The Federal Bureau of Investigation files on James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, and Susan Sontag, and a dozen famous writers have a lot of stories to tell, and over the past eight years the MuckRock team has been digging through them.

Today, we’re excited to tell those stories in a new format: a 400-page volume that brings the most funny, frightening, poignant, and provocative tales about the intersection of surveillance and freedom to life, as told through those primary source documents.

Explore history in a brand new way. Each author’s file includes brand new introductory material, and we’ve selected the documents that we feel provide the most interesting view into that person’s life, their relationship with the law, or a certain cultural moment in American history.

The book is now available in MuckRock’s online store, as well as Amazon, through IndieBound, Indigo, Powell’s, and Waterstones, in addition to bookstores around the country. If you buy through the MuckRock store, you’ll get an exclusive free gift with purchase, including FOIA coasters, redacted magnetic poetry, and stickers.

Join us to celebrate!

We’ll be having a series of events for the upcoming book, the first of which is this Wednesday in Cambridge, where we’re having a free book launch party at The Field in Central Square. On October 29th, we’ll be at Harvard Book Store. We hope you can join us at these or a future event!