Erik Larson‘s books, which include Devil In The White City, and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, take a moment in our American experience and turn that moment into the most riveting and thrilling story imaginable. Each of his books reads like a thriller, set against a grand tableau, where we get to know the players intimately. And sometimes it’s a challenge to remember that Erik Larson’s books are nonfiction– because truth is always so much stranger than anything we could make up.

Larson’s most recent book, In the Garden of Beasts , is a book that prompts as many questions as it does answers.  It concerns a history professor from University of Chicago, William Dodd, who becomes America’s first Ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in 1933.  Ill prepared for the task at hand, Larson suggests that William Dodd could have been confused with another William Dodd whose qualifications more clearly matched the job at hand. As Dodd and his family initially enjoy the glamor and glitz of prewar Berlin, they take advantage of the city’s social and cultural life; it could be said that Dodd’s daughter, really delights in the glamor of prewar Berlin, engaging in affairs with Gestapo and Nazi top brass one after the other.  As the ground shifts in Berlin, Ambassador Dodd becomes increasingly alarmed, and yet his dispatches to Washington seem to fall on fairly deaf, if even indifferent, ears.  In the Garden of Beasts is, like Larson’s other books, a shocking portrayal of Washington’s disinterest and Berlin’s horror. This is a most amazing story. It is no wonder that Erik Larson is one of the most successful and respected nonfiction writers in America today.

In conversation with David Kipen, proprietor extraordinaire of Libros Schmibros, a do-it-himself community lending library in Boyle Heights. David is the editor of two magnificent resource guides: Los Angeles in the 1930′s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels; and San Francisco in the 1930″s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay. He is the former Director of the National Endowment for The Arts’ National Reading Initiative and Big Read Project, and was book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the author of several books, and is the book critic for KPCC.

At Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, 300 N. Clark Drive, Beverly Hills. Tickets, $20.  For reservations, email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com or click here.

Dan Rather, one of the titans of broadcast journalism, is one of the most distinguished news journalists in American media history. Before serving as anchor for “CBS Evening News” for 24 years, Rather was White House Correspondent during the LBJ administration, and also during Nixon’s tenure. Dan Rather happened to be Southwestern Bureau Chief for CBS News, based in Dallas, in 1963, and was one of the first to report on the assassination of President Kennedy.  CBS sent him to Vietnam as Foreign Correspondent, where he reported from the front.  Dan Rather’s career in broadcast journalism is decorated with glory and controversy—and guts.  In his new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in News, he addresses those moments—from being criticized by President Nixon and Vice President George H.W. Bush as being biased against them, to the scandal of revealing documents critical of President George W. Bush’s Texas National Guard service, documents which had not been properly authenticated.  Dan Rather’s legacy in the Watergate reporting is legendary, cornering President Nixon and not letting go.  His early international reporting from Afghanistan eventually led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his interviews with Saddam Hussein prior to the Gulf War just reinforced his position as a most influential figure.

Dan Rather’s broadcasts were folksy, eloquent and often poignant.  His parting words as anchor of CBS Evening News speak for themselves:

Not long after I took up the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word Courage. I want to return to it now, in a different way: to a nation still nursing a broken heart, and for what happened here in 2001, and especially to those who found themselves closest to the events of September 11; to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in dangerous places; …to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all, and to each of you, Courage.

Marty Kaplan is our go-to guy for the Big Three network journalists. He has interviewed, for Writers Bloc, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, and with courage and eloquence, will chat with Dan Rather about Dan’s life in and around the news. He’s worked in politics, in government, in entertainment and in education.  While writing speeches for Vice President Mondale on Pennsylvania Avenue, Marty paid close attention to Dan Rather on CBS.  Marty is a scholar and a journalist and currently serves as the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC. He contributes regularly to The Jewish Journal, and is an expert on political coverage in television news.

