Can't Miss It: Monday

HOW-TO BOOK: You may have run into Reza Aslan, author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, while watching the Daily Show. Now you can see the professor of creative writing (at the University of California, Riverside) in person, talking about his newest book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. Sounding a bit like John Gottman, Aslan says the best cosmic war is one that isn't fought; he says need to strip conflicts of their religious connotations and address the more earth-bound grievances that generate the cosmic mindset.

7:30 p.m. // Kane Hall Room 210, University of Washington // Tickets: $15 general

MULDOON ON ROETHKE: Also on UW campus, in Kane Hall's Roethke Auditorium, is druidic, captious Paul Muldoon, Ireland's answer to what comes after Heaney. Muldoon is the New Yorker's poetry editor, among other things, and he's in town to deliver the 46th Annual Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading. Theodore Roethke, since you ask, taught poetry at the UW, and sometimes wrote poems himself. This is "Meditation at Oyster River."

8 p.m. // Kane Hall Room 130, University of Washington // FREE

OLD HAND ON A HAMMOND: Memphis's Booker T Jones, accompanied by the Drive By Truckers Troy Gonyea and Rick Holmstrom on guitar, Ron Weber on bass, and Darian Gray on drums, hits the Triple Door tonight with his Hammond B3. He's touring for his new all-instrumental album, Potato Hole: "a mixture of newly written songs and a trio of intriguing covers, all recorded in a scant one week's time." The title refers to the place below the slaves' quarters where extra food was stashed, and the covers are Outkast's "Hey Ya," Tom Waits' "Get Behind the Mule" and the Drive By Truckers' "Space City." This is going to be a hell of a show.

7:30 p.m. // Triple Door, 216 Union Street // Tickets: $30