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FROM THE BLOG
Featured From The Blog
February 12, 2023
The land I write about (and now own a piece of) was sold in the 1970s by mail. It was so cheap that people usually bought it sight unseen, from newspaper ads: $30 down and $30 a month for 12 years was a common deal. The federal government said it was a fraud, and this TV investigation from the time seems to agree. (Click READ MORE to go to YouTube.)
Appearances
February 13, 2016
“Ted has a way of talking about big topics such as prisons, immigration, and infrastructure with engaging stories that captivate everyone in the room.”— James Walsh, student, Boston College […]
September 16, 2015
When I became a USDA meat inspector, I was puzzled that my supervisors were veterinarians. People didn’t head to vet school to oversee slaughter, did they? I started talking to […]
January 17, 2015
Last January, at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, the admiral in charge tapped his chair and told me that “Twelve years ago, none of us thought that anybody would […]
November 21, 2014
Amazing Guy, Gone But Remembered
Matthew Power was a wonderful writer and a friend of mine. A Vermonter who graduated from Middlebury College, he got assigned to my nonfiction writing workshop at the Bread Loaf […]
June 18, 2014
Before I had kids, I used to wonder what would happen when they read my books. What kind of example was I setting with some of the chances I was […]
March 28, 2014
Some years ago, when I was living in Denver, I was invited to take part in a summer writers’ conference in Aspen, Colorado. It sounded like fun and indeed it […]
June 4, 2013
There’s a fair amount of fine art around meat and slaughter. Most famous might be the paintings of Francis Bacon – several friends guessed that the image Harper’s magazine used […]
April 13, 2013
A couple of years ago, I applied for a job as a USDA meat inspector. Most inspectors work inside slaughterhouses; I thought it would be a good way to take […]
March 19, 2013
I was skiing at Winter Park, Colorado, yesterday—a place I have skied for more than 40 years without seeing a moose—when I saw a moose. It was in the middle […]
January 21, 2013
This month my books Coyotes and Whiteout came out in eBook editions, which means that now all of my books are available in digital editions. With snazzy new cover designs. […]
January 1, 2013
For the New Year, my wife gave me a new daypack. It was time. The old one, by North Face, served me during the research for The Routes of Man […]
November 10, 2012
Rolling Nowhere, my account of riding the rails as a young man, was recently released as an ebook. It’s pretty cheap to download it to your screen-thingy from the Kindle […]
June 29, 2012
This weekend the New York Times Magazine publishes my story about Alex White, a police informant in Atlanta who helped bring his handlers to justice after they tried to use […]
April 16, 2012
I take sugar in my coffee, and make daily use of the diner-style dispenser in our kitchen. I like how the sugar comes out of there in a hurry. Apparently […]
January 28, 2012
I was lucky, when I entered corrections some years ago, that my training instructor was Vinny Nigro. He was a man of exacting standards who had a great sense of […]
November 21, 2011
On Thanksgiving, I will be among the millions of Americans who have the somewhat unpleasant experience of handling a raw turkey, recently out of the refrigerator, relieved of its plastic […]
September 27, 2011
Some of my subjects, I admit, are a bit dark. But this one is the opposite. I first came upon Ophelia Dahl in Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest […]