Why’s This So Good?

A few days ago I stepped onto an elevator, heading out for an afternoon coffee. The repairman was there, his tools spread out on the floor. Come on in, he…

“Do you know how George Washington died?” my girlfriend asked one evening last week. I was busy working on this piece, and in truth, I had no idea. Because after he…

I’ve never met William Langewiesche, and I don’t know many of his secrets, but I know he and I have at least one thing in common: We’re guided by the…

There are two stories from the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, that to me remain better than all the others. R.W. Apple wrote a news analysis that ran on…

For one thing, it’s 42,535 words long. This lets you know that you’re into Serious Business right there, before you even get started. Then comes the opening, torn straight from…

Magic and writing tricks differ in at least one happy way: A writing trick’s delights only increase once you see through the sleight of hand.In “Inhaling the Spore,” writing about a…

It’s hard to think of a single magazine piece that exerts as world-historical an influence upon its genre as Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” the 1966 Esquire profile…

A few years ago, a bunch of us were sitting around the front porch of this crumpled old resort in the Catskills, knocking back drinks and talking shop. I can’t…

The Pulitzer Prize for breaking news tends to go to a massive team effort, often one in which a dozen or more reporters feed material to one, two or even…

For seven days and seven nights in mid-March of 1995, David Foster Wallace took a cruise. He did not have a very good time. The results of the voyage are…