It looks like the event-planners for most of the District’s book stores are still on vacation, so it’s slim pickings for you bookworms out there. Fortunately, Politics and Prose is picking up the slack with a few notable author events. Chicklit-erati beware: this week’s offerings tend more toward the academic set.

THURSDAY
Daniel Mendelsohn will be reading from his book, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, about his historical detective work retracing the footsteps of members of his family who perished in the Holocaust. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 7 p.m.

FRIDAY
If Deep Ancestry sounds a bit intimidating to you, fear not. Dr. Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project makes 200,000 years of genetic anthropology easy to understand. Politics and Prose, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY
Anthropologist Susan Hirsch tackles the grand concepts of political violence, terrorism, and justice through a personal lens in In the Moment of Greatest Calamity, her meditation on the loss of her husband in the East African embassy bombings of 1998. Hirsch’s psychological struggle, and her observations at the trial of the bombing suspects, make for a gripping read. Politics and Prose, 6 p.m.

SUNDAY
Before Charlemagne was known as Charlemagne, he was Karl, King of the Franks. Medeival historian Jeff Sypeck will be discussing the art of Becoming Charlemagne, and the legendary ruler’s mix of diplomacy and military gung-ho that led to his appointment as the Holy Roman Emperor. Politics and Prose, 5 p.m.

MONDAY
The biggest name on this week’s docket, humorist P.J. O’Rourke is in town offering his thoughts on Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. O’Rourke has waded through Smith’s heady 18th Century work of economic theory “so you don’t have to.” Politics and Prose, 7 p.m.