From the FBI file on Lloyd Louis Brown, who wrote the prison novel Iron City (1951), edited several Communist journals, and coauthored Paul Robeson’s autobiography, Here I Stand. The file…

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By Frederic Morton, from a speech given at the Vienna Haus der Barmherzigkeit two days before he died, in April. Morton was a critic, an essayist, and the author of…

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From an experiment conducted by Fixr.com, a cost-estimating website. The experiment collected the top search queries suggested by Google for the phrase “How much does * cost in [country].”

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By Diane Williams, from FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, FINE, a story collection out next year from McSweeney’s. Williams’s story “Living Deluxe” appeared in the June 2013 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

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By Seth Price, from his novel Fuck Seth Price, out last month from Leopard Press. Price’s earlier novel, How to Disappear in America, was published in 2008.

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By Elizabeth Willis, from a work in progress. New York Review Books published Willis’s sixth collection, Alive, in April. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

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By Lukasz Jarosz, from The Nature of Things, a collection of his poems that will be published this month by Liberodiscrivere. Jarosz is the author of several books of poems,…

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From the description of the Vajankle, a silicone foot produced by Sinthetics, an intimate-doll manufacturer. A single Vajankle, without a shoe, costs $175.

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From a list of gifts rejected by organizations since 2010. Compiled by Nicholas Nardini.

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From the titles of computer-science papers published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and retracted after it was discovered that they were written by software that generates fake…

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By Wolfgang Hilbig, from “I”, published in 1993 by S. Fischer Verlag and due out for the first time in English in July from Seagull Books. Hilbig was born in…

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From a debate in February in the Utah State Legislature about House Bill 74, which specifies that consent for sexual contact cannot be given in circumstances in which a person…

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By John Edgar Wideman. Wideman is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine.

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From emails about an antigay protest organized by the Westboro Baptist Church in 2002. The emails were included in the FBI’s file on Fred Phelps, who founded the church in…

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By William M. Arkin, from Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare, out next month from Little, Brown. Arkin is a former army intelligence analyst and the author…

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From posts to Instapray, an app that allows users to post and request prayers. God, please help me overcome my Internet addiction. It is ruining my life. Who wants to…

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From Lynching in America, a report published in February by the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, that litigates on behalf of indigent and marginalized defendants.

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From “Taking Animal News Seriously: Cat Tales in the New York Times,” a study by Matthew C. Ehrlich, a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, published…

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By Rae Armantrout, from the January/February 2015 issue of The Believer. Armantrout is the author of many collections of poems, including Itself, published by Wesleyan University Press in February.

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From tweets by companies alluding to current events between 2011 and 2014. @KennethCole Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available…

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By Joshua Cohen, from Book of Numbers, out next month from Random House. Cohen is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. Toward the end D-Unit had been working on the…

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