Written by Jason Linkins MONDAY Vertigo Books and the TransAfrica Forum’s Writers Corner are bringing three great authors together for a special reading event: Kwame Dawes (She’s Gone), Helon Habila (Measuring Time) and Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) come together at the Charles Sumner School, 1201 17th Street NW, 6:30 p.m. TUESDAY It’s a father and daughter fest at Politics and Prose tonight, as John McPhee, author of Uncommon Gardens joins Martha…
MONDAY You know, kids. If you are, for whatever reason, uncomfortable saying the Pledge of Allegiance in class, just cross your fingers or something, or say “the Sun God Ra” instead of “The United States of America.” Or just suck it up and deal, it’s not like the Pledge really has binding legal power. Or just take Joel Westheimer’s advice. He wrote a book about this stuff: Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s…
MONDAY Murder, urban intrigue, and the promiscuous pen of Edgar Allan Poe are the ingredients of Daniel Stashower’s treatise on the evolution of the detective story, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Invention of Murder. Chapters, 445 11th Street, NW., 1pm. TUESDAY Head on over to the Baird Auditorium at the National Museum of Natural History to hear Andrea Mitchell discuss Talking Back: . . . to Presidents, Dictators, and…
MONDAY No, he didn’t make An Inconvenient Truth, but climate change policy wonks will probably turn out to throw Joseph Romm a bone as he signs Hell and High Water: Global Warming—the Solution and the Politics—and What We Should Do. At Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., at 7 p.m. WEDNESDAY When the men of a remote mountain village in Colombia are abducted by guerrillas, the women left behind learn how to get by…
MONDAY: It’s hard to think of a more appropriate person to have written On the Wealth of Nations, part of the new Grove Atlantic Great Books series where contemporary writers flesh out the work of humanity’s most important thinkers, than P.J. O’Rourke. Harder still to imagine a time when everyone agreed that P.J. O’Rourke had a sense of humor. At Politics and Prose at 7 p.m., also Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Cato Institute,…
TUESDAY Lisa Phillips is in town promoting her new book, Public Radio: Behind the Voices. It was unconfirmed at press time whether her reading would be interrupted by Kojo Nnamdi, asking for pledges. Olsson’s Books and Records, 418 7th St. NW., 7 p.m. WEDNESDAY There once was a poet named Trillin, Who, to D.C., came all a-shillin’ He does A Heckuva Job Tossing poetical globs Of poo at political villains. Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut…
MONDAY Counterprogramming this week’s State of the Union Address will be activist Cindy Sheehan, who will ostensibly be discussing her book Not One More Mother’s Child tonight at All Souls’ Church tonight at 7pm. For anyone who’s either been hiding under a rock this past year or who hasn’t yet experienced the pleasure of being clouted in the forehead with a ball peen hammer by a member of the Free Republic, this reading is a…
TUESDAY In her work in the New Yorker, Daphne Merkin writes with a head-on style that tosses concern for political correctness to the wind and, just as often, polarizes readers, especially across the feminist spectrum. She’ll be holding court at the J tonight on the topic of the rebranding of Jewish identity and culture along hipster lines. DCJCC, 1529 16th Street NW, 7:30 pm. For tickets, call 888-621-2230 or order online at www.nextbook.org. WEDNESDAY Jared…
MONDAY We’re guessing that our readers probably have at least a passing familiarity with Ana Marie Cox and at least one of her two millennium straddling web-based glories: Suck and Wonkette. Well, Cox is leaving it all behind for content that won’t be found in your RSS feed: her debut novel, Dog Days, is out and she will be dishing and signing tonight at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW., 7 p.m. TUESDAY You…