Malcolm Gladwell with Walter Isaacson

Join us for a virtual Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Sunday, April 25, 2021
3:00pm PT/ 6pm ET 


Malcolm Gladwell
in conversation with Walter Isaacson

discussing his book,
“The Bomber Mafia: A Dream,
a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War“

 

This event premieres on April 25 at 3pm PT/6pm ET

 

Tickets: $36
includes the audio book
(Tickets open to international orders. Your audio book will be e-delivered on pub day, April 27)

PURCHASE TICKET/AUIDIO BOOK

 

Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of six New York Times bestsellers including Talking to StrangersDavid and GoliathOutliersBlink, and The Tipping Point. He is the cofounder and president of Pushkin Industries, an audiobook and podcast production company which produces the podcasts Revisionist History; Broken Record, a music interview show; and Solvable, in which Gladwell interviews innovative thinkers with solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.  The Bomber Mafia began as episodes Revisionist History, and the production team behind that show also produced the audiobook edition. Gladwell appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles for Talking to Strangers (video) and David and Goliath, and previously also interviewed Michael Lewis (video) on our stage.

Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race; Leonardo da VinciThe Innovators; Steve JobsEinstein: His Life and UniverseBenjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.  He previously appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in conversation with Michael Lewis for his book on da Vinci (video). 

In The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War, Malcolm Gladwell  weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.

Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists had a different view. This “Bomber Mafia” asked:  What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points — industrial or transportation hubs – cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal? 

In Revisionist History, Gladwell re-examines moments from the past and asks whether we got it right the first time. In The Bomber Mafia, he steps back from the bombing of Tokyo, the deadliest night of the war, and asks, “Was it worth it?”  The attack was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives but may have spared more by averting a planned US invasion.

Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge.  As a key member of the Bomber Mafia, Haywood’s theories of precision bombing had been foiled by bad weather, enemy jet fighters, and human error. When he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II.

The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.

 

 

Ziggy Marley with Malcolm Gladwell

Join us for a virtual Live Talks Los Angeles event:
Saturday, February 6, 2021
5:00pm PST/ 8pm EST 
 
 
Ziggy Marley
in conversation with Malcolm Gladwell
 

discussing his book,  
Bob Marley: Portrait of the Legend

 

This event premieres on February 6 at 5pm PST/9pm EST
PURCHASE TICKETS
 

$65 includes a a copy of the book with a signed bookplate* 
(* we only ship to US addresses)
$10 includes a ticket to watch the event

 

Join us and celebrate Bob Marley on Feb 6, his birthday!

In honor of Bob Marley’s seventy-fifth birthday, this glorious oversize book collects more than 150 photographs that celebrate the life and influence of the forefather of reggae and one of the greatest musical and sociopolitical icons of twentieth-century pop culture. 
 
Ziggy Marley is an eight-time Grammy winner, Emmy winner, author, philanthropist, and reggae icon. He has released thirteen albums to much critical acclaim. His immersion in music came early at the age of ten, when he sat in on recording sessions with his father, and he has now realized his father’s lifelong dream of owning his master recordings and publishing intellectual property.  
 
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of six New York Times bestsellers–The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath and Talking to Strangers. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy‘s Top Global Thinkers. 
 

Drawing exclusively on photos in the Marley family archives, the book mixes the iconic and the intimate, bringing together striking images of Marley as a performer onstage with unseen glimpses into his creative process in and out of the studio and his family life in Jamaica. Making the most of its oversize pages, the book is designed as a monument to his influence.

Focusing on the last decade of his life–the period of his greatest worldwide fame–and with excerpts from unpublished interviews and prophetic quotes alongside the images, this is a definitive portrait of one of the great artists of the twentieth century made by those who knew him best.

 

Malcolm Gladwell with Larry Wilmore

Tuesday, September 17, 2019
8pm

Presented in association with Barnes & Noble

Malcolm Gladwell
in conversation with Larry Wilmore

discussing his book,
Talking to Strangers:
What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know

 

Fox Performing Arts Center
3801 Mission Inn Avenue
Riverside, CA 92501

PURCHASE TICKETS 
$55 General Admission Section Seat + signed book
$75 Premium Seating + signed book (first five rows)

— Feature on Malcolm Gladwell and his new book in the New York Times, Sep 1

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is the host of the podcast Revisionist History and is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Previously, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business and science, and then served as the newspaper’s New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn’t true?

Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmorehas been a television producer, actor, comedian, and writer for more than 25 years. He can currently be heard as host of Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air on The Ringer Podcast Network. The show features Wilmore’s unique mix of humor and wit as he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the worlds of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond.

Wilmore is perhaps best known for his role as host of Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, which debuted in January 2015 and ran for nearly two years. Off-screen, Wilmore serves as co-creator and consulting producer on HBO’s Insecure, a half-hour comedy series starring Issa Rae that details the awkward experiences and racy tribulations of a modern-day African-American woman. Wilmore also helped to launch ABC’s Black-ishas an executive producer.

Previously, Wilmore made memorable appearances as the “Senior Black Correspondent” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and hosted his own Showtime “town hall”-style comedy specials, Larry Wilmore’s Race, Religion & Sex. He has written for In Living Color, The PJ’s (which he co-created), The Office(on which he has appeared as Mr. Brown, the diversity consultant), and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.He also served as creator, writer, and executive producer of The Bernie Mac Show, which earned him a 2002 Emmy Award for “Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series” and a 2001 Peabody Award.

In April 2016, Wilmore hosted the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, DC. His first book, I’d Rather We Got Casinos and Other Black Thoughts, was published in January 2009.

Ticket sales are final.  No refunds.

 

Malcolm Gladwell with Brit Marling

Monday, September 16, 2019
8pm

Presented in association with Barnes & Noble


Malcolm Gladwell
in conversation with Brit Marling

discussing his book, 
Talking to Strangers:
What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know

 

Frost Auditorium
4401 Elenda St,
Culver City, CA 90230

PURCHASE TICKETS 
$55 General Admission Section Seat + signed Book 
$75 Premium Seat + Book (Sold Out)

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and the bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers—and why they often go wrong.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is the host of the podcast Revisionist History and is a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Previously, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business and science, and then served as the newspaper’s New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn’t true?

Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Brit Marling is an actor, writer and producer. Most recently she was in the return of The OA on Netflix. Other credits include The Keeping Room, The Better Angels, I Origins, The East, and The Company You Keep.

Ticket sales are final.  No refunds.