EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of two posts analyzing the stand-out profile of tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova by Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins. You can also read our Q&A with … Read more
Shootings are so common in the U.S. that victims are often reduced to 10-point type in news stories: A name and age, maybe alongside a loved ones’ baleful quote set snug against a margin. Peter Sagal made sure … Read more
“Our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written. Black Americans fought to make them true. Without this struggle, America would have no democracy at all.” So begins Nikole Hannah-Jones’s stunning and provocative essay that … Read more
A sentence that grabs you by the heart and hooks you into the narrative is one of the most powerful ways to become one with the pages. It also keeps the reader thinking days later, kind of like a … Read more
In her memoir about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion writes about the night she lost the man who can only be described as her other half. She recalls how a social worker described her to … Read more
A decade or so ago, shortly after I became book editor of the Los Angeles Times, I wrote a piece defending the liberties of memoirists. This was in the wake of the scandal over James Frey and his memoir “A … Read more
Why is it great? This essay has a more famous line, which is being quoted a lot these days: “Then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in … Read more
The best print narratives often take the form of either movie or metaphor. The first approach hinges on complete scenes, allowing a story to unfold as it would in film, through a discrete series of moments or events. This style … Read more