Reader, Meet Author
MONDAY Eliot Spitzer, current New York Attorney General and likely Democratic nominee for governor, is known to have a “quick temper” and a “passion for reform,” but he just might be the only state attorney general in the history of the United States to share a stage with Yo La Tengo. And to at least two dozen East Village record store clerks, that means a whole lot. Brooke Masters will tell you a lot more as she reads from Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., 7 p.m. TUESDAY If you were looking for a way of learning about how badly the relationship between Iraqi Sunnis and Shia has destabilized over the past few years, then hearing what Naval Postgraduate School professor Vali Nasr has to say on The Shia Revival could be very valuable. This is not for people who think the Shia are “those little animals that grow sprouts from seeds” however, so, maybe you ought to take in a screening of Talledega Nights, Mr. President. Politics and Prose, 7 p.m.
WEDNESDAY
If you’re in the market for a taut, funny, beachable book for the month of August, pick up Kept: a Comedy of Sex and Manners from columnist and D.C. resident Y. Euny Hong. Drawing comparisons to Vanity Fair, the novel tells the story of Judith Lee, an unemployable, aristocratic Korean who decides to make her way as a top-dollar courtesan in New York City. The author shall hold forth at Olsson's Books & Records, 1307 19th St. NW., at 7 p.m.
Also, Katha Pollitt comes to Politics and Prose to discuss her new book, Virginity or Death!, and we remind you that if you don’t care for the book, she’d prefer you to be somewhat famous before you talk about it. Politics and Prose, at 7 p.m. Free.
FRIDAY
By now, if you aren’t familiar with the way George Pelecanos deftly weaves threads of urban sociology through the plots of his well-regarded crime fiction, you must now have learned to read yet. One of D.C.’s most treasured authors, he sits in at Politics and Prose to read from his latest, The Night Gardener. 7 p.m.
SATURDAY
Charles A. Stevenson is so inside the national security game that he feels no worry about using jarhead jargon as the title of his book. Stevenson dishes on all the Secretaries of Defense since McNamara in SECDEF. Politics and Prose, 6 p.m.