Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking, a 1994 madcapper about a tobacco lobbyist who suffers hellish consequences for his life’s work, is one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read—and this coming from a guy who breaks out in hives at the mere whiff of political punditry. Buckley, the founding editor of Forbes FYI, appreciates both Swiftian satire aimed at his beloved D.C. and Marxist—as in Groucho—slapstick aimed at the rest of us. In his new novel, Little Green Men, Buckley ups the ante on his previous explorations of literary delirium: John Oliver Banion is a John McLaughlin-type talk-show host who, after getting sucked up into the cosmos by probing aliens (then spit back down to Earth), decides to re-evaluate his stuffy existence. Goad the quick-tongued Buckley into taking caustic swipes at your favorite enemies when the author reads from and signs copies of Little Green Men at 7 p.m. at Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Sean Daly)