Books
All Your Favorite Famous Quotations Are Fake
A quote investigator shares his tips for pinning down who really came up with the inspirational sayings that litter Facebook and Instagram.
What It Feels Like to Be Illiterate All Your Life
Not being able to read makes you feel socially excluded, and that's just the beginning.
How the Rorschach Test Became the Most Famous Tool in Psychiatry
A revealing new book sheds light on Hermann Rorschach and his controversial and inexplicably effective test.
Why Protests Work
The author of a new book on direct action says the main goal of demonstration is to make people in power uncomfortable.
All Your Favorite Writers and Artists Were Constantly Fucking
A new book charts out the often messy love lives of famous artists, writers, and creative types.
How the CIA Infiltrated the World's Literature
The new book, Finks, reveals how great writers such as Baldwin, Márquez, and Hemingway became soldiers in America's cultural Cold War.
Krampus Is the Fucked-Up Santa we all Deserve This Year
We talked to Al Ridenour, the author of 'The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil,' about the goat-hoofed punisher of misbehaving children.
The Photographer Who Documented the Early Days of LSD-Fuelled Psychedelia
We talked to Lawrence Schiller, whose photographs of the counterculture movement inspired Tom Wolfe, about how the new text offers the "full picture of set and setting".
Cuban Humor Owes Everything to Fidel Castro
Most Americans don't realize this, but 'el Líder Máximo' was the inspiration for—and butt of—a lot of very excellent jokes.
We Asked a Dominatrix to Review Some of this Year's Worst Sex Writing
A quick sample: "I entered her. Not only my prick, but the whole of me entered her, into her guts, into her darkness."
Funny Writers of Color Are Finally Being Taken Seriously
Paul Beatty's Man Booker-winning novel 'The Sellout' is part of a new wave of very funny, very serious literary works.