Simon Sinek is author of the global best seller, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. Sinek is also best known for popularizing the concept of Why in his first Ted Talk in 2009.  It has since risen to the third most watched talk of all time on TED.com, gathering 27+million views and is subtitled in 43 languages.

Put David Sedaris and Glenn O’Brien in a blender and add a dash of New York and Hollywood gossip, and you wind up with Alan Cumming. In You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: And Other Stories, Alan Cumming takes the reader on a wild journey of pithy and cheeky fun, presenting his real-life stories of debauchery during late night Hollywood parties, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and hilarious yet poignant memories of his life, family, and friends. 

In season three of This is Life with Lisa Ling, Ling goes inside the cage with female fighters, attends a wedding behind bars, and learns to code with Silicon Valley teens. She explores legalized prostitution, investigates the ravages of America’s heroin epidemic, and uncovers state laws that allow rapists parental rights.  In Los Angeles she gains unprecedented access to America’s largest jail, and in Philadelphia, takes a 360-degree look at how technology is changing the landscape of law enforcement.

Daniel J. Levitin’s bestselling books include: This is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind.  His new book, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age is an indispensable and funny primer on how to recognize misleading announcements, graphs, and written reports, and how to think critically about the stories and statistics we encounter on a daily basis.  

Since retiring from professional basketball as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, six-time MVP, and Hall of Fame inductee, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a lauded observer of culture and society, a New York Times bestselling author, and a regular contributor to The Washington Post and TIME magazine. He now brings that keen insight to the fore in Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White. He uses his unique blend of erudition, street smarts and authentic experience in essays on the country’s seemingly irreconcilable partisan divide – both racial and political, parenthood, and his own experiences as an athlete, African-American, and a Muslim. 

Penn Jillette is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award­-winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His commentary has appeared in the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times.  In Presto, Jillette takes us along on his journey from skepticism to the inspiring, life-changing momentum that transformed the magician’s body and mind.  He weaves in his views on sex, religion, and pop culture, making his story a refreshing, genre-busting account. 

Terry McMillan is the bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, and The Interruption of Everything and the editor of Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Each of Ms. McMillan’s seven previous novels was a New York Times bestseller, and four have been made into movies.  Her new novel, I Almost Forgot About You, shows what can happen when you face your fears, take a chance, and open yourself up to life, love, and the possibility of a new direction.

We hear the word “artisanal” all the time—attached to cheese, chocolate, coffee, even fast-food chain sandwiches—but what does it actually mean? We take “farm to table” and “handcrafted food” for granted now but how did we get here? In Finding the Flavors We Lost, acclaimed food writer Patric Kuh profiles major figures in the so-called “artisanal” food movement who brought exceptional taste back to food and inspired chefs and restaurateurs to redefine and rethink the way we eat.

Since Devil in A Blue Dress set Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins out on his first job of detection,  Mosley has published close to 50 books across genres and formats. Mosley’s upcoming book, Charcoal Joe, marks the 25th anniversary of the Easy Rawlins series.  Join us for a special evening of conversation and readings celebrating Walter Mosley, who’s characters’ popularity and the critical acclaim his books drew opened doors for another generation of writers of color, not only in the mystery field but in other genres as well.