From "The Serious Superficiality of The Great Gatsby," by Joshua Rothman. From "Leaning In," by Mindy Kaling. Or to put it into an equation: Microphones + Crooning + Nazis + Radio + Bing Crosby + $50,000 = Silicon Valley. From "How Bing Crosby and the Nazis Helped to Create Silicon Valley," by Paul Ford. "In my twenties, I became guiltily conscious that my personal favorite literary protagonists (Italo Svevo's Zeno, Knut Hamsun's narrator in "Hunger," Halldór Laxness's Bjartur, Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas, Cervantes's Don Quixote) were all male, all written by males, and all pains in the ass." From Rivka Galchen's contribution to "Would You Want to be Friends with Humbert Humbert?: A Forum on "Likeability." " It's what society chooses not to punish that tells us most about the prevailing ethical standards of the time. From "The Real I.R.S. Scandal," by Jeffrey Toobin. Photograph by Metronome/Getty.