virtual event
Tuesday, Sept. 1
at 7:00PM

Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. Author Jeff Hobbs, writing with heart, sensitivity, and insight, stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future--both their own and the cultures in which they live--in contemporary America.

virtual event
Wednesday, Sept 2
at 7:00PM

National Book Award finalist Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's highly anticipated return weaves together like and unlike, mythic and modern.  In a nimble dance of lightness and gravity, Likes explores the full range and contradictions of our contemporary moment. Through unexpected visitors, Waldorf school fairs, aging indie-film stars, the struggle to gain a foothold in the capitalist shell-game of work, the Instagram posts of a twelve-year-old--these stories of friendship and parenthood, celebrity and obsession, race and class and the passage of time, form an engrossing collection that is both otherworldly and suffused with the deceitful humdrum of everyday life.

virtual event
Thursday, Sept. 3
at 7:00PM

Joe Sanderson died in pursuit of a life worth writing about. He was, in his words, a "road bum," an adventurer and a storyteller, belonging to no place, people, or set of ideas. He was born into a childhood of middle-class contentment in Urbana, Illinois and died fighting with guerillas in Central America. With these facts, acclaimed novelist and journalist Héctor Tobar set out to write what would become The Last Great Road Bum.

virtual event
Tuesday, Sept. 8
at 7:00PM

President Obama's former United States chief of protocol looks at why diplomacy and etiquette matter--from the international stage to everyday life. History often appears to consist of big gestures and dramatic shifts. But for every peace treaty signed, someone set the stage, using hidden influence to effect the outcome. In her roles as chief of protocol for President Barack Obama and social secretary to President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton, Capricia Penavic Marshall not only bore witness to history, she facilitated it

virtual event
Wednesday, Sept 9
at 4:00PM

In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Policymakers emphasize "the right to know," but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general "right to know" but when the information in question would significantly improve people's lives.

virtual event
Saturday, Sept 12
at 2:00PM

A Rabbit's Tale:
When a new family moves into Prune Street Farm, Alice and the other cottontails are cautious. The new owners are from the city; the family and their dog are not at all what the rabbits expect, and soon Alice is making new friends and doing things no rabbit has done before. When she overhears a plan by a developer to run the family off and bulldoze the farm, Alice comes up with a plan, helped by the farmer's son, and other animals, including a majestic bald eagle.

​

Tom Bite Back:

Eleven-year-old Tom was bit by a vampire, a werewolf, and a zombie right before the first day of middle school. It was a weird and crazy day. And the worst part? Even a Vam-Wolf-Zom needs to go to sixth grade. At least his neighbors and classmates seem to have accepted him. Annie even wants him to join her band!

virtual event
Tuesday, Sept. 15
at 6:00PM

Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, shook us in 1985. It imagined a totalitarian state called The Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States. The Constitution has been tossed out the window, and the military has taken over. Gilead's women are subjugated, the law is the Bible strictly interpreted, and resistance is squashed.  Thirty five years ago,  it was a cautionary tale about repressive societies. Today many readers consider it prophetic. The Testaments is the next chapter. 

virtual event
Wednesday, Sept. 16
at 7:00PM

Family in Six Tones speaks both to the unique struggles of refugees and to the universal tug-of-war between mothers and daughters. The journey of an immigrant--away from war and loss toward peace and a new life--and the journey of a mother raising a child to be secure and happy are both steep paths filled with detours and stumbling blocks. Through explosive fights and painful setbacks, mother and daughter search for a way to accept the past and face the future together.

virtual event
Thursday, Sept. 17
at 10:00AM

MacIntyre’s new book, Agent Sonya: Moscow’s Most Daring Wartime Spy, uncovers the story of a woman, codename Sonya, whose life in a lovely Cotswold village, belies the truth that she was really a dedicated and dangerous intelligence officer for the Soviets, who ran Soviet agents all over Europe. While living the life of a quiet and unassuming country housewife, married to a machinist (he was also a Soviet spy), she passed scientific secrets to the Soviets, secrets that helped the Soviets build their nuclear arsenal. MacIntyre has the gift of making you think you’re reading the next great spy thriller, which you are. But you’re reading nonfiction, 20th century history that defies belief. Presented by Writers Boc LA.

virtual event
Thursday, Sept. 17
at 6:00PM

How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget; Joan Didion's yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American kid interned at Manzanar; and the music of the Manson Family segues into the birth of sci-fi fandom.

virtual event
Monday, Sept. 21
at 7:00PM

In her book Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View, artist Janna Ireland explores the work and legacy of Williams through a series of intimate black-and-white photographs. Ireland gives the reader a vision of Williams that is both universal and highly personal. More than a book of architectural photographs, Regarding Paul R. Williams is the result of one artist’s encounter with another, connecting across different generations within the same city.

virtual event
Tuesday, Sept. 22 
at 11:00AM

Jill Lepore, in her thrilling new book, If Then, explores the nature and range of The People Machine — and its goal to predict behavior, whether commercial or political, and manipulate the outcome. Lepore, staff writer for The New Yorker, and the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University, excavates a forgotten company whose legacy in predictive analytics is nothing short of the data-mad, algorithmic world we live in now, besieged by the next notification informing what we’ll buy, what matters to us, and how we’ll vote. Presented by Writers Bloc LA & the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall.

virtual event
Thursday, Sept. 24
at 7:00PM

Lucille Ball--the most powerful woman in the history of Hollywood--was part of America's first high-profile interracial marriage. She owned more movie sets than did any movie studio. She more or less single-handedly created the modern TV business. And yet Lucille's off-camera life was in disarray. While acting out a happy marriage for millions, she suffered in private. Her partner couldn't stay faithful. She struggled to balance her fame with the demands of being a mother, a creative genius, an entrepreneur, and, most of all, a symbol.

virtual event
Wednesday, Sept. 30
at 12:30PM

In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code.

virtual event
Wednesday, Sept. 30
at 6:00PM

A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn't seen in forty-nine years.​ A man arrives at a Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby.​ A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past. These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface. It is in this moment that Bill Clegg reminds us how choices--to connect, to betray, to protect--become our legacy.

virtual event
Thursday, Oct. 1
at 7:00PM

In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O'Neal loathed Kobe Bryant, and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O'Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles.