Lawrence Weschler was for over twenty years (1981-2002) a staff writer at The New Yorker. He recently graduated to director emeritus of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he was director from 2001-2013. His books of political reportage, in addition to that book on torture, include The Passion of Poland (1984) andCalamities of Exile (1998).  More culturally focused books, in addition to the books on Irwin and the MJT, include Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1995); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006); True to Life (on David Hockney, 2008); and Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative (2011). Once, happening upon a Portuguese edition of Weschler’s 1990 book on torture in during a photo opportunity in a Rio shopping mall, Chilean General Augusto Pinochet flipped through its pages for a few moments, whereupon he pronounced, “Lies, all lies.  The author is a liar and a hypocrite.”