ALOUD @ Los Angeles Public Library

\"America's foremost literary pugilist\" (Village Voice) offers an elegantly argued case against all religions.

On a devastated, lawless American continent, families have only one hope: passage on a ship to Europe. A remarkable novel by one of the most inventive novelists writing in English today.

Two California-born writers-one from East L.A. and the other from the Central Valley-discuss their understanding of stories as a way to complicate our views of self, of morality, and of our relationships with the world around us.

From the celebrated author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, a stunning historical novel—his first—set in Buenos Aires at the start of Argentina’s Dirty War. 

At age twelve, Beah (now twenty-five), fled attacking rebels in his native Sierra Leone and was picked up by the government army. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop?

Whether chronicling the class conflict in the African American community or exposing the failings of the government response to Hurricane Katrina, Dyson never shies away from controversy. Join two of America's most astute intellectuals in a discussion about issues that matter.

In a society in which sex is both a major obsession and a major taboo, what is the function of erotic literature? Is there a new receptivity to thinking and writing about the sexual dimension? Join two award-winning American writers for a provocative discussion.

Solnit-activist and cultural historian-draws on emblematic moments of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire and place in brilliant autobiographical essays exploring how we find ourselves or lose ourselves.

Oren, recently visiting professor at Harvard and Yale and author of the best-selling Six Days of War - covers 230 years of America's political, military, and intellectual involvement in the Middle East from George Washington to George W. Bush.

Aslan (No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam) and Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason; Letter to a Christian Nation) square off for the first time to debate the future of religion and its role in society.