A Monthly Speaker Series Featuring Some of Our Neighborhood’s Most Fascinating People

Stop by Spices Asian Restaurant (3333 Connecticut Avenue NW) before or after the Talk for a 10% Discount off your Dine-In Bill

October 17, 2023, 7 pm, with book sales & signing at 6:30 pm

 “The Cleveland Park Spy”: Jim Popkin

In person at the Cleveland Park Library

Free but must register to attend: 

https://clevelandwoodleypark.helpfulvillage.com/events/1946

Jim Popkin will discuss his new book, Code Name Blue Wren, about convicted Cuban spy Ana Montes, who used to live on Macomb Street in Cleveland Park. Popkin is an author and investigative journalist whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, WIRED, and on NPR. He ran the NBC News Investigative Unit, where he was a Senior Producer and on-air correspondent. He reported for NBC News for 14 years for the TODAY Show, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, and CNBC. Popkin won four national Emmy Awards for outstanding journalism, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, the George Polk Award, and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He received a BA from Northwestern University and a Master’s from Yale Law School. 

Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America’s Most Dangerous Female Spy – and the Sister She Betrayed was released this past January,  just three days before Montes was freed from prison after more than two decades behind bars.

Code Name Blue Wren will be available for sale in the library lobby, and Jim Popkin will be on hand to sign books.

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                                                    Photo by Linda Maraniss

November 14, 2023, 7 pm, with book sales & signing at 6:30 pm

“Jim Thorpe”: David Maraniss, journalist and editor 

In person at the Cleveland Park Library

Free but must register to attend: https://clevelandwoodleypark.helpfulvillage.com/events/1947

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and was a finalist three other times. Among his bestselling books are biographies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Roberto Clemente, and Vince Lombardi, and a trilogy about the 1960s—Rome 1960; Once in a Great City (winner of the RFK Book Prize); and They Marched into Sunlight (winner of the J. Anthony Lucas Prize and Pulitzer Finalist in History). His latest book, Path Lit By Lightning, is about the life of the renowned Native American Olympian James Francis Thorpe, a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, who won two gold medals for the US at the 1912 Summer Games.

Path Lit by Lightning will be available for sale beginning at 6:30 pm, and David Maraniss will be on hand to sign books.