Some years ago, I spent three weeks at a mountain-climbing base camp in the interior of Antarctica. The reporting trip was supposed to be a two-day in-and-out, but a dispute over airplane fuel kept a motley crew of us … Read more
If you’re not a fan of “A River Runs Through It,” it can only be because you haven’t read it yet. Norman Maclean’s 1976 novella of family dynamics plays out on Montana’s Blackfoot River and is an enduring … Read more
If you have read the novels of Dennis Lehane (among them “Gone, Baby, Gone,” “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island,” all made into movies), you know that place is a powerful character, even a protagonist, in his … Read more
Consider the curse of curse words. Some publications steer clear of them altogether. Some embrace them in whole, in part, or in different forms and different fonts. Some have found stances shifting in a world where … Read more
I‘m not sure why a New Yorker story from November 2017 showed up in my social media feed in recent days, but I’m glad it did. I’m from the generation that was raised on the romance and courage of … Read more
I love that feeling when a passage promises you that a story is worth sticking with. I had this experience recently when reading Wesley Morris’ profile of the late Cicely Tyson, who died last month at … Read more
Clichés are a bane of original writing. Unless you turn a worn and tired cliché on its ear (I sure hope you notice what I did just there) and make it new. Then all the meaning people attach to … Read more
The retirement of newspaper editors is usually the stuff of insider industry news. Occasionally one breaks through to merit attention far more broadly. Martin Baron is one of those. The announcement of his retirement, effective Feb. 28, 2021, as … Read more
Cal Hooper is a Chicago cop who was ditched by his wife, estranged from his daughter, haunted by past cases and addicted to the action. Somewhere along the way, the guiding line between right and wrong became fuzzy. Fed … Read more
A line from a 1993 story about gun violence in America has stayed with me all these years. It was by DeNeen Brown of The Washington Post, called “Getting Ready to Die Young,” and featured … Read more
