Started in 1997, the Moth storytelling shows provide a stage where anyone can come up and tell a five-minute story. Famous people and not-famous people tell stories of heroism, pathos, joy and the quirks of everyday living. These stories are often mesmerizing, and this new book collects 50 of the best. It’s a fun, fascinating miss-mosh that I tried to read slowly because I didn’t want it to end. — Lisa Parrish
Rebecca Rosen, “Walt Whitman Is Great at Twitter,” for theatlantic.com
I’ve pimped @TweetsOfGrass here before, but check out this lovely take on Twitter’s favorite Whitman account, which includes comments from the feed’s mysterious editor/curator and comments from MIT’s Noel Jackson. Rosen gets it just right. The lines she gathers at the end — which anticipate a key moment in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” — suggest Whitman would have been pretty damn good at tweeting indeed. Was there any doubt? — BW