Lizzie Presser was looking for the intersection of two wide-ranging and little-known facets of American life: the broad power of contempt laws, and the criminalization of medical debt. The ProPublica reporter found it in Coffeyville, Kansas, and came back … Read more
Lizzy Goodman’s “Meet Me in the Bathroom” is such a raucous oral history of New York’s indie rock scene that readers’ ears are in danger of ringing while reading. It’s vivid and grimy enough to make you feel … Read more
You can almost smell the cedar-hewn totem poles and see them rise from the soil, so evocative is “We Didn’t Stand A Chance,” Joshua Hunt’s personal essay about opioid abuse among Native Alaskans. Opioid abuse … Read more
It was an intriguing bit of crowd-sourcing: Police in Portland, Oregon, said they had “exhausted all resources” in attempts to find relatives or friends of a dead WWII veteran, and was asking the public for help. In response, an … Read more
When it came time to write about the 50th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon, Charles P. Pierce jettisoned sentimentality like a booster rocket. The opening of Pierce’s July 20 Esquire column touches … Read more