WHO: Journalist Seymour Hersh, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Formerly of The New York Times and now a frequent contributor to The New Yorker.

TOPIC: Chain of Command: How We Got from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

WHAT: Mondavi Center Distinguished Speakers Series.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Oct. 17.

WHERE: Jackson Hall, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

•••

WHO: Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, an account of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected a university professor and her seven female students as they studied The Great Gatsby, Lolita and other classics in the privacy of Nafisi's home while the world around them crumbled.

TOPIC: The Republic of the Imagination.

WHAT: Mondavi Center Distinguished Speakers Series.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Dec. 4

WHERE: Jackson Hall.

•••

ADMISSION: Tickets are required for all three of these events, and are available through the Mondavi Center box office, (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org