Mary Roach’s voice is so distinctive you could take her byline off her stories and her NYT best-selling books and still know who wrote them. Roach immerses herself in worlds that other journalists might rather avoid – human dissection labs and funeral homes for Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, for instance, and “haunted” spaces [...]
Tag Archives: National Geographic
“Why’s this so good?” No. 15: Michael Lewis’ Greek odyssey
October 11, 2011 – 10:00 am
Last October, with the Greek bond crisis emerging as a danger to the European economy, Michael Lewis wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about an order of monks accused of manipulating the crisis to bilk the Greek government out of billions of dollars. It’s 12,000 words about bonds, corruption, politics and markets, yet it moves [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 12: Ian Frazier digs into piggery
September 20, 2011 – 4:07 pm
Environmental journalists often feel married to the tragic narrative. Pollution, extinction, invasion: The stories are endless, and endlessly the same. Our editors see the pattern and bury us in the back pages; our readers see it and abandon us on the subway or in the dentist’s office. Sometimes we’re no fun. But assuming the value [...]
Cynthia Gorney on embracing complexity “while maintaining a sense of justified outrage”
August 19, 2011 – 10:31 am
Our latest Editors’ Roundtable looks at Cynthia Gorney’s story “Too Young To Wed,” from the June issue of National Geographic. In addition to her work for National Geographic, Gorney is a professor at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, she worked [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 2: McPhee takes on the Mississippi
July 7, 2011 – 2:11 pm
When the Mississippi River recently surged down through the middle of the country, a lot of people I follow on Twitter took the opportunity to point to John McPhee’s marvelous 1987 article “Atchafalaya.”I took their advice and revisited the piece. After 24 years, the story is still valuable simply as a guide to the risks faced [...]
Paul Nicklen goes to extremes with Polar Obsession
March 17, 2010 – 12:13 pm
Just a few minutes talking with Paul Nicklen reveals his compulsion to educate the world. Ask a question about his polar adventures, and he segues quickly into arthropods, krill and dangerous drops in the levels of polar sea ice. He carries within him the ghost of the marine biologist he nearly became. Luckily, he found [...]
Paul Nicklen’s Polar Obsession: “I had finally found a way to really connect with readers”
March 17, 2010 – 12:11 pm
Paul Nicklen, a photographer with National Geographic, was going to call his latest collection of images Bipolar Obsession on a lark, to reflect his trips to both poles. He settled instead on Polar Obsession and freely admits that he is, in fact, obsessed—not just with the animals and his pictures of them, but with getting [...]
Walk on the wild side: animal stories that don’t stand up
March 8, 2010 – 3:51 pm
When it comes to wildlife narratives, writer Bryan Christy wants more accountability from reporters. Christy wrote us in response to our Friday issue of the Narrative Digest, which featured coverage of a zoo, a history of animal experimentation, and an essay on a vet in Sierra Leone, among other articles. He added another a item to the list of issues raised [...]
