By Philip Roth, from remarks he gave at a celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday at Columbia University in 2008. They are included in Philip Roth: Why Write?, which will be published…
From a series of podcasts that Uber, the ride-hailing platform, created last year for its drivers in Seattle. In 2015, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance granting Uber drivers…
From a list of experiences on Airbnb that are offered by the platform’s hosts to their guests. The feature was introduced in November.
By Patrick Modiano, from Livret de famille, an untranslated novel that was published in 1977 by Éditions Gallimard. Modiano’s most recent books in translation, Such Fine Boys and Sundays in August, were published this…
From a list of over-the-counter sexual-enhancement products sold since 2007 that have been identified as harmful by the Food and Drug Administration.
Discussed in this essay: Chester B. Himes: A Biography, by Lawrence P. Jackson. W. W. Norton. 640 pages. $35. Early in Chester Himes’s first and best-known novel, If He Hollers…
One morning, as I walked on the quiet, mostly wooded King Mountain trail above San Francisco Bay, a dog not much smaller than I and possessed of much sharper teeth…
Estimated payload, in pounds of military-grade explosives, of fireworks purchased annually in the United States : 5,900,000 Of the MOAB, the U.S. military’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb : 18,000 Amount…
By Ellen Ullman, from Life in Code, which will be published next month by MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ullman is a former computer programmer and the…
From tasks performed in Walden, a computer game in which players simulate the life of Henry David Thoreau. The game was developed by Tracy Fullerton at the University of Southern…
From letters that Marcel Proust wrote to his neighbors Marie and Charles Williams between 1908 and 1916, while he lived at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, in Paris. Charles Williams owned a…
From voice messages sent on WhatsApp by Abdul Aziz Muhamat, a twenty-four-year-old Sudanese refugee detained on Manus Island, to Michael Green, a journalist, in March and April 2016. That April,…
From a guide to “common principles of behavior” recommended to Russian tourists visiting foreign countries. The guide was released by the Russian Foreign Ministry in March. Translated from the Russian…