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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 […]
September 13, 2011
In 1994 I published an article in the New York Times Magazine called “The Hand-Off.” It was about the search of a young mother with AIDS, Evelyn Mirach, for someone […]
August 7, 2011
Last Sunday was my friend Rick’s birthday. But two weeks earlier, his car’s odometer reached 200,000. Which matters more? I know about the miles because he took a picture of […]
June 20, 2011
Sometimes when I’m writing I get behind on my movie viewing, and so it was only recently that I got to watch “How to Train Your Dragon,” a movie recommended […]
April 29, 2011
As literature struggles to retain its place of importance in our cultural life, it’s thrilling to see the birth of a new and serious magazine. The first issue of The […]
April 26, 2011
Last week Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya. Hetherington was a British photographer who lived in New York. With Sebastian Junger, he made “Restrepo,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about American soldiers […]
March 1, 2011
My latest book, The Routes of Man, is now out in paperback, sporting a beautiful new cover and an improved subtitle: Travels in the Paved World. It is available at […]
December 15, 2010
Recently the wife and I went to see “127 Hours,” Danny Boyle’s film about the real-life misadventure of mountaineer Aron Ralston. Ralston, as moviegoers know, was solo hiking in a […]
December 6, 2010
Historic roads: going but not gone
For weeks (okay, months) I’ve been meaning to link to this thought-provoking post at BLDGBLOG, written by Geoff Manaugh. It’s about ancient routes all around us — at Monticello and […]
June 29, 2010
Though I’m always after my wife for saving too much stuff, in fact I have the same problem. One thing that’s been particularly hard for me to get rid of […]