Wednesday, April 29, 6:00 p.m. Boston Athenæum, 10½ Beacon Street

The media these days speak in so many forked and foreign tongues — film, book, video game, broadcast, blog — that without a dictionary or a concordance it’s hard to know who is saying what to whom. Over the last fifty years it has come to pass that on an examination paper at the end of a year’s course in the history of western civilization a sophomore at a high-end New England university can give as his answer: “The Greeks invented three kinds of columns — Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth.”

How does a writer tell a straight story to readers who think in circles? Maybe by sending smoke signals.

LEWIS LAPHAM is the editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, the national correspondent for Harper’s Magazine, and the author of thirteen books, among them Money and Class in America, The Wish for Kings, Theater of War and, most recently, Pretensions to Empire. For Bloomberg Radio he hosts a weekly program, “The World in Time.”

A reception will follow this lecture. Reservations will be accepted starting April 16 at 617-720-7600.