🧠Because truth is often stranger—and funnier—than fiction.
Memoirs, essays, and deep dives into everything from psychology to platypuses. Smart reads for curious minds.
Refresh often, or subscribe and let the deals come to you.
The best of the weirdest news, facts, and fun from all over the world! Â Where else could you learn about a woman who broke her legs flying a pig, a student who got credit for dressing like a lobster, and a man who patented a method for determining the sex of a spinach...
"One of the best books about the writing profession ever published." ―The Fresno BeeKatherine Anne Porter called courage "the first essential" for a writer. "I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence," agreed Cynthia Ozick, "sometimes every syllable." E....
The PEN Award-winning essay collection about queer lives: "Gorgeously punk-rock rebellious."—The A.V. ClubThe razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas; a doomed lesbian biker gang; recovering alcoholics; and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some...
"This is an expression not of people who are suddenly freed of something, but people who have been free all along." —Ralph Ellison, speaking with Robert Penn WarrenA stunning collection of previously unpublished interviews with key figures of the black freedom...
NAACP 2017 Image Award WinnerWith his trademark acerbic wit, incisive humor, and infectious paranoia, one of our foremost comedians and most politically engaged civil rights activists looks back at 100 key events from the complicated history of black America.A friend...
The machines are already improving themselves. You just have not been told how fast. In the spring of 2026, Claude began writing between seventy and ninety percent of the code used to train its own next version. AlphaEvolve spent over a year optimizing the training...
"A bracing, rollicking read about the spark that ignites when people start asking meaningful questions." —O MagazineChristopher Phillips is a man on a mission: to revive the love of questions that Socrates inspired long ago in ancient Athens. "Like a Johnny Appleseed...
One of the masterworks of Western civilization from the Ancient Greek author and orator known as the "Father of History."Â Written in the fifth century BC, The Histories is a wide-ranging inquiry into the Greco-Persian Wars and beyond. Factual accounts of military...
Why does everything sound better if it's said in French? That fascination is at the heart of The Story of French, the first history of one of the most beautiful languages in the world that was, at one time, the pre-eminent language of literature, science and...
Free yourself from emotional turmoileven when that turmoil is caused by others!We have a much greater understanding of human behavior now than we did just a few decades ago. Yet even with this greater understanding of the human mind, why we do what we do can sometimes...