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Readings

Excerpts from the best and most bizarre new books, testimonies, government documents, journals, news reports, speeches, and letters.

Spirit Guide

From a list of Thai ghosts, compiled by Andrew Alan Johnson, an assistant professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore and the author of Ghosts of the New City, published last…

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The Torment and the Engine

From an interview in the Spring 2015 issue of The Paris Review. Elena Ferrante is the pseudonym of an Italian novelist whose books include The Days of Abandonment, My Brilliant…

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Black Hat, White Hat

By Masha Gessen, from The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, out last month from Riverhead Books. Gessen is the author of several books, including The Man Without a…

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The Joke

By Justin E. H. Smith, from “The Fundamentals of Gelastics,” a work in progress. Smith’s latest book, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference (Princeton), will be published in June. In…

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For the Longest Time

From entries in the India Book of Records, founded in 2004 by Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, who holds the Guinness world record for constructing the largest screwdriver.

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Poverty Level

From How to Get Rid of Homeless, a collection of forum posts compiled by Matteo Bittanti and published in January by Concrete Press, Bittanti’s publishing company. The posts, which were made on…

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Off Site

From online messages found on Ross Ulbricht’s laptop in 2013 by FBI agents. Ulbricht, then twenty-nine, was arrested while working on his computer in a San Francisco public library. In…

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Unread at Any Speed

By Ralph Nader, from Return to Sender, a collection of 115 unanswered letters Nader sent to George W. Bush and Barack Obama between 2000 and 2015, out this month from Seven Stories Press.

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Genre Friction

From a February order by a U.S. magistrate judge denying summary judgment in Latele Television, C.A. v. Telemundo Communications Group, LLC. The suit argues that El Rostro de AnalÍa, a telenovela produced by Telemundo, infringes on…

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Beat Reporter

From a previously unpublished journal entry by Allen Ginsberg, dated February 18–19, 1965, and collected in The Essential Ginsberg, which will be published next month by Harper Perennial. In 1965, Ginsberg accepted…

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Watched Words

From Internet search terms blocked by the Chinese government since 2011. The terms were compiled and translated by the China Digital Times, a bilingual Chinese-media-tracking site based in California.

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In the Pain Cavern

By Maggie Nelson, from The Argonauts, out next month from Graywolf. Nelson is the author of several books, including Bluets, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, and Jane: A Murder.

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Dire Straights

From questions asked by deputies of the L.A. County Men’s Jail to determine whether an inmate should be placed in a unit created to house and protect gay and transgender…

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Oath of the Elbe

From Swansong 1945: A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich, edited by Walter Kempowski, out this month from W. W. Norton. On April 25, 1945, Soviet…

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Homeroom Security

From “Prevent Duty Guidance: A Consultation,” a paper issued last December by the U.K. Home Office. The U.K.’s counterterrorism strategy, CONTEST, comprises four branches: Prevent, Pursue, Protect, and Prepare. Channel…

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Thumbnickel

By Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, from The Turnip Princess, published last month by Penguin Classics. In the 1850s, Schönwerth traveled through Bavaria, his homeland, to record its tales. Much of…

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What Do I Know About Who I Am?

From Sufi Lyrics, by Bullhe Shah, published by Harvard University Press in January as part of the Murty Classical Library of India. Bullhe Shah was an eighteenth-century Sufi poet and…

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The Times, Behind

From descriptions of BuzzFeed in the New York Times between 2007 and 2014. BuzzFeed was founded in 2006.

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Swat Team

From an incident report written by a deputy in the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office, in Okeechobee, Florida. The office occasionally responds to requests from parents seeking oversight from law enforcement…

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Make Me Live

By Nell Zink, from Mislaid, a novel, out in May from Ecco. Her previous novel, The Wallcreeper, was published last year.

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May 2015

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