Why’s This So Good?

Peter Stark and “As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow – First – Chill – Then Stupor – Then the Letting Go –”

Peter Stark and “As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow – First – Chill – Then Stupor – Then the Letting Go –”

Peter Stark’s second-person rendering of a hypothermic near-death experience took its 1997 print headline from the closing quatrain of an Emily Dickinson poem that, depending who you ask, is either…
February 22, 2018
Brian Kevin
William Langewiesche and "Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight"

William Langewiesche and “Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight”

William Langewiesche is known to readers of The Atlantic and Vanity Fair‎ as a kind of Jack London figure, a writer of sturdy, authoritative tales of modern life at the…
February 13, 2018
Jonathan Clarke
Francisco Cantú and "The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border"

Francisco Cantú and “The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches From the Border”

I remember first hearing Francisco Cantú’s story sometime last year, spooling out from my car speakers as I wound through mountain curves many hundreds of miles from the border he…
February 1, 2018
Olga Kreimer
Why's This So Good? (The wonderful) Dan Barry and "The Lost Children of Tuam"

Why’s This So Good? (The wonderful) Dan Barry and “The Lost Children of Tuam”

If Dan Barry has a beat, it is humanity — humanity as it reckons with its triumphs and travesties, and, sometimes, its profound secrets.[pq]Why does Barry begin a story about…
January 15, 2018
Julia Shipley
"The Uncounted": combining the power of narrative with an 18-month investigation

“The Uncounted”: combining the power of narrative with an 18-month investigation

“The Uncounted,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal’s exhaustively reported investigation into the scale of civilian casualties in the U.S.-led coalition’s fight against ISIS, begins, like many disaster narratives, with a…
January 11, 2018
Abby Sewell
"Draft No. 4": the legendary John McPhee's "master class in the writer's craft"

“Draft No. 4”: the legendary John McPhee’s “master class in the writer’s craft”

John McPhee’s great subject has always been work. From his first book, “A Sense of Where You Are,” which came out in 1965 and portrays basketball star and Rhodes Scholar…
December 21, 2017
David L. Ulin
Why's This So Good? David Foster Wallace and the brilliant "Consider the Lobster"

Why’s This So Good? David Foster Wallace and the brilliant “Consider the Lobster”

Take a moment to bask in the splendor of the piece that maddened many Gourmet readers in 2004
August 1, 2017
Ryan Marnane
Sarah Lyall and (the hilarious) "Paying a Price for 8 Days of Flying in America"

Sarah Lyall and (the hilarious) “Paying a Price for 8 Days of Flying in America”

Whoever said “It is better to travel than to arrive” wasn’t sitting next to Sarah Lyall aboard American Airlines Flight 1886 en route from Iowa to Arizona at the moment…
July 27, 2017
Julia Shipley
How Michelle Garcia told the story of Juárez, a city lost to violence, through its dogs

How Michelle Garcia told the story of Juárez, a city lost to violence, through its dogs

The Al Jazeera America piece, reported with Mexican reporter Ignacio Alvarado Alvarez, haunts with its indelible portrait of pets paying the price when a terrorized place goes feral
May 2, 2017
Carolina A. Miranda
Why's This So Good? Hunter S. Thompson and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

Why’s This So Good? Hunter S. Thompson and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”

It’s hard, I know, to make a case for gonzo journalism in an age when reality is beset by exaggeration, even lies. And yet I’ve found myself drawn back to…
April 13, 2017
David L. Ulin