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Slavoj Zizek, renowned Slovenian critical theorist, dissects and reconstructs three major faith-based systems of belief in the world today, showing how each faith understands humanity and divinity-and how the differences between the faiths may be far stranger than they at first seem.

Smart, comical, and sensible, this children's book-follow-up to the widely successful Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, offers kids the opportunity to recognize their tactics, giggle at their own mischievousness, and empathize with their parents' struggles, while providing both kids and parents…

Smith takes us on a trip-mind-blowing and humorous-deep into the international underground where super-high-grade marijuana is developed, produced, sold, and entered into the Super Bowl of the marijuana world, Amsterdam's Cannabis Cup. Moving between California, the hub of the legalization and…

Two celebrated poets read from their most recent work and discuss how Los Angeles has influenced their writing, how some influences overlap and others diverge. Born in Watts, Wanda Coleman witnessed Simon Rodia working on the Towers firsthand. Coleman's work is often concerned with the outsider…

Using film clips and text in a detailed play-by-play of Harpo Marx's physical movements, Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body-- its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, \"cute\" pathos, and more. Holding up a mirror to Marx's 13 films, Koestenbaum takes a…

Lelyveld, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, offers an intricate portrait of Gandhi's conflicted mission. After shaping his philosophy of nonviolent resistance during his time in South Africa, Gandhi promoted these social values back in his native India. Although India quickly revered the \"Great…

From the best-selling author of How We Decide comes a revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Why did Elizabethan England experience a creative explosion? What can we learn from Bob Dylan's writing habits and the drug addiction of poets? How did Pixar redesign its office space for maximum…

As he approached midlife, bestselling author and Los Angeles local Mark Salzman (Iron and Silk, The Soloist, Lying Awake) confronted a year of catastrophe. Overwhelmed by terrifying panic attacks, suffering from a crippling case of writer's block, and dealing with the very sudden death of his sister…

There may be more to \"Like Ike\" than we realize. Veteran journalist and editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Times, Jim Newton offers a bold reappraisal of the 34th president, who was belittled by critics as \"the babysitter in chief.\" Newton yields a portrait of a shrewd leader, a progressive…

Literary Los Angeles has always existed apart from our country's publishing capital--3,000 miles apart, to be exact. What does this distance offer writers and book artists? What are the freedoms and the challenges of being outside the traditions and trends of literature? A panel of L.A. writers…

In an election year driven by worldwide public demonstrations, congressional stagecraft and conflicting narratives, rhetoric, aesthetics and politics are apt to collide. As part of a 2012 national series, poet-performer Douglas Kearney and artist-activist Edgar Arceneaux of the Watts House Project…

What is the power of historical perspective? How can we learn from the past to reform our society of the future? The late historian Tony Judt reframed the history of the European continent after WWII in his book Postwar. A luminous thinker, he clarified the power of historical perspective for living…

Independents unite! In a powerful assessment of an unprecedented social change, a renowned sociologist chronicles the biggest demographic shift since the baby boom: we thrive when we go it alone.

The 18th Poet Laureate reads from his work and discusses life, literature, and his time in the Golden State. Presented in collaboration with the California Center for the Book and the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress