This deliciously offbeat political bull session — ALOUD Presents Jon Meacham in conversation with Bill Maher — pitting Tennessee-born American lit–history-journalist-editor big-shot Jon Meacham against the perennially rumpled, rascally comic-commentator and bona fide smart-ass Bill Maher is a When-Two-Worlds-Collide proposition that definitely blasts the lid off the Intrigue-O-Meter. Framed as a discussion of Meacham's latest tome From Jefferson to Obama: The Art of Power and Politics, it's guaranteed to be the penultimate election postmortem. Meacham's studied, historical insight and extrapolations offer both illimitable illumination and critical context that will add profound insight and, doubtless, also set Maher up to toss off a series of withering puns, doubles entendre, gags and wisecracks of all stripes. Considering that the just-past election was such a sumptuously fractious feast for the political junkie — transforming the process from mere theater into full-blown Theater of the Absurd — this affair's combination of deep thought and spontaneous hilarity is so irresistible that it's almost one's patriotic duty to participate. Los Angeles Central Library's Mark Taper Auditorium, 630 W. Fifth St., dwntwn; Tues., Nov. 27, 7:15 p.m.; free, resv. required. (213) 228-7025; lfla.org.

Tue., Nov. 27, 7:15 p.m., 2012

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