Wednesday, March 3, 7 p.m.
GEORGE WEIN
"Myself Among Others: A Life in Music"
The legendary jazz impresario, founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, describes his relationships – sometimes smooth, sometimes tempestuous – with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and others. Co-presented with Friends of Jazz at UCLA.

Thursday, March 4, 7 p.m.
SIMONE FORTI, CARMELA HERMANN, VICTORIA MARKS
"A WINDOW ON MOVEMENT AND LANGUAGE"
Writer/dancer Simone Forti reads from her new book, "Oh, Tongue"; Carmela Hermann and Luke Johnson perform Hermann's "Turning My Head to the Left," showing the humor in a relationship where actions are sometimes contrary to words; Dan Froot, Peter Carpenter and Victoria Marks perform Mark's "Creation," a satire with two narrators who interpret the gestures of a female performer.

Tickets: General Admission $8, Library Associates and Students with I.D. $6 payable at the door, cash or check only.

Tuesday, March 9, 7 p.m.
DAVID BORNSTEIN
"How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas"
An award-winning journalist shows how ordinary people who combine creativity, real-world savvy and extraordinary determination are quietly solving some of the world's most pressing problems. Co-presented with Ashoka, Inc.

Thursday, March 11, 7 p.m.
PETER SINGER
"The President of Good & Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush"
In Conversation with Steve Wasserman, editor, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Professor of Bioethics at Princeton's Center for Human Values, author of "Animal Liberation," "Practical Ethics," and "Rethinking Life and Death," Peter Singer "may be the most controversial philosopher alive: he is certainly among the most influential" (The New Yorker).

Tuesday, March 16, 7 p.m.
DAVID K. SHIPLER
"The Working Poor: Invisible in America"
Shipler, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "Arab and Jew," presents a searing, intimate portrait of working American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape poverty.

Thursday, March 25, 7 p.m.
JULIA PRESTON AND SAM DILLON
"Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy,"
in Conversation with Journalist Marc Cooper

Preston and Dillon, winners of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, provide a comprehensive political and historical guide to Mexico today, recounting the slow-motion democratic revolution that unfolded after the 1968 massacre of student protesters by government troops. Marc Cooper has reported from Latin America for three decades.

Tuesday, March 30, 7 p.m.
STEVE ONEY
"And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank"
A Dickensian cast of characters comes to life in Oney's epic saga of one of the most shameful moments in our nation's history. "A superb work of true crime…a remarkable exercise in what might be called judicial archaeology" (Kirkus Reviews).

Wednesday, April 7, 12 noon
SUSAN SONTAG
One of America's pre-eminent writers and thinkers, and recipient of the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award 2004, reads and discusses her work.

Tuesday, April 13, 7 p.m.
PETER SCHWEIZER
"The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty" (Written with Rochelle Schweizer)
An account of the family's path to enormous wealth and political prominence. Schweizer, Hoover Institute Fellow, reveals the culture and values that make the Bushes tick. Presented by the Council of the Library Foundation and sponsored by City National Bank.

Thursday, April 15, 7 p.m.
NEWER POETS IX
An annual event featuring six gifted L.A. poets: Drea Brown, Eric Gudas, Ariel Robello, Elizabeth Iannaci, Say-vun Khov, and Judith Pacht. Co-presented with Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles Poetry Festival.

Tuesday, April 20, 7 p.m.
LUIS ALBERTO URREA
"The Devil's Highway"
A brilliant writer who has made a long career out of chronicling life along the border puts a human face on the true story of 26 Mexican men who, in May 2001, made a doomed trek through southern Arizona's deadliest stretch of desert, the Devil's Highway.

Thursday, April 22, 7 p.m.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFÓN
"The Shadow of the Wind"
Translated by Lucia Graves

The international literary sensation—a runaway bestseller in Spain—about a boy's quest through the shadows of postwar Barcelona for a mysterious author whose book has proved as dangerous to own as it is impossible to forget.

Monday, April 26, 7 p.m.
JAMES HILLMAN
"A Terrible Love of War"
Hillman, one of the central figures in psychology in the 20th and 21st centuries, the best-selling author of "The Soul's Code," undertakes a groundbreaking examination of the psychological origins, needs and rewards of war.

Thursday, April 29, 7 p.m.
ERIC SCHLOSSER
"Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market"
The author of "Fast Food Nation" investigates the underbelly of the American economy by analyzing three of its most thriving black market industries -- marijuana, migrant labor and pornography.