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 find a quieter but no less devastating picture of … Read more
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 like fiction, Mark Seal tells the story of … Read more
At a time of intense racial tensions in the United States – tensions that visited my own college campus last year – I ran across a story that stopped me in my tracks. In “This Is What They … Read more
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 of Existence. The endless updating and reworking over the years … Read more
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 serialized, reported memoir about life as the gay grandson of … Read more
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 assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that … Read more
“Elroy lives here. Tiny, half-blind, mentally retarded, 39-year-old Elroy. To find him, go past the counselor flirting on the phone.” If you had been in the Georgetown University cafeteria back in 1999, you might have seen me with my … Read more
Imagine, if you will, an investigative series in a metropolitan tabloid daily newspaper about renegade narcotics cops and a lying informant, a series that opens with a headline like this: Celebrating 100 Years of Excellence in Journalism and the Arts … Read more
It’s June 2003, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has just been overthrown. “Everybody likes us,” Spec. Stephen Harris, a 20-year-old from Lafayette, Louisiana, tells a Washington Post correspondent while on patrol in Baghdad. Don’t worry, he says, this is a … Read more
In 1986, Patrick McSorley was a 12-year-old-boy living in a Boston housing project. His dad had just committed suicide, and his mom was schizophrenic. One day, a Catholic priest named John Geoghan showed up at Patrick’s home and offered to … Read more
