By Muriel Spark, from The Informed Air, a collection of essays to be published this month by New Directions. This essay originally appeared in the Observer, as “Eyes and Noses,”…

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By Colin Richmond, from “Deliberation and Precipitation: Fresh Eggs, c. 1890–c. 1910,” published in the Winter 2014 issue of Common Knowledge. Richmond is professor emeritus of medieval history at the…

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From Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy,

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From a note sent in 1917 to the Appeal Tribunal in Middlesex, England, which reviewed requests for exemption from military service during World War I. The note is included in…

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From the 500 least popular lectures out of the more than 1,600 available on the website of TED, a nonprofit organization that aims to “bring together the world’s most fascinating…

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By Nadezhda Teffi (1872–1952), an author of short stories, poems, one-act plays, a novel, and a volume of memoirs. This story was first published in book form, in 1912. Translated…

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From a November 25, 1848, article published in the Norfolk News, Eastern Counties Journal and Norwich, Yarmouth, and Lynn Commercial Gazette and included in Purring: Sport of the People, an…

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By Gary Indiana, from A Significant Loss of Human Life, one of twenty-two pamphlets published by Semiotext(e) for this year’s Whitney Biennial, which is currently on view at the Whitney…

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By Nikil Saval, from Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, out this month from Doubleday. Saval is an editor of n+1.

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By William T. Vollmann, from Last Stories and Other Stories, to be published by Viking in July. Vollmann’s last article for Harper’s Magazine, “Life as a Terrorist,” appeared in the…

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By Barbara Ehrenreich, from Living with a Wild God, out next month from Twelve. Ehrenreich, a longtime contributor to Harper’s Magazine, is the author of many books, including, most recently,…

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From an application submitted by Lucien Greaves, the pseudonymous spokesperson of the Satanic Temple, a group based in New York City, to the Oklahoma State Capitol Preservation Commission for approval…

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From remarks by Joseph Esposito, a retired New York City police officer, during a wiretapped phone conversation with another former city employee. Esposito was accused in January of helping some…

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From stories submitted anonymously to the website hazedandconfused.com, describing the tasks reportedly carried out by undergraduates in pledging prospective fraternities or sororities. Visitors to the site are encouraged to vote…

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By Alice Goffman, from On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, to be published next month by University of Chicago Press. Goffman, a sociologist at the University of…

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From a report by the inspector general of the Air Force concerning allegations against Major General Michael J. Carey of professional misconduct during a trip to Russia last July. In…

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By Carol Ruth Silver, from a July 3, 1961, entry in a secret journal of her experiences at the maximum-security Mississippi State Penitentiary, in Parchman. One month earlier, the twenty-two-year-old…

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By Norman Rush, from Granta 126, published earlier this year. Rush is the author of several works of fiction, including, most recently, Subtle Bodies. From an early age, I was…

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By Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), from Stories, out this month from Dalkey Archive Press. Translated from the Portuguese by Rhett McNeil. Do you know about the academies of…

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