Last summer, when she thought nobody was looking, Mary Bale put a cat in the trash. The act was caught on video, and Bale was quickly tried and convicted online. The aftermath of a viral crime.

On Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her fame.

A young black gentrifier gets lumped in with both groups, often depending on what she’s wearing and where she’s drinking. She is always aware of that fact.

Memories of the author’s teenage years, when his father pulled up stakes on a comfortable life in Baltimore to reinvent himself as the head of a S&L bank in Los Angeles.

Supply and demand paid-sex economics, ‘hobbyist’ internet message boards, and the power of reviews.

A remembrance of relationships formed when the author, at 13 and using a false identity, frequented hockey chat rooms.

A 134-pound magazine writer takes his chances at the U.S. Open sumo championships.

Memories of the expat revolutionary scene in 1980s Nicaragua. An excerpt from Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War.

A first-person rumination on a lifetime spent behind bars.

On what you come to appreciate after a short apprenticeship with paramedics.

The perpetually underpaid author takes a moonlighting job with Demand Media, publisher of search-engine optimized articles with titles like “Hair Styles for Women Over 50 With Glasses”, absurdity ensues.

A just-barred Pakistani-American attorney attempts to save a young family’s home from foreclosure and glimpses the contradiction-rich bureaucracy that has emerged in response to the housing crisis.

The author joins his father’s work crew, gutting out foreclosed houses in Florida and interviewing their former residents.

The author enrolls in three cults - ADIDAM, the Moonies, and Aleph (formerly Aum, who carried out the Tokyo metro Sarin attacks) - via their New York branches.

The poet and his love affair with Italian motorbikes (and also lots of women.)

Lessons learned while temping at an Amsterdam coffee shop.

A firsthand account of prison’s dysfunctional relationships. The writer wasn’t able to gain access through official channels, so he completed guard training and took a job as a Sing Sing corrections officer.

How Juarez became the murder capital of the world.

Tony Judt on his own amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the experience of being “left free to contemplate at leisure and in minimal discomfort the catastrophic progress of one’s own deterioration.”

A Pynchon conference in Lublin, Poland may say more about the men (yes, only men) who attend Thomas Pynchon conferences than the works of the reclusive author.

A Hollywood screenwriter finds out his identity’s been stolen when a hooker calls–from his private office–demanding to be paid for the sex they didn’t just have.

An awkward journalist-Russell Crowe friendship turns even more awkward.

Adventures in something called “Radical Honesty.”

The inner workings of a surprisingly amiable Holocaust denial conference.