Heart of the City

Perfect reading in your Valentine's Day afterglow: in this nonfiction study of nine urban romances, Ariel Sabar illustrates that it's not always biology that dictates love's destiny—sometimes it's location, location, location. He winningly depicts New York City as a gigantic Rube Goldberg device for tossing people together and inspiring unexpected intimacy.

May 22: The video game Pac-Man, featuring "the most iconic character from the golden age of arcade video games," was released on this day in 1980. Over the next decade, gamers spent over $2.5 billion in quarters…

Ethan Rutherford and Matt Burgess (Dogfight: A Love Story) on the writing of Rutherford's surreal and fiercely funny story collection The Peripatetic Coffin

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