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 moral, technological and geographic margins. Among his subjects have been … Read more
This week we spotlighted the storytelling of the Middle East on Storyboard. Too often the coverage is of the bird’s-eye-view variety, either because of dangerous conditions or cultural differences. But these posts highlight the humanity that kind of reporting misses: … Read more
Why is it great? This story was part of the late writer’s Iraq coverage that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. It captures Iraqis’ sense of loss in the war, and the loss that had seeped … Read more
“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 banal domestic scene. But in this case, the humdrum … Read more
Many journalists covered the battle for Mosul, the capital of the self-styled Caliphate of the Islamic extremist group ISIS. American author Luke Mogelson, on assignment for The New Yorker, viewed it from a unique angle: He embedded for two … Read more
The first line of Rania Abouzeid’s story “The Jihad Next Door” could be the opener of a literary spy novel. “The eight men, beards trimmed, explosive belts fastened, pistols and grenades concealed in their clothing, waited until nightfall before … Read more
A spring blizzard this week left me without power for 16 hours, and at first I felt unmoored because there was no heat, no light — and no Internet connection. It revealed how plugged in my life is. But can … Read more