Unspoken Truths

Until cancer attacked his vocal cords, the author didn’t fully appreciate what was meant by “a writer’s voice,” or the essential link between speech and prose. As a man who loved to talk, he turns to the masters of such conversation, both in history and in his own circle.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,979 words)

Church Burners

It was one of the most perplexing crimes anyone could recall—ten churches in East Texas torched in six weeks. But even more mysterious was the fact that the arsonists were two local boys, raised as Baptists, who had met in Sunday school.

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: May 11, 2011
Length: 30 minutes (7,554 words)

Deadly Games

A white cross rising above the Macacos slum marks the spot where people are burned alive. A starving horse, his ribs poking out, is hitched close by with a thin rope. A nearby soccer field is dotted with pieces of melted rubber. No games are played here. The Amigos dos Amigos gang that runs this favela has a ritual: Members stack tires around their enemies, pour in gasoline and light the tires on fire. This is called microwaving. Black smoke rises into the air. At a school down the hill, near the famous soccer stadium where the 2016 Olympic opening ceremonies will be held, the students hear the screams and cover their ears. This is Rio in real life.

Source: ESPN
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,001 words)

Of Murder and Moving On

More than three decades ago, these murders shook Wyoming’s blue skies and open spirit. He admitted to committing them, testified against a man later given a death sentence and — poof — vanished into prison under an alias. Now, people were saying he had come home. Hard, unanswered questions circled the rumor. So not long after spring broke this year, a knock on his door. No response.

Published: May 1, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,061 words)

Home in Capital Letters

The first day I ever spent in Kansas City was the day I interviewed for the job as sports columnist at the musically named Kansas City Star. The paper’s sports editor at the time, a dreamer named Dinn Mann — the grandson of the famed Judge Roy Hofheinz, who built the Astrodome — picked me up at the airport and began to drive us toward downtown.

Source: Joe Blogs
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,711 words)

Hillary Clinton: Chinese System Is Doomed, Leaders on a ‘Fool’s Errand’

In an exclusive interview, the secretary of state says Beijing’s human rights record is “deplorable” and it is “trying to stop history” by opposing the advance of democracy. “It was during this part of the conversation, when the subject of China, and its frightened reaction to the Arab Spring, came up, that she took an almost-Reaganesque turn, calling into question not just Beijing’s dismal human rights record, but the future of the Chinese regime itself.”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 10, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,857 words)

Taco Bell and the Golden Age of Drive-Thru

It’s as if the great advances of human civilization, in everything from animal husbandry to mathematics to architecture to manufacturing to information technology, have all crescendoed with the Crunchwrap Supreme, delivered via the pick-up window.

Source: Businessweek
Published: May 9, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,403 words)

The End.

So here you are, dead and alone. Chances are you didn’t want this, but your wishes were ignored. Whatever happens to the part of you that you recognize as somehow quintessentially you (call it soul, self, spirit, spark), the other part isn’t finished yet—the fleshly part, the limbs and guts that ached and pleased you in so many ways, the meaty bits that you vainly or grudgingly dragged around for all those years. That piece is still of interest to the bureaucrats. It is still a potential source of profit. In your absence its journey is just beginning. (National Magazine Award winner 2011)

Published: May 9, 2011
Length: 30 minutes (7,665 words)

The Double Game

India has become the state that we tried to create in Pakistan. It is a rising economic star, militarily powerful and democratic, and it shares American interests. Pakistan, however, is one of the most anti-American countries in the world, and a covert sponsor of terrorism. Politically and economically, it verges on being a failed state. And, despite Pakistani avowals to the contrary, America’s worst enemy, Osama bin Laden, had been hiding there for years—in strikingly comfortable circumstances—before U.S. commandos finally tracked him down and killed him, on May 2nd.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 9, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,160 words)

Asian Like Me

Millions of Americans must feel estranged from their own faces. But every self-estranged individual is estranged in his own way. I, for instance, am the child of Korean immigrants, but I do not speak my parents’ native tongue. I have never called my elders by the proper honorific, “big brother” or “big sister.” I have never dated a Korean woman. I don’t have a Korean friend. Though I am an immigrant, I have never wanted to strive like one.

Published: May 9, 2011
Length: 36 minutes (9,044 words)