From The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, a memoir by Austin Reed, published this month by Random House. Likely completed in 1858, the manuscript was discovered at…
By Kenneth Irby (1936–2015), whose collected poems, The Intent On, was published by North Atlantic Books in 2009.
From posts by residents of Oakland, California, to NextDoor and Glenfriends, two online social networks for neighbors.
From a complaint filed in October 2014 on behalf of a woman who was harassed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Harris County, Texas. In October 2015,…
From a mathematics textbook for children between six and twelve years old, published by the Islamic State’s ministry of education. The Islamic State distributed copies of the textbook to schools…
From Living on Paper, a collection of Iris Murdoch’s letters published next month by Princeton University Press and Chatto & Windus. Murdoch (1919–99) was the author of numerous novels, including The…
By David Searcy, from Shame and Wonder, a collection of essays that was published this month by Random House. Searcy is the author of two novels, including Last Things (2002).
From queries submitted by telephone and in person to the New York Public Library’s Reference and Research Services between 1940 and 1989.
By Justin E. H. Smith, from a work in progress. Smith’s fourth book, The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (Princeton), will be published in June. At the end of August, the oldest…
From entries made since 2009 to the U.S. Protocol Gift Unit Federal Register Report, which records items given by foreign dignitaries to federal employees.
From a list of approximately 70,000 diagnostic codes included in the International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification, which was adopted by U.S. health-care providers in October.
From an audio recording entered as evidence in a 2014 lawsuit filed by a man identified as D.B., who claims that he inadvertently recorded his colonoscopy on his cell phone.…
From Of Beards and Men, by Christopher Oldstone-Moore, which will be published next month by the University of Chicago Press. Oldstone-Moore is a senior lecturer in history at Wright State…
From a contract prepared by a casting agency for extras in the television show Westworld, which is scheduled to air on HBO next year.
By László Krasznahorkai, from Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens, a travel memoir that will be published next month by Seagull Books. Krasznahorkai won the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.…
By Allen Ginsberg (1926–97), from Wait Till I’m Dead, a volume of his uncollected poems that will be published by Grove Atlantic in February.
By Brian Blanchfield, from Proxies, an essay collection that will be published in April by Nightboat Books. Blanchfield is the author, most recently, of A Several World, a volume of…
By Peter Gizzi, from the spring issue of Granta. Gizzi’s selected poems, In Defense of Nothing, was published last year by Wesleyan University Press.
From a complaint filed in June against the State of North Carolina by PETA and other plaintiffs, including Beth A. Sparks, an adviser to the National Opossum Society who “has…
From When the Sun Bursts, by Christopher Bollas, out this month from Yale University Press. Bollas has been a practicing psychoanalyst for more than forty years.