Doddsie, who put propriety above everything else, had never forgotten nor forgiven Elias Renthal's reverberating fart on his exit from the Butterfield nearly eight years earlier, after he had been kicked out of the hallowed …

Institutions are a strange mix of the mass and the individual. They abstract. They behave according to a set of rules that substitute both for individual judgments and for the emotional responses that occur whenever …

(cue "I don't see what's so great about it" jokes)
Hey, remember everything that ISN'T the Oscars Death Race? Me neither! Awesome! …I'm so sorry about the protracted service interruption, guys. I've missed you, and all …

Plagues and Bible-thumpers hang on from our last poll, plus the Fug Girls, VJs, and a brick of a book about Nixon and Carter. Pick us out a good one!

William Poundstone is pretty good with a low-pH zinger. In Bigger Secrets, a book I've reread a hundred times thanks primarily to Poundstone's "…seriously?" prose, he gives this account of Scientology's handling of Hubbard's death:
Finally …

"Why is magic still a secret in Edmonton? Good PR."

On this episode of the Tomato Nation Read-Along: Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion, by Janet Reitman. It's available in print and Kindle formats, as well as on audio, which is how …

It's that time again, boys and girls. We've got two books about religion from the last poll, plus a bunch of other goodies to choose from; celebrate Election Day by voting for our next book!
 

I know it's not Tim's way to dish bitchy dirt — except that 1) he has an obligation to dish it because he obviously has access to the best and most comprehensive Project Runway dirt …

By the time I turned twenty, I had come to despise Zelda Fitzgerald. It was no fault of hers. I knew nothing about her, really, except that she had married F. Scott and lost her …