Contingency speech written for Richard Nixon in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon during their historic moon landing.
Letter from the widow of Aldous Huxley to his brother describing in detail his recent death.
Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to a school board humanely and vulnerably opposing the banning of his books.
Letter from Gene Wilder to the director of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with remarkably thoughtful feedback on costume sketches.
Draft letter from Galileo describing the usefulness of his telescope and his recent discovery of four curious “stars” seen to be circling Jupiter.
News group posting from Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 announcing to an online community the first version of a new piece of software he’s working on tentatively called WorldWideWeb.
Exchange of letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor during the finishing of The Great Gatsby.
Letter from J. R. R. Tolkien to his German publisher undressing them for inquiring about his “Arian” ancestry.
Letter from then-Associate Director of Science at NASA to a concerned humanitarian about the cost and benefit of manned space flight.
Letter from Tom Waits to the magazine The Nation on the “virus” of commercialization of art.
Letter from the inventor of the Kalashnikov rifle to a religious leader seeking absolution for his contribution to suffering.
Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his family as a prisoner of war in Dresden, the experience that would form the foundation of his classic novel Slaughterhouse Five.
Archived Post
This post is archived from my account on li.st, a social media app that shut down in 2017. Some posts have been edited slightly to fix typographical errors and correctly represent the gender of some individuals. You can view the full archive here.