If you’d like to do some background reading before attending this week's sold out Author Event with Chris Hayes on Thursday, follow the links below to become familiar with the broadcaster and his work.

• Check out Chris Hayes’ official biography at MSNBC.
   
• Read through this substantial list of Hayes’ articles on a wide range of issues that span the beginning of his career at the Chicago Reader to some of his more recent contributions to The Nation, The New York Times, and everything in between.
   
• In the "By the Book" section of The New York Times Book Review, Hayes discusses his reading habits along with some of the books he turns to for guidance and a mention of his upcoming writing project.
   
• Asked if there is one book he’d recommend to the current president, Hayes chose Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. You can listen to Judt’s bracing presentation of Postwar from his November 2006 lecture at the Free Library.
   
• And last but not least, here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’ opinion piece in The Baltimore Sun based on his reading of Chris Hayes’ first book, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.

Chris Hayes will speak at a SOLD OUT event on Thursday, March 23, 2017, 6:00 p.m. at Parkway Central Library, where he will discuss his new book, A Colony in a Nation.