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
This week I left the snows of New England for a visit to my old stomping grounds in California. It was a bit head-spinning for a couple of reasons: When I left last year, California was in drought. Now it’s … 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
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
Chris Jones This story was published in May 2008, five years into Chris Jones’s career at Esquire. Jones was 35 at the time, and he says it was probably the best time to … Read more
