Media Archive

Impossible Idealism:
Inventing a Moral Life

What does it mean to devote yourself to helping others? Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer for The New Yorker, follows the…

Fates and Furies

The award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia delivers an exhilarating new novel about the creative partnership of marriage, and…

An Evening with
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

In the wake of an historic summer of groundbreaking Supreme Court decisions, Justice Stephen Breyer returned to ALOUD to discuss…

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

Returning to ALOUD after receiving the 2012 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award for his distinguished commitment to libraries and…

Destiny and Desire: A Novel

Carlos Fuentes

One of literature’s masters offers a wild, riveting saga that explores passion, magic and corruption in modern Mexico, mixing ancient…

To Live and Dine in L.A.:
Menus and the Making of the Modern City

Cynthia Hawkins, Ricardo Diaz

ALOUD gathers for a multimedia tour of the library's menu collection, paired with a conversation on the city's food past…

The Further Adventures of Mr. Cilantro Man

Tom Lutz

Juan Felipe Herrera grew up the son of Mexican immigrants in the migrant fields of California, and became the first…

The Bricks That Built the Houses

Kate Tempest, Neelanjana Banerjee

The Bricks That Built the Houses explores a cross-section of contemporary urban life with a powerful moral microscope, giving us…

Searching to See:
Experiences from the Outside World

Geoff Dyer, Jonathan Lethem

From the Watts Towers in Los Angeles to the Forbidden City in Beijing, Geoff Dyer’s newest collection of essays explores…

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

William Finnegan, David Rensin

Join Finnegan in his return to the Pacific coast for a discussion of his revelatory pursuit of the perfect wave.