MONDAY
Politics and Prose welcomes Ali Ansari, who will be discussing his book Confronting Iran. We’ve not read the book, but we’d hazard a guess that the strategies offered by the author get a good deal more nuanced than something along the lines of whining “We got to get them to stop doing this shit.” 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW., at 7 p.m.

TUESDAY
It’s not said often enough, but historical accounts of great naval battles are so teh awesome. Get off the beaten boulevard of bibliophiles and stop in at the Navy Museum tonight to hear from James Nelson, author of Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet That Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain but Won the American Revolution. 11th & O Sts. SE., at noon.

WEDNESDAY
Need a conversation starter for the next Fringe Festival Happy Hour? Stop by the Madison Building of the Library of Congress today to hear from Steven F. Sage, a research fellow at the Holocaust Museum, who’s exhaustively researched the possibility that Adolf Hitler’s lunatic worldview may have been patterned on a perverse reading of a trio of Henrik Ibsen plays. It’s all in Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist and the Plot for the Third Reich. 101 Independence Ave. SE, 6th floor., at noon.