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 [...]
Tag Archives: The Atlantic
“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 of [...]
“Why’s this so good?” No. 5: Raymond Chandler sticks it to Hollywood
July 27, 2011 – 11:08 am
We tend now to think of Hollywood’s hackneyed, would-be blockbusters as a new phenomenon, one borne of desperation, unprecedented cynicism and the rise of narrative television. But Raymond Chandler’s wonderful 1945 essay-screed “Writers in Hollywood” reminds us that the motion picture industry was, by and large, as uninspired and ridiculous 65 years ago as it is [...]
Old story, new media: David Dobbs brings family secrets to the Atavist
July 26, 2011 – 2:13 pm
We recently talked by Skype with David Dobbs about the mystery that began with his mother’s dying wish. Dobbs’ years of efforts to solve that mystery eventually became “My Mother’s Lover,” which was published last month byThe Atavist.
Dobbs has written at many lengths in several formats: He’s completed three books on science and environmental [...]
Slow violence and environmental storytelling
June 13, 2011 – 1:39 pm
How can environmental writers craft emotionally involving stories from disasters that are slow-moving and attritional, rather than explosive and spectacular? This is a particularly pressing question for our age, as the news cycle spins ever faster, as the media venerates spectacle, and as public policy is increasingly shaped around what are perceived as immediate needs.
Think of [...]
Eliza Griswold on religion, violence and reporting
May 3, 2011 – 8:50 am
We spoke last week with Eliza Griswold, winner of the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.” In addition to winning the Lukas Prize, which is co-administered by Columbia University and the Nieman Foundation, Griswold has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The [...]
The Union general, Malcolm X and the tides of history
April 15, 2011 – 12:29 pm
Our latest Notable Narratives are a pair of stories that focus on race in America. Both Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Legacy of Malcolm X” (from The Atlantic) and Adam Goodheart’s “How Slavery Really Ended” (from The New York Times Magazine) take a narrative approach to key events in African-American history, albeit from opposite ends of a [...]
What we’re watching: a town washed away, satellite images and covering conflict
March 14, 2011 – 1:53 pm
With Muammar Qaddafi’s efforts to suppress armed rebellion in Libya and the events unleashed by the massive earthquake in Japan on Friday, it’s a wonder that those of us not involved in the immediate coverage or relief can do anything but sit and watch these images in horror, hoping for the best possible outcomes in the face [...]
What we’re watching: picturing mercy, breaking down remixes, and garage fighting with keyboards (really)
February 28, 2011 – 4:11 pm
You bulked up your movie-watching to prepare for the Oscars, and now they’re over. What next? If you’re pining for some new things to see, we’ve got some options for you. And for better or worse, none of them involve Kirk Douglas.
“Afghanistan, February 2011,” assembled by Alan Taylor at The Atlantic (who previously founded The [...]
What we’re reading: novelists do nonfiction, a witness recants, and two friends jump into the Charles River
November 5, 2010 – 11:29 am
Today, we set aside election reporting (which we’ll return to soon) in order to gin up some reading for your Thursday anxieties: dubious conviction and cultural claustrophobia, not to mention suicide and delusion. But there are surprises – and hope – tucked in here: the rich life of the first child diagnosed with autism (now 77), the [...]
