Why’s This So Good?

“In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.”— “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen, 1975.There’s trouble in the heartland these days over promises broken…

You know when you absentmindedly click on a product and an ad for the thing seems to stalk you online for the rest of your life? (I once thought the…

I was almost afraid to read “My President Was Black.” Ta-Nehisi Coates is such a tour de force, I was afraid that his words would wipe away my thoughts, his insights obliterate…

We’re drowning in imagery these days: photos on the pages of newspapers and magazines, on televisions, smart phones, iPads and laptops; full-wrap ads on buses, trains and towering buildings; even…

We’ve become too familiar, sadly, with the narrative of destructive PTSD as troops return from Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the hands of Los Angeles Times writer Thomas Curwen, we…

Clark Rockefeller doesn’t exist. The pressed Lacoste shirts and fancy shoes might be his, but the name, the title and everything else are fake.In a Vanity Fair piece that reads…

Tomorrow’s journalists exploring the masters of today Jacqui Banaszynski is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who now is an endowed Knight Chair  professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Last semester,…

Anyone who’s worked in the obituary or foreign news section of a news outlet has a story or two to tell about the Fidel Castro obituary, otherwise known as Bane…

I follow the journalist Randy Potts on social media, so I had known for weeks that he was planning to launch “The Bible Went Down With The Birdie Jean,” a…

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest…