Articles

Habit That Could Have Killed

Kruse has a knack for infusing even his more newsy stories with a non-official, folksy voice. He often achieves a friendly yet authoritative tone.In this piece, his tone is a…

Burden of Innocence

Among the things that strike us in this story are the paradoxes Schultz skillfully points to: Racism helped send Green wrongfully to prison; in prison he transformed himself; out of…

Una Vida Mejor

Hull follows a group of Mexican women who journey north to la tortilla grande, as they call the U.S., and shuck blue crabs as "guest workers" on the North Carolina…

A Cold-Blooded Liar

Stuart Warner, an editor and writing coach at The Plain Dealer, wrote to us: "’Cold Blooded Liar’ is not a pure narrative. It was written by our investigative reporter and…

Suspicion in the Ranks

This investigative-narrative series follows the story of James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo who was charged with espionage.It’s a well-written and well-structured piece, an illuminating account with a clear…

Iraq Breaks From Past

We admired this piece in part for the way Fassihi’s use of the first person opened up her writing: She didn’t try to squeeze her insights within the more rigid…

An Otherwise Ordinary Day

Bock reconstructs the story of customs inspectors in Port Angeles, Wash., a small remote city on the Olympic Peninsula. The officials detained—then chased and caught—Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who’d tried…

Here: In Etna

This is a neat topic, conducive to good scene with its unusual site, strong characters and broad reason to care: the dying practice of setting up pins by hand. Batz…

The Umpire’s Sons

We must admit we approached this piece about a father and his ill sons with a bit of weariness: another story about suffering children, death, loss. The piece is wrenching.…

Death to Blasphemers

There are many things to admire in Bearak’s collection of pieces for which he won a 2002 Pulitzer. We’ll just point out, for this piece about pre-9/11 Pakistan, his tone:…