In 2009, three American hikers (and UC Berkeley grads) hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan unknowingly crossed into Iran and were captured by a border patrol. Accused of espionage, they were incarcerated in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison—Sarah, for fourteen months and Josh and Fattal, for two long years. This…
This National Book Award-winning account illuminates the erosion of the social compact—the collapse of farms, factories, public schools—that had kept the United States stable and middle class since the late 1970s. In The Great Unwinding, Packer probes the seething undercurrents of American life…
Imagine that Plato came to life in the twenty-first century and embarked on a multicity speaking tour. How would he handle the host of a cable news program who denies there can be morality without religion? How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a tiger mom on how to…
In this revelatory study of Muslim youth movements that have emerged in cities around the world in the years since 9/11 and in the wake of the Arab Spring, Aidi illuminates the unexpected connections between urban marginality, music, and political mobilization. By examining both secular and…
On February 21, 2012, five young women entered the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow wearing neon-colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas to perform a "punk prayer" beseeching the "Mother of God" to "get rid of Putin." What transformed a group of young women into artists with a shared vision…
Artist Jeff Koons and filmmaker/author/photographer John Waters discuss Koon’s innovative and ever-changing art-making practice, which ranges from sculpture to painting to digital media. Like Waters, Koons’s art comments on the notion of "good taste," as well as the decadence of capitalist culture…
Walter Mosley, one of America’s most admired crime novelists joins one of its newest stars—Attica Locke—for a conversation about noir, race and writing in and from Los Angeles. Presented in collaboration with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, the evening kicks off Tales from…
Frenkel, one of the 21st century’s leading mathematicians, works on one of the biggest ideas to come out of mathematics in the last 50 years: the Langlands Program. In his lyrical autobiography, he reveals a side of math we’ve never seen, suffused with all the metaphysical beauty and elegance of a…
William Burroughs was the original cult figure of the Beat Movement, author of Naked Lunch, and influence to scores of artists, writers, and musicians. For the centennial celebration of Burroughs’ birth, beat historian and biographer Barry Miles discusses the long-term cultural legacy of Burroughs…
The Days of Anna Madrigal, the suspenseful, comic, and touching ninth (and final) novel in Armistead Maupin’s bestselling Tales of the City series, follows one of modern literature’s most unforgettable and enduring characters—Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane…
This new work by the MacArthur Award-winning novelist begins when composer Peter Els opens the door to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab—where he experiments to find music in surprising patterns—has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Seeking help from family and a…
Hailed as one of the most inspiring women of our time, musician and activist Angélique Kidjo shares the story of her world in the memoir, Spirit Rising: from the communist regime of her native Benin to her work as a UNICEF Ambassador and activist promoting education for all girls in Africa. Kidjo’s…
This first sweeping history of Parks' life challenges perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement. Theoharis offers a compelling portrait of the working class activist who stared poverty and discrimination squarely in the face and never stopped rebelling against them in…
