MONDAY: Those of you interested in questions of population growth and its relationship to female sexual autonomy will want to catch Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, as he discusses his new book, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want, at Busboys and Poets. 6:30 p.m. Sorry folks, Salman Rushdie’s discussion and signing of The Enchantress of Florence at Politics & Prose is, sadly, sold out. TUESDAY: Bestselling author Lauren Weisberger......

It was just a couple weeks ago that we told you about Olsson's plans to shutter its Penn Quarter location -- which it finally did, on Friday. In an email to customers, owner John Olsson had said that "The landlord has other plans for the space," and we confirmed that those plans were to bring in UK noodle shop Wagamama. But the Post reported on Saturday that it looks like there's a lot more to......

MONDAY: John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a political writer for The New York Times, will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of his new book, Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power. 7:30 p.m. Alan Furst will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his new novel, the tenth in the Night Soldiers series, The Spies of Warsaw. 7 p.m. Michael I. Meyerson will be at......

Sad news for lovers of locally-owned bookstores: the Olsson's location in the Lansburgh building in Penn Quarter is shutting down. We had heard rumors this was in the works for a couple of weeks, especially after so many author events appeared to be moving to the Dupont Circle location. The email below was sent out to the Olsson's list on Monday. Dear Friends, After 15 years in The Lansburgh building on 7th Street NW, the......

MONDAY: Jonathan Miles will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about his novel, Dear American Airlines, the story of a man stuck at Chicago's O’Hare airport with thousands of other passengers who decides to write a complaint letter. 7 p.m. Conservative columnist George Will will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss and sign copies of his new book, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation.......

MONDAY: Robert Scheer will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his book, The Pornography of Power. If you swapped those words around, you'd have an entirely different book. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Comedian and The Daily Show contributor Lewis Black will be at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue to read from his new book, Me of Little Faith. Two tickets are free with a book purchase at Politics and Prose, or cost $6 each.......

MONDAY: George Lakoff, a linguist and cognitive scientist, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to talk about his book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. We can tell you why: With an 18th century brain, you'd be dead. We be smart. 7 p.m. Author Stephanie Klein will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to discuss and sign copies of Moose: A Memoir of Fat......

TUESDAY: Carl Hiaasen will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss and sign copies of his book, The Downhill Lie. A downhill lie must be like when you tell a friend that you love their favorite band, even though you don't, and then they say, "Well, I have an extra ticket to their show on Saturday," which you respond, "That's too bad. My sister's in town." Actually, the book is about golf. 7......

MONDAY: Kelly McMasters will be at Politics and Prose to talk about her memoir, Welcome to Shirley, which looks at the town of Shirley, New York — a wonderful place to grow up in the 1970s, but unfortunately not a great place to spend the rest of your life thanks to the close proximity of the leaky Brookhaven atomic research facility. 7 p.m. Rick Perlstein will be at the Penn Quarter Olsson's to talk about......

When blogging about books in D.C., you tend to receive more press releases about political non-fiction than any other genre — so much that it starts to make you cynical. Most of the books read like armchair quarterbacking with an unhealthy dose of rhetoric. But Matthew Yglesias' book, Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats, manages to break out of that mold. Yglesias, an......

MONDAY: Nostalgic for the grunge rock of yore? Laurie Lindeen will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about her memoir, Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story, which looks at her stint in the 80s and 90s as the guitarist for Zuzu's Petals. 7 p.m. Chris Meyers Asch, co-founder of the prospective U.S. Public Service Academy, will appear at Politics and Prose to talk about The Senator and the Sharecropper, the......

Most first-time novelists never actually become first-time novelists; in most cases “first novels” end up abandoned as real life overwhelms the time commitment and intellectual energy necessary to take a book from concept to completion. Those lucky enough to finish sometimes never find a publisher, ending up instead with dashed hopes and a pile of rejection notices that begin with “While we found your book intriguing and well-crafted…” and end with “…and we’re sure that......

Washington, D.C's Big Read continues through May 24. Celebrating F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby this year, venues throughout town are holding events: On Tuesday the Arts Club of Washington will be "Flirting with the Masters," with two fiction writers discussing Fitzgerald's impact on their work, or try one of the many events at the MLK, Jr. Library, such as the ongoing Fitzgerald exhibit, or the film tribute screening of The Last Tycoon on Thursday.......

MONDAY: Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift will make an appearance at the Olsson's in Penn Quarter to read from and sign copies of her book Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, & Politics, a commentary on how we deal, or fail to deal, with dying in modern America. 6 p.m. Paris Review editor Nathaniel Rich will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his debut novel, The Mayor's Tongue. Don't miss our......

MONDAY: Keith Gessen will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, which focuses on the lives of three young intellectuals at the beginning of the 21st century. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, will appear at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue to read from her book, People of the Book, based on real-life Australian rare-book expert Hanna Heath’s travels to Sarajevo to......

