A week in the author’s life when it became impossible to control the course of events.

An essay on Jimmy Savile, British television and child sexual abuse.

On the moral behavior of animals.

A non-erotic journey.

The last men who ride the rails, “where silence and lawlessness still reign.”

On a biography of David Foster Wallace.

A mystery writer moves into an apartment where a grisly crime was committed.

On being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Diagnosed with a rare blood disease, the author reflects on illness and addiction.

New York’s Russian community in Brooklyn.

Writing a “stunt memoir” in the waterpark capital of the world.

An essay about phone dials and a response to the end of blogging.

An essay on African-American fatherhood.

On Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, screenwriters.

On “soldiers for credibility” and the tug of war over truth.

On working in an artists’ colony.

A meditation on the “out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant.”

On living in Saudi Arabia.

An essay on Alcor – “the Arizona cryonics company that has put the body of Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams in cryogenic suspension, in the hope he may one day rise again” – and the desire to live forever.

Autobiographical cartoonists on truth and lies.

On the O.J. Simpson verdict and the Million Man March.

An essay on televangelists and a missing mother.

In a posthumously published essay, Twain recounts dreams of a long-lost love.

Vidal on Midge Decter, homophobia and a proposed alliance between Jews and gays.

This isn't an essay or simply a woe-is-we narrative about how hard it is to be a black boy in America. This is a lame attempt at remembering the contours of slow death and life in America for one black American teenager under Central Mississippi skies. I wish I could get my Yoda on right now and surmise all this shit into a clean sociopolitical pull-quote that shows supreme knowledge and absolute emotional transformation, but I don't want to lie.