MONDAY: Nizam Ali — whose parents, Ben and Virginia Ali, opened Ben's Chili Bowl 50 years ago — and Tracey Gold Bennett will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of their new book, Ben's Chili Bowl: 50 Years of a Washington DC Landmark. 6:30 p.m. TUESDAY: Dexter Filkins, an award-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest......

MONDAY: CBS News' Bob Schieffer talks about Bob Schieffer's America at Politics and Prose. Sounds like an episode of Sliders where Jerry O'Connell jumps into a dimension in which Schieffer has become president and he commands an army of cybernetic men in order to suppress all original thought. Or was that Dr. Who? 7 p.m. Linn Ullmann — author of Stella Descending and the daughter of legendary director, screenwriter, and author Ingmar Bergman — will......

MONDAY: Steve Gillon will be at the New America Foundation to discuss The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation. 12:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.-based author and journalist Ron Suskind will be at Politics and Prose to discuss his latest book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: George Pelecanos and contributors Rhozier "Roach" Brown and James Grady will......

TUESDAY: Bobby Austin will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Circus Clowns & Carnival Animals: Growing Up in the Ebb and Flow of Rural Black Life. 6 p.m. Daniel Mendelsohn, the best-selling author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest collection of essays, How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken.......

TUESDAY: Breena Clarke, a Washington D.C. native and alumna of Howard University, will be at Politics and Prose to discuss her novel, Stand the Storm, which is set in Georgetown but takes place before and during the Civil War. 7 p.m. Arjun Makhijani discusses and signs his book, Carbon-Free And Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, at Busboys and Poets in D.C. 6 p.m. WEDNESDAY: Daniel Levitin and songwriter and record producer Parthenon Huxley......

MONDAY: Award-winning author and columnist Maggie Jackson will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to talk about Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. If a dark age is characterized by a decline in civilization, and Jackson believes it's only just now "coming," she hasn't been watching enough reality TV. 6:30 p.m. Dick Meyer, a long-time CBS journalist who now spends his time with NPR, will be making an appearance......

MONDAY: Prize-winning Civil War historian Noah Andre Trudeau talks about Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea at the Barnes and Noble in Georgetown. 7:30 p.m. Sheryll Cashin will be at Politics and Prose to talk about The Agitator's Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African-American Family. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Steven Shafarman will be at the Busboys and Poets in D.C. to sign and discuss Peaceful, Positive Revolution: Economic Security for Every......

MONDAY: Michaele Weissman will be at Politics and Prose to talk about God in a Cup, Weissman’s investigation of coffee at every stage of its production, marketing and consumption. 7 p.m. Leora Kahn will be at Busboys and Poets in D.C. to discuss and sign copies of Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan. 6:30 p.m. Martin Clark will be at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to read from The Legal Limit, the......

MONDAY: Karen Dawn will be Thanking the Monkey at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle. No, that doesn't mean what you think. Dawn, who founded the animal advocacy media group DawnWatch.com, merely wants us to rethink the way we treat animals. For starters, chimpanzees want all you horrible sitcom and commercial writers out there to stop calling them monkeys. They're apes, dorks. 7 p.m. Law professor Cass Sunstein will make an appearance at Politics and Prose......

MONDAY: Ethan Canin, bestselling author of the The Palace Thief, will make an appearance at Politics and Prose to discuss America, America, a novel about America as it was and is. Or as Sam the Eagle would say, "It's a tribute to all nations, but mostly America." 7 p.m. Rebecca Harrison Reed, a local artist, will be at the Olsson's in Old Town Alexandria to read from and discuss her work illustrating The Train to......

MONDAY: Stella Rimington will make an appearance at the Olsson's in Dupont Circle to talk about the new installment in her series of books about MI5 officer Liz Carlyle, Illegal Action. When it comes to mysteries and thrillers, an illegal action has to be more interesting than a legal action, right? 7 p.m. When he isn't making creepy YouTube videos, presidential candidate Mike Gravel is writing books about the military-industrial complex and the imperial presidency.......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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......