Worthy books are released almost every day. No doubt more than a few authors bemoaned the publication of their hard work this past year, when so much of the world’s attention was distracted by a lethal pandemic and lethal … Read more
I started with the notion of trying to wade through the weeds of this past year and list the things that kept me in astonishment as a reader, writer, editor and citizen. The list of excellent journalism was pages … Read more
Canadian freelancer Eva Holland didn’t just report her debut nonfiction book, “Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear.” She lived it. For the book, she plummets out of an airplane, stands … Read more
While there are no dearth of journalism textbooks on the market, many skim over well-trod territory rather than dive deep into a specialty field. And those that do take that deep dive — whether writing about how to interview … Read more
When I first discovered that Earl Shaffer — the first man acknowledged to have hiked the entire 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine — lived nearby, I went through his brother John Shaffer with an interview request. It … Read more
Why is it great? Nabokov is masterful here, not just stylistically but emotionally. He interrupts Humbert Humbert’s grotesque pursuit of Lolita by having him address the reader directly with an abject plea for understanding, a jarring moment that makes us … Read more
Marion Abrahams-Welsh grew up with four generations of her family on hilly Sheppard Street in the Cape Town neighborhood known as District Six. Fourteen of them shared a small home filled with love and possibility, even though they had little … Read more
Sometimes the idea for a book springs from what you don’t know. David Grann had never heard of the “Osage Murders” until a historian he was talking to mentioned the series of mysterious deaths among members of the wealthy Osage … Read more
As the 1960s came to an end, America was on the brink of a revolution, with the ascendant counterculture challenging nearly every aspect of American society at home while the Vietnam War continued to wage on abroad. Clara Bingham recounts … Read more
Dale Russakoff spent 28 years as a reporter for The Washington Post before writing her first book, “The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools?” Russakoff, who took a buyout in 2008, was near the end of a long recuperation … Read more