Briefly in Datebook

“NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw and social activist Susan Faludi

will be featured speakers at the Newport Beach Library’s Martin W. White

Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series starting Feb. 11.

Other guests include biologist Stephen Gould and China expert Orville

Schell.

Faludi launches the third annual series with “Whose Backlash is it

Anyway?” in which she will discuss her books “Backlash: The Undeclared

War Against American Women” and “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American

Man.”

A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Faludi won the Pulitzer

Prize for her reporting for The Wall Street Journal. She has also worked

for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times.

On March 17-18, the series continues with Schell’s “China: Friend or

Foe?” Schell is dean of the graduate school of journalism at UC Berkeley

and the country’s foremost expert on China.

Brokaw will speak April 28 with a program titled “An Anchorman Looks at

the World.” Brokaw’s best-selling “The Greatest Generation” was the

subject of a January 1999 documentary about Americans coming of age

during the Depression and then fighting in World War II.

Brokaw is a member of Broadcasting and Cable’s TV Hall of Fame, and has

received a Peabody, an Emmy, and the Congressional Medal of Honor

Society’s 1999 “Tex” McCrary Excellence in Journalism Award.

A video of the program will be shown April 29 with discussion by an

interactive panel of Orange County leaders.

The series concludes with Gould’s “The Surprising Pattern of Life’s

History” May 19-20. An interpreter of science and its social

consequences, Gould is professor of geology and zoology, and curator for

invertebrate paleontology at Harvard University.

All lectures begin at 7 p.m. Dinner and music are available at some

events. Reservations can be made at the Newport Beach Central Library’s

administration office, 1000 Avocado Ave. Tickets go on sale Jan. 17.

For more information, call (949) 644-3296.