At September’s Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton roused his party when he said that Republicans, having left Barack Obama with a “total mess,” were now complaining that the president hasn’t…

Read more

Read more

From comments posted on YouTube about a rap video released in September by the Colombian guerrilla group FARC. The song describes their upcoming peace talks in Cuba and Norway with…

Read more

From a May 23 expert-witness statement submitted as evidence in the trial of three members of the Russian activist collective Pussy Riot, who were sentenced in August to two years…

Read more

From “ ‘Being There’ in Toronto,” a May 3, 1987, speech by Jerzy Kosinski. Oral Pleasure, a collection of Kosinski’s speeches, essays, and interviews, edited by Barbara Tepa Lupack and Kiki…

Read more

From the 2011 testimony of Ira Isaacs, who was found guilty of obscenity in April, on charges relating to four videos he distributed through his company Stolen Car Films. Michael…

Read more

From a 1979 letter by John Lennon to a laundry in New York City, where Lennon lived with his wife, Yoko Ono. The John Lennon Letters was published by Little,…

Read more

Read more

From a June 8, 1972, letter by William Styron to Frederick Exley, the author of A Fan’s Notes, who was a guest lecturer at the University of Iowa that year.…

Read more

From an interview with Paul Hudert, a juggler who performs under the name Paolo Garbanzo at Renaissance faires and with the Flying Karamazov Brothers, by Rachel Lee Rubin, an American…

Read more

From a message posted in July by Victoria Foyt on the website for her young-adult novel Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls Part One, which Foyt describes as a “sci-fi fantasy…

Read more

From messages sent to NASA’s “Ask an Astrobiologist” Web page. David Morrison, who responds to the questions, has received more than 5,000 messages related to “Doomsday 2012” and the planet…

Read more

From the press release of a performance held in July at Allegra LaViola Gallery, in New York City. Artist Laura Ginn and Allegra LaViola Gallery proudly present Tomorrow We Will…

Read more

Read more

By Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, from her collection of stories There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself, to be published in February by Penguin. Translated…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

The G.O.P. aims to paint the country red

Read more

Never mind the European meltdown, here’s the Olympics!

Read more

Paper Routs In “The Only Game in Town” [Report, September], David Sirota unjustly mentions an old publisher of Philadelphia’s two dailies in his catalogue of newspaper owners who use their…

Read more

Read more

In search of what Obama built

Read more

The dangers of misunderstanding Iran

Read more

The past and future of the Voting Rights Act

Read more

Spiraling downward at the Central Library

Read more

When Ashley told me to go home, I went. Well, not immediately. First I walked to a garden and sat on a bench, or I think it was a garden,…

Read more

Tom Wolfe is back with Back to Blood (Little, Brown and Company, $30) and I have to confess, after wading through this multiculti, multilingual, punnyfunny Miami miasma, that it’s difficult…

Read more