You’re sitting around with your friends at a local dive bar. The beer and the conversation are flowing. It’s late, and you start thinking of those “let’s-pursue-our-dreams” things you should all do together. Maybe it’s “we should start a band,” or “we should run the Marine Corps marathon” or “we should all knock over a convenience store.” Whatever. Usually nothing ever comes of it, perhaps a good thing, on occasion. The convo digresses, you all......

MONDAY: NPR senior news analyst and ABC commentator Cokie Roberts will be at Politics and Prose to talk about the companion volume to her 2004 book Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, Ladies of Liberty. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Busboys and Poets in D.C. will hold an event to discuss Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie, a collection of writings by the young American who was run over by a bulldozer......

MONDAY: To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Michael Eric Dyson will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss his new book, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. 6 p.m. David Hajdu, music critic at the New Republic, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about The Ten-Cent Plague. No, he's not talking about a cheap knockoff of the......

MONDAY: Elizabeth Crane will appear at the Dupont Circle Olsson's to read from her new book of stories You Must Be This Happy To Enter. Paul Fattaruso will also be there to read from his new book, Bicycle. According to Olsson's, Fattaruso "does for bicycles what Richard Brautigan did for trout." We'll take their word on that one. 7 p.m. Annie Griffiths Belt, one of the first women hired as a staff photographer at National......

A while back, Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced she wanted to start a book club of sorts, and now, the date of the book club discussion has been finalized. On Thursday, May 1, at a location yet to be determined, the Chief will host a public discussion of pop-sociology books The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Sadly, the invitation doesn't make it seem like the Chief necessarily wants to keep the book......

MONDAY: Former Saturday Night Live writer and zombie survival expert, Max Brooks, will appear at Washington DCJCC's Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater to talk about the coming zombiepocalypse — the subject of his book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. If you can't make it, just remember that a lawnmower may look like a really cool weapon against the undead, but it's not useful in all situations. 8 p.m. Detroit-based author......

MONDAY: New York Times journalist Jennifer 8 Lee, fresh off an appearance on The Colbert Report and a turn irritating us, will appear at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue to talk about her book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Lee went around the U.S. and investigated American "Chinese food." $6. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: The Library of Congress continues its Poetry at Noon series at the Mary Pickford Theater with the theme "Fathers and Daughters," featuring......

MONDAY: Ori Z. Soltes, an art and religion historian and lecturer at Georgetown University, will be at the Washington DCJCC to discuss The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust. The event is sponsored by Nextbook's Public Programs on Jewish Literature, Culture and Ideas. 7:30 p.m. Chris Hedges has a bone to pick with what the folks he calls “new atheists,” such as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and literary critic Christopher Hitchens. Hedges......

Adrian Tomine is not the same person as Ben Tanaka, the main character in his graphic novel, Shortcomings, so please don't get all angry at him. Just because they're both nebbishy, early 30s Japanese-American guys who are a little obsessed with their dealings with the opposite sex, doesn't mean Tomine is anywhere near as cynical, uptight and petulant as Tanaka -- at least as far as we can tell. The similarities between the two men......

Monday: >> E.J. Dionne, a columnist for the Washington Post and an academic at Georgetown and Brookings, will appear at Politics and Prose to talk about Souled Out, which examines the intersection of politics and religion. 7 p.m. Tuesday: >> Ysaye Barnwell, a founding member of the Grammy award-winning African American female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, makes an appearance at Politics and Prose to perform and talk about her new book,......

MONDAY: Michael Scheuer, who anonymously chronicled his leadership of the CIA’s bin Laden Unit from 1996 to 1999, will be at Politics and Prose sans pseudonym to talk about Marching Toward Hell, a withering indictment of the Bush administration's attempt to export democracy abroad. 7 p.m. Author, law professor and LGBT rights activist Nancy Polikoff will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families......

TUESDAY: Australian author Steve Toltz will be at Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from and sign copies of his debut book, A Fraction of the Whole — the story of a son recollecting the outrageous and shocking events that led up to his father's death. 7 p.m. Speech may be free, but presenting your ideas and arguments in an effective manner takes a little bit of training. Louise Dunlap, a lecturer at Tufts University......

MONDAY: Manil Suri, who teaches mathematics at the University of Maryland and writes fiction, will be at Politics and Prose to read from The Age of Shiva. 7 p.m. Laton McCartney will be at the Penn Quarter Olsson's to talk about The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country. For those of you who aren't familiar with American history, this scandal rocked the Harding White......

Wendy Kaufman over at The Happy Booker (via City Desk) alerts us to the sad news that Candida's World of Books, the 14th Street independent bookstore that focused primarily on travel and international titles, will soon be shutting its doors after only four years in business. Candida's had a niche, and its niche was "travel," for want of a better word. But referring to Candida's as a "travel" bookstore didn't really do justice to what......

MONDAY: Aaron Raz Link will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of What Becomes You (American Lives), the memoir of Link, who started life as a girl named Sarah and 29 years later began life anew as a gay man. 6:30 p.m. Carol Gilligan, known for her work in gender studies during her 34 years on the Harvard faculty, will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her first......