The Way the World Works

Acknowledgments

The essays in this book first appeared in the following publications, sometimes under different titles.

Periodicals

The American Scholar: “String,” “Narrow Ruled,” “No Step,” “I Said to Myself,” and “Mowing.”

Areté: “The Nod.”

Columbia Journalism Review: “Defoe, Truthteller.”

Duke University Libraries: “If Libraries Don’t Do It, Who Will?”

Granta: “La Mer.”

Harper’s Magazine: “Why I’m a Pacifist.”

Literaturen: “Sunday at the Dump” (in German translation).

Married Woman: “How I Met My Wife.”

McSweeney’s, “San Francisco Panorama” issue: “Papermakers.”

The New Yorker: “Coins,” “Truckin’ for the Future,” “Grab Me a Gondola,” “Kindle 2,” “Steve Jobs,” and “Painkiller Deathstreak.”

The New York Review of Books: “The Charms of Wikipedia.”

The New York Times: “The Times in 1951.”

The New York Times Book Review: “From A to Zyxt,” “Sex and the City (Circa 1840),” and “Google’s Earth.”

NYRblog: “We Don’t Know the Language We Don’t Know.”

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America: “Reading the Paper.”

Port: “David Remnick.”

The Washington Post Magazine: “One Summer.”

Books

“Inky Burden,” preface to A Book of Books, by Abelardo Morell.

“Take a Look at This Airship!” introduction to The World on Sunday, by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano.

“Thorin Son of Thráin,” in The Most Wonderful Books: Writers on Discovering the Pleasures of Reading, edited by Michael Dorris and Emilie Buchwald.

“What Happened on April 29, 1994,” in 240 Ecrivains Racontent une Journée du Monde: l’Album Anniversaire: 1964–1994, edited by Le Nouvel Observateur (in French translation).

“Why I Like the Telephone,” in Once upon a Telephone: An Illustrated Social History, by Ellen Stock Stern and Emily Gwathmey.

“Writing Wearing Earplugs,” in How I Write: The Secret Lives Of Authors, edited by Dan Crowe with Philip Oltermann.