At the Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive.  Tickets, $20.  For reservations, click here or email reservations@writersblocpresents.com

Buddy Elias is Anne Frank’s first cousin (his mother and Anne’s father were brother and sister), and he and Anne were close childhood friends.  Buddy Elias comes to Writers Bloc to tell his family’s story of a remarkable cache of letters, documents and photographs discovered in his mother’s attic, following her death, that contribute to a much broader understanding of the Frank family before their incarceration in the Amsterdam attic.  Buddy  Elias and Otto Frank, Anne’s father, remained close all of their lives; the letters, photos and documents , and Buddy Elias himself, close the gap between the distance of Anne Frank’s terrible Amsterdam attic, and Los Angeles in 2012.  The resulting book, Anne Frank’s Family, is notable because it was written by Mirjam Pressler, who served as the official German translator of The Diary of Anne Frank.  Pressler also wrote a biography of Anne Frank, and is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the prestigious German Book Prize.

In conversation with noted author, attorney and book critic, Jonathan Kirsch.  Jonathan is the author of twelve books, including the bestselling The Harlot at the Side of the Road, and the great recent book, The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God.  He has written extensively on Biblical history, including his critically acclaimed historical study of Moses.  He writes regularly for The Jewish Journal. You’ve heard him on KPCC and on KCRW chatting with authors, and about books.  When he’s not reading or writing or interviewing, he practices law in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on intellectual property and not surprisingly, publishing.

At the Goethe Institut, 5750 Wilshire Blvd.  Free Parking in the building.  Tickets, $20. For reservations, click here or email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com .

It is fair to say that few journalists know the intricacies of the Middle East as well as does Mike Shuster.  A reporter with NPR since 1980, Shuster has covered wars in Iraq and Iran, the Intifadas in Israel, September 11, Afghanistan, Africa, and South Asia, including India and Pakistan. He is considered to be one of the most experienced Middle Eastern correspondents in the world, and has won numerous prestigious awards for his distinguished reporting.

Tickets, $20.  At RAND, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica 90401.  Plenty of free parking underground at RAND Corporation, for people who register before May 29.  Those who register or show up on May 30 can find plenty of free parking on the street directly in front of RAND Corporation’s headquarters.  To make reservations, click here or email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com .

Rob Huebel is a comedian, writer and actor. He’s a great improv artist, and you can see him at Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood. He’s all over television and film– you’ve seen him on The Office, on 30 Rock, and in The Descendents. He’s the dishy Dr. Owen Maestro on Adult Swim’s  Children’s Hospital, clearly one of the most unorthodox– and unmedical–shows on cable. Decide who’s funnier: Rob Huebel or Joel Stein.

At Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, 300 N. Clark Drive, Beverly Hills.  Tickets, $20.  For reservations, click here or email reservations@writersblocpresents.com .

If you think that this is a dry dusting off of the story of the Founding Fathers convention in Philadelphia,  you’re dead wrong.  Kevin Bleyer might be just another nutball who wants to rewrite the Constitution—and there have been several—in order to form a more perfect union. He might be a nutball, but he’s a funny nutball, and given that he’s coming to Writers Bloc, he’s our nutball.  Kevin gives us his reasons for wanting to rewrite the four page brief that among other things, defines the three branches of government.  Kevin points out what the Constitution DOESN’T talk about: slavery, for one thing, democracy another. Kevin reminds us of the powers of the Presidency, and its scope as defined in the Constitution—and just how our Presidents have conveniently forgotten about the limitations the Constitution imposes. For our own good, of course. Kevin defends his right and authority to rewrite it, and rewrite it, article by article, he does just that.

How to make this really funny? It takes a writer for The Daily Show to do it, and it’s pretty hilarious.  Me The People places the original Constitution in its historical context, turns James Madison, our “father of the Constitution” into a pretty funny character, and at the same time legitimately (well, almost legitimately) exposes why the document might not be as perfect as it seems. Me The People is not only fabulously funny, it’s the most entertaining book on American history and politics we’ve seen in ages. Framers such as Madison, Ben Franklin, John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson might not be exactly proud of Kevin’s efforts, but they would be wildly amused and greatly enlightened. They would also appreciate his comedy writing for President Obama for the White House Correspondents Dinners, because it is also not written in the Constitution that the President must be funny, and we believe that was a great omission and oversight on the part of the Framers.

While Kevin wants to have the last word on the Constitution of the United States, the guy who really does have The Last Word is Lawrence O’Donnell.  We love him on his show on MSNBC, we appreciate him for the vast experience he brings to his desk, we look forward to his interviews that are hard-hitting and revealing.  He knows government inside and out, having served as Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance under Senator Moynihan.  Let’s not forget The West Wing.  He’s funny too.

