The New Yorker Festival is coming up! It's Lollapalooza for the urban intelligentsia. Tickets go on sale today at noon, and if you don't buy them immediately then forget seeing the good stuff. A guide to the good stuff, below.

How many fortunate coincidences can one family have? First, three successive generations of Sulzbergers become publishers of the New York Times. Then young A.G. Sulzberger lands a reporting gig there. Now another Sulzberger relatives's joining the paper! Total insanity.

Alain de Botton is a respected European writer who was ready to bite the arms off anyone standing in the way of his contract to spend a week sitting in an airport, writing a boring airport book. Writing careers suck.