Pam Grier:
Foxy
Wednesday, June 16, 2010,
6:30 pm at Outwrite Books

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzgw0ppe1oM(there’s 15 seconds of non-FCC complaint inducing sound at 1:35, although if you bleep one mothereffing word, it would be better to start at 1:20)

In this prickly autobiography, the iconic actress is almost as hard-nosed toward lovers as her filmic alter -ego was toward enemies. Grier recalls a flamboyant career, from B-movie starlet in Women in Cages through blaxploitation diva in Foxy Brown to Tarantino muse in Jackie Brown, all of it shaped by a rigorous Stanislavskian method. (Her self-transformation into a strung-out killer prostitute for an audition almost got her arrested by the NYPD.)

Grier nods to the feminist and black power movements that inspired her screen persona as a glamorous badass shot gunning a white and/or male power structure—Hollywood's answer to Angela Davis—while distancing herself from the myth: deep down she's a Colorado farm girl, scarred by two rapes, who loves horses. But there's a resemblance to her onscreen persona in her tough, wary attitude toward domineering boyfriends like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who futilely tried to convert her into a submissive Muslim wife, and comedian Freddie Prinze, whose suicide garners less space and pathos than does the death of her dog. “What harm would it do to say yes and keep on watching his behavior?” she strategizes when a suitor presents an engagement ring.
 
 
Sebastian Junger:
War
June 16, 2010
7pm at Barnes & Noble Buckhead

“War is insanely exciting.... Don't underestimate the power of that revelation”, warns bestselling author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Junger (The Perfect Storm).

The war in Afghanistan contains brutal trauma but also transcendent purpose in this riveting combat narrative. Junger spent 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with a platoon of the 173rd airborne brigade in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, one of the bloodiest corners of the conflict. The soldiers are a scruffy, warped lot, with unkempt uniforms—they sometimes do battle in shorts and flip-flops—and a ritual of administering friendly beatings to new arrivals, but Junger finds them to be superlative soldiers. Junger experiences everything they do—nerve-racking patrols, terrifying roadside bombings and ambushes, stultifying weeks in camp when they long for a firefight to relieve the tedium. Despite the stress and the grief when buddies die, the author finds war to be something of an exalted state: soldiers experience an almost sexual thrill in the excitement of a firefight—a response Junger struggles to understand—and a profound sense of commitment to subordinating their self-interests to the good of the unit.

 Junger mixes visceral combat scenes—raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion—with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.
 
 
Bret Easton Ellis:
Imperial Bedrooms
Friday June 18th, 2010
6:30 pm at SCAD Atlanta Campus

Bret Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero, is one of the signal novels of the last thirty years, and he now follows those infamous teenagers into an even more desperate middle age.
 
Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he’s soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, a powerful manager who’s still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame and fortune. Then there’s Clay’s childhood friend Julian, a recovering addict, and their old dealer, Rip, face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than in his notorious past. But Clay’s own demons emerge once he meets a gorgeous young actress determined to win a role in his movie. And when his life careens out of control, he’s forced to come to terms with the deepest recesses of his character – and with his proclivity for betrayal.
 
Christopher Hitchens:
Hitch-22: A Memoir
Friday June 18th, 2010
7 pm at Barnes & Noble Buckhead

Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism in Iraq. He has been both a foreign correspondent in some of the world's most dangerous places and a legendary bon vivant with an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and literature. He is a fervent atheist, raised as a Christian, by a mother whose Jewish heritage was not revealed to him until her suicide.
 
In other words, Christopher Hitchens contains multitudes. He sees all sides of an argument. And he believes the personal is political.
 
This is the story of his life, lived large.
 
About the Author:
Christopher Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School. He is the author of numerous books, including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Orwell, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and his #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award nominee, God Is Not Great.