" \"Why do we fight wars?\" \"Why do hearts break in February and why do some people have a hankering for a dodo sandwich?\" Note: you are encouraged to wear your favorite hat to this program.
Oct 31, 2007•1 hr 2 min
The Conscience of a Liberal
Today's most widely read economist weaves together a nuanced account of three generations of history with sharp political, social, and economic analysis.
Oct 30, 2007•1 hr 16 min
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
The New Yorker's brilliant music critic takes us inside the labyrinth of modern sound, from Vienna before World War I to New York City in the seventies. Through experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken-come listen to a history of the twentieth century through its music.
Oct 25, 2007•1 hr 20 min
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
\"The poet laureate of medicine\" (New York Times) examines the complexities of our response to music and the particular powers of music to move us physically and emotionally, beneficially or destructively, showing how we humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one.
Oct 24, 2007•1 hr 9 min
Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel
The acclaimed memoirist, author, and biographer of Jean Genet conjures the true-life love affair between author Stephen Crane and the woman known as his wife.
Oct 23, 2007•1 hr 1 min
The American Idea
For 150 years, The Atlantic Monthly has explored what its founders-including Emerson, Longfellow and Holmes-called \"The American Idea.\" Join us for a high-spirited discussion with celebrated Atlantic contributors about the role literary masters have played in interpreting and often rebuking American society and culture.
Oct 19, 2007•1 hr 14 min
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
The Pulitzer Prize- winning author of Stiffed and Backlash examines the post-9/11 outpouring in the media, popular culture, and political life and offers a fiercely original view of ourselves, our history, and the future we may unwittingly be creating.
Oct 17, 2007•1 hr 18 min
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