At The Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills.  7:30 pm.  Tickets, $20.  For reservations, email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com or click here.

Berlin, perhaps more than any other city in our collective imagination, has lived through so many identities, and has morphed from one version of itself into another, several times, over the course of just a few generations.  Berlin is a city of extremes—and its past 60 years haunts us even as its present delights and absorbs us.

Jeffrey Lewis is an award winning literary novelist whose new novel, Berlin Cantata, spins numerous huge questions around a single house, a house once owned by Jews, then by Nazis, then by Communists, and now by writers.  Berlin Cantata weaves 13 voices around the ownership of this house, voices disparate in motivation, nationality, and intent.  It is a novel about identity, about reclamation, about Berlin.  It is a novel about reconciliation, about the ghosts of the past, both beloved and feared, and about what it means to be a German. And what it means to be a Jew in Germany now, a generation removed from the war, and following the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall.  Jeff Lewis says that Berlin is “a city that has lost one of its limbs and is receiving a miraculous gift, a little bump under the flesh, where the limb is just beginning to grow back. The city is Berlin in the years right after the Wall fell, the gift is the Jews.”

If Berlin interests you or even haunts you, acquaint yourself with Jeff Lewis. Berlin Cantata is a beautiful novel, whose extraordinary strands explain the conflict, love and burden of coming to terms with Germany. It is a most compelling story about reconciliation.  He is the author of several award-winning novels, and was a Writers Guild and Emmy Award-winning writer on “Hill Street Blues” for years.

In conversation with Andrea Grossman.

At the Goethe-Institut, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.  Free parking in building.  Tickets, $20.  For reservations, click here or email reservations@writersblocpresents.com

Cost: $10.00 per person. UCLA students free.

Writers Bloc co-sponsors this program with thanks to the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA and UCLA’s Department of Comparative Literature. We invite you to participate in a wonderful cultural event featuring Arab Israeli author, satirist and television comedy writer Sayed Kashua, in conversation with UCLA Professor Arieh Saposnik.

Sayed Kashua (sometimes called “The Palestinian Seinfeld”) is sort of a phenomenon in Israel.  An Arab Israeli, Kashua was born in an Arab town in Israel, and has become an outspoken wit and social critic, through his novels, his weekly satiric column in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and through the extremely popular and acclaimed TV sitcom he created, “Arab Labor.” His work’s overriding theme is being a member of a minority in Israel, and he covers the social, cultural and political aspects of that perspective.  It’s a crucial perspective to consider at this juncture in the current international state of affairs.  Kashua’s writing is irreverent, funny, and sobering.  His new book, Second Person Singular, has won prestigious Israeli and international literary awards, and it is an honor for Writers Bloc to bring Sayed Kashua to audiences in Los Angeles.

In conversation with Professor Arieh Saposnik, Gilbert Foundation Chair and Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Arieh’s field of study is Zionism.  He is engaging and funny, and brings a sensitivity as well as intimate understanding of Sayed Kashua’s cultural contributions-from his literature, newspaper columns and television show.

The program is made possible by the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA in Westwood as well as UCLA’s Department of Comparitive Literature. At 147 Dodd Hall, which is just by the UCLA Law School. Park in Lot 2 (off of Hilgard at Westholme).

Tickets, $10. See below for further information about Kashua and the event from UCLA’s Nazarian Center for Israel Studies:

Second Person Singular centers on an ambitious lawyer who is considered one of the best Arab criminal attorneys in Jerusalem. He has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of town, a large house, speaks perfect Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. One day at a used bookstore, he picks up a copy of Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, and inside finds a love letter, in Arabic, in his wife’s handwriting. Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer hunts for the book’s previous owner—a man named Yonatan—pulling at the strings that hold all their lives together.  With enormous emotional power, and a keen sense of the absurd, Kashua spins a tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice.

Mr. Kashua is the recipient of the Grinzane Cavour Award for first novel 2004 (Italy), The Prime Minister’s Prize 2005 (Israel), the Lessing Prize for Critic 2006 (Germany) and the Bernstein Prize 2011 (Israel) for Second Person Singular.  His two previous novels, “Dancing Arabs” (2004) and “Let it be Morning” (2006), were also written in Hebrew and published in translation in the United States.

Sayed Kashua was born inthe Arab town of Tira in central Israel.  At the age of  fifteen, he was accepted into the Israeli Academy for Arts and Sciences in Jerusalem, one of a very small number of Arab students. He then attended the Hebrew University of Jeruslaem, graduating with  degrees in philosophy and sociology.  Mr. Kashua currently resides in Jerusalem with his wife and daughter.

Mr. Kashua will sign books following his talk.  Copies of “Second Person Singular” will be available for purchase at the event.

Cost: $10.00 per person. UCLA students free.

SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS

Doors Open at 7:00 p.m. Parking available in UCLA Structure 2 for $11.00. Enter the campus at the the Hilgard and Westholme entrance, and purchase parking at the parking kiosk (open until 7:30 p.m. Pay-per-space parking is also available in Lot 2 for $6.00 for two hours ($11 beyond two hours).

How to Park at UCLA

For more information please contact

Nazarian Center for Israel Studies Tel: (310) 825-9646
israel@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, Writers Bloc, UCLA Department of Comparative Literature

Lovers of French cinema, listen up.  The 16^th annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COLCOA) Film Festival opens at the Directors Guild this coming Monday, April 16, and runs through the 23^rd. For those unfamiliar with this fantastic event, it is a weeklong smorgasbord of recent French films –- thrillers, dramas, comedies — almost all of them released in France in 2011. This year’s program consists of 34 features and documentaries and 21 shorts, including numerous Cesar and Cannes winners. The Intouchables [sic] is an affecting comedy, starring Francois Cluzet and Cesar-winner Omar Sy, about the unlikely bond that develops between a wealthy, disabled aristocrat and the young man, just out of jail, who is hired to take care of him. It is France’s third highest grossing film of all time. One of the most powerful films you are likely to see anywhere this year is the drama Early One Morning, about a man (Jean-Pierre Darroussin in a rare tragic role) who is driven to extremes by the callousness and corruption that surround him at work. Also screening: the 1938 Marcel Carne film Hotel Du Nord and the 1975 romantic adventure Call Me Savage, starring Yves Montand and Catherine Deneuve. Actress/writer/director Julie Delpy is this year’s artist-in-residence.  COLCOA is presented by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a group of French and American guild and cultural organizations.

Why is this festival so much fun? For one thing, it is unusually low-key and personable; nobody cares about the pecking order here. Most of the filmmakers and many of the stars attend and everybody is approachable. You don’t have to be fluent in French, but it’s easier to eavesdrop if you are. Not every film is a winner, but COLCOA has a pretty enviable track record. Past offerings have included My Afternoons with Margueritte, Mesrine, Inferno, The Secret of the Grain and the two Jean Dujardin OSS 117 spy parodies. Some of this year’s films already have been picked up for American distribution. For more information, and to order tickets (which quickly sell out), go to www.colcoa.org.

Thebloggess.com is indeed an internet phenomenon; millions of readers flock (and click) to her site to read about her observations, misadventures, and analysis of everything from motherhood to pop culture.  In her new book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny claims that although she reveals much in her blog about her completely unorthodox childhood, she leaves the best stuff for the book.  You know it’s going to be interesting when you learn that her father was a taxidermist, who conducted his business in all of its gory glory, from the house. That her parents are characters is an understatement—and Jenny’s stories are affectionate, but really hilarious reflections of experiences no one could possibly make up.  Jenny’s professional experience in Human Resources also lends itself to her particular brand of reasoned observation and subsequent ribald, good-natured mockery. There are many who can relate to her story about getting lost and refusing to use GPS — it’s that condescending tone that GPS lady uses that makes us want to defy her mystifying directions. Jenny Lawson’s pieces and her book are wonderful reminders how great it is that not everyone thinks like we do. We urge you to see her in person to learn how funny she is about the things we tend to take for granted.

In conversation with Soleil Moon Frye. Soleil is an actress, director and blogger, who, like Jenny Lawson, has hundreds of thousands of readers and fans. Check her out at moonfrye.com, but also at Writers Bloc on April 19. 7:30 pm.  At the Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills.  Tickets, $20. For reservations, click here, or email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com