A library, of course, makes for a stubborn protagonist in a work of narrative journalism. “The reality is, it’s just different writing about something that has all of the complexity of bureaucracy. I don’t do a lot of stories where I have...
It’s the first day of summer and everyone’s scurrying to a thing they’re unsure of, eyes locked away from the guy who’s approaching the driver’s side window. Jack the five-year-old rides by on his orange bike with its propellers spinning a...
I found halcyon on a street in New York. Not graffiti, but part of the pavement: a mound of tarmac, in the middle of which was a steel plate where the word appeared. Shining in the light, it looked like frosting. Who put it there? Who...
A revolution is an opinion that has got its hands on some bayonets. So said Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew about such things. Fair enough: Throughout history, most revolutions have been brought about at the point of a spear or the end of a...
Ah, wilderness. The very word means“the place of wild animals.” It’s a place where, by definition, as my friend the grizzly bear expert Doug Peacock says, something in it can kill you and eat you. Absent that danger, it’s something other...
On April 21, 2016, David George Gordon spoke with Joshua Foer as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Gordon, who is a science writer, is also known as “The...
