It’s been 16 years since I first read Darcy Frey’s piece about the overwhelming, stressful job of being an air traffic controller – 16 years since I first swore never to fly into Newark. Frey’s powerful narrative scarred me for life. “Something’s Got To Give” ran in The New York Times Magazine in 1996, 15 years [...]
Category Archives: why’s this so good?
“Why’s this so good?” No. 31: Susan Orlean maps obsession
by Andrea Pitzer |
February 17, 2012
Susan Orlean’s “Orchid Fever” first ran in The New Yorker on January 23, 1995. It had a second life as a book, and a third as a movie, in which adapting the latter from the former drives a screenwriter to madness, ruin and redemption. And no wonder: Orlean’s most famous article is, in fact, not [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 30: Sally Jenkins picks Kwame Brown
by Megan Greenwell |
January 31, 2012
The thing about being the first pick in the NBA draft – especially if you’re 19-year-old Kwame Brown, the youngest No. 1 pick ever – is that you become the subject of a lot of newspaper stories. By April 2002, the end of Brown’s rookie season with the Washington Wizards, dozens of reporters had dutifully written profiles [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 29: Andrea Curtis and the rhythm of mercy
by Bruce Gillespie |
January 24, 2012
As a rule, I’m not one of those readers who flips ahead to the last few pages of an article or book before committing myself to reading it. I like a little mystery in my life. But that’s exactly what I found myself doing when I started to read Andrea Curtis’ “Small Mercies” after it [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 28: Vanessa Grigoriadis on Britney Spears
by Jenna Wortham |
January 17, 2012
There’s a video of Britney Spears shot in 2007, not long after Valentine’s Day. She’s pacing around a tattoo parlor, where she’s just gotten a pair of bright red lips inked on her wrist and a cross etched onto her hip. She’s bookended by men so large their silhouettes rival refrigerators, but enough of her [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 27: Christopher Goffard tracks love in flight
by Mark Johnson |
January 10, 2012
One drawer of my desk – the largest – contains a mound of stories, the best I’ve found in newspapers and magazines over the last 20 years. In addition, three or four “great writing” folders float around the top of my work space; faux-wood fragments of the desktop are seldom visible. Then there are a handful of individual [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 26: Moehringer KO’s a mystery
by Tommy Tomlinson |
January 3, 2012
The hell with my lede. Let’s start with his: I’m sitting in a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio, waiting for a call from a man who doesn’t trust me, hoping he’ll have answers about a man I don’t trust, which may clear the name of a man no one gives a damn about. That’s how [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 25: Nick Paumgarten’s tower of terror
by Michelle Legro |
December 20, 2011
A few days ago I stepped onto an elevator, heading out for an afternoon coffee. The repairman was there, his tools spread out on the floor. Come on in, he said, pressing the “door close” button and whistling a short tweet. Somewhere above us, a whistle back, and we started to move. Hey-yo! Someone shouted. [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 24: Gay Talese on Joe DiMaggio
by Jonathan Seitz |
December 13, 2011
“Do you know how George Washington died?” my girlfriend asked one evening last week. I was busy working on this piece, and in truth, I had no idea. Because after he kicked out the British, helped establish modern democracy, and became the first American Hero – never mind the first president – Washington left the realm of [...]
