Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

In this history of human adventure, one of Latin America's most distinguished writers illuminates movements of ideas and society across centuries by recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods and visionaries-- from the Garden of Eden to 21st-century New York.

How did smog help mold the modern-day culture of Los Angeles? Join this discussion about pollution, progress and the epic struggle against airborne poisons.

A renowned essayist considers the achievements and limitations of his tantalizing, daunting subject.

Violence spills north of the border after the bloodiest year in the war to control drug smuggling through Tijuana. Join journalists from San Diego and Tijuana and a long-time watchdog of border violence to discuss the difficulties faced and methods used by reporters doing their jobs in Tijuana.

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Tom Brokaw, veteran news anchor, author and 2009 recipient of the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award.

The historically African- American enclave of Sag Harbor, on the east end of Long Island, is the setting for the wonderfully funny, supremely original novel by the MacArthur award-winning author of The Intuitionist.

In this tragicomic true story of the year in which both of his parents died, the award-winning author and humorist captures the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan.

One of America's most performed and admired composers, Adams (Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic) helped shape the landscape of contemporary classical music. His new memoir reveals the inner workings of his creative process and illuminates the recent history of music-making.

Waldman-- a \"Cat 4 hurricane of unchained imagination, curiosity, and invention, political rage and erotic elation.\"-draws on animal lore, animal encounters, dreams, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and Buddhist ritual in her new investigative hybrid-poem exploring the nuances of inter-species communication and compassion

Surveying the global scene, a preeminent scholar of religion launches a revolution in the way we understand-and confront-radical Islam.

Join us for this exuberant annual reading with emerging Los Angeles-area poets.

Magically blending sarcasm and gravity, America's favorite surrealist poet and NPR commentator offers an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world.

Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, talks about how novels work and why we like them.

Three members of the final judging panel for the Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards, read from their own prize-winning work.

Buergenthal, currently the American judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, arrived at Auschwitz at age ten, and was soon separated from his mother and then his father. In this inspiring memoir, he reminds us of the resilience of the human spirit.

Wangari Muta Maathai is the founder of the Green Belt Movement, which, through networks of rural women, has planted over 30 million trees across Kenya since 1977. In 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament in the first free elections in a generation, and in 2003 was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 2004, she is the author of Unbowed: A Memoir, and speaks to organizations around the world. Her newest book, The Challenge for Africa addresses the intricacies of African issues, such as the lack of technological developments, the absence of fair international trade, population pressures and enduring hunger, and the dearth of genuine political and economic leadership. Maathai stresses the need for Africans to invent and implement their own solutions, rather than relying on foreign aid and Western visions of change, and calls for a revolution in leadership on both a political and individual level.

Nigerian music, Mexican farce, John Updike, Lou Reed. Polish puppeteers, Belgian Butoh, Irish bards? what goes into the making of a season of groundbreaking performing arts at REDCAT and UCLA Live?

An award-winning investigative reporter exposes the global war on women's reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development.

Fairchild, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, and Paschen, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Prize, read poems that celebrate how the humble -- the work of a machine shop, the duties of a home -- is exalted by attention and care, just as their poems are distinguished by thoughtfulness, gratitude, and a deep concern for the well-made phrase.

Arax, a native son, spent four years traveling the breadth of the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. From the marijuana growing capital of the U.S. to the town that inspired The Grapes of Wrath, Arax offers a stunning panorama of California in a new century.