BIG THINGS on the DC book circuit this week. For instance: your third-favorite Wire personality George Pelecanos (after David Simon and Omar), in addition to Colon Whitehead! Plus, go check out the Arab-American Handbook: A Guide to the Arab, Arab-American & Muslim Worlds, the hotly anticipated fan-written prequel to Barack Obama’s bildungsroman, The Marx-Engels Reader: Die Träume Von Meinem Vater. MORE »

TONIGHT, D.C. SPARKLES! “Barack Obama loves our nation’s reporters in D.C. He made jokes about them, but at the end, he proved he cared about America’s Newspapers. This president may be a hero, after all.” [AOL Politics Daily]

There is a use for both your encyclopedic knowledge of arcane Greek mythology and your shameful mental repository of Lee Woodruff-centric minutia this week in DC, in the context of author events. It’s true! MORE »

The first cases of completely bathetic and overblown panic have been found identified in Virginia. Sad. [WTOP] MORE »

In the continuum of America’s Problems, right before everyone was concerned about the economy and right after the environment actually starting melting, there was the issue of the Muslins, a dangerous sect of Hawaiian Christian Platonists who went rogue for a few years, in Iraq. You’ll recall The War, yes? Anyway, few books about that thing, and how it’s still a problem, despite not being mentioned on any blogs for awhile. Also, there seems to be an early onslaught of nostalgia for capitalism going around, which in this week’s column is comically juxtaposed against the closing of one of DC’s most beloved bookstores, Vertigo Books. Irony! MORE »

Local athletics club the Washington Nationals is getting “special treatment” from DC, as the city has agreed to pay to keep the Metro running late if baseball games run late. No word yet on whether the same applies if games just feel like they’re taking forever. [DC Examiner] MORE »

It’s Ladies Week on the DC book tour circuit, as there are a number of biographical-y things about important historical events that one wouldn’t necessarily equate with certain obscure ladies who were actually quite integral, in these important historical events. For instance, the New Deal. And “liberty,” as a concept. Also special guest appearances by your Congressman Chris Van Hollen and moderately popular Newseum exhibit Cokie Roberts. MORE »

There is a blue crab baby boom, in the Chesapeake! These baby boomer crabs are distinctive for sporting blue “aprons” around their midsection and for their affinity for waxing nostalgic about Saturday Night Live episodes that aired between 1975-1979. [Washington Post] MORE »

One is not born an enemy of Christopher Hitchens, one becomes one. Take the nascent case of a one Adrian Wooldridge, who’s parading around town with his new book, God Is Back, all about how God is back! Adrian Wooldridge has a world of Slate columns originally scribbled in pink highlighter on Andrew Sullivan’s bathroom floor tiles coming his way. Sad. MORE »

A guy was caught selling guns from a potato chip stand in a market. It was as easy as catching a gun salesman at a potato chip stand, said police. [Washington Examiner] MORE »

Last week was learningsy, hm? Synopsis: we talked about Foreign Affairs and explored some important theories about colonialism and its most nefarious agent: the Mercator projection. Such the fun! This week it’s on to bigger and better: namely, Taco Talk, the in-house monthly of the DC restaurant California Tortilla. Taco Talk, or “TT” as it was called with a distinctly pejorative inflection in certain neoconservative circles, was founded in 1934 as the premier journal of the anti-Stalinist left. Come, let us take a look. MORE »