Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

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.

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.

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.

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 world of fiction.\" (Jami Edwards, on Bookreporter.com).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.