“But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night.”

Why is it great? For the second week in a row, our One Great Sentence comes from a gifted journalist who has just left us. Last week, the writer was Jimmy Breslin, who died after a long and brilliant career; this week, it is Alex Tizon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning longform writer who died at 57, ending a standout career too soon. The sentence comes from this piece for The Atlantic last year about a terrible mix-up in the cases of two missing men in Alaska that left their parents in torment. (Read the Storyboard interview with Tizon about the article here.) In just 12 words, Tizon captures the agony of a father who can never be sure if his son is alive or dead. It is the created word "not-knowing" that haunts.