The Fierce Intimacy of Tennis Rivalries

It was a year earlier, indoors in New Orleans, in only their third match against each other as pros (Borg was 22; McEnroe 20), when their relationship as opponents coalesced. They were in the third and deciding set (which McEnroe would eventually win), and it was close. As McEnroe has recounted, “I was getting all worked up and nutty.” At 5-5, Borg had had enough of McEnroe’s antics and motioned him to the net. McEnroe thought Borg was going to berate him. Instead, Borg put his arm around him and said: “It’s O.K. Just relax. It’s O.K. It’s a great match.” It was Johnny Mac’s satori. From then on it was different with Borg. As McEnroe once told an interviewer, “If we could keep lifting our games, I didn’t have to worry about the crowd or the linesmen or anything.”

Published: Aug 23, 2011
Length: 22 minutes (5,717 words)

Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace

I suppose it made sense, when blogging was new, that there was some confusion about voice. Was a blog more like writing or more like speech? Soon it became a contrived and shambling hybrid of the two. The “sort ofs” and “reallys” and “ums” and “you knows” that we use in conversation were codified as the central connectors in the blogger lexicon. We weren’t just mad, we were sort of enraged; no one was merely confused, but kind of totally mystified. That music blog we liked was really pretty much the only one that, um, you know, got it. Never before had “folks” been used so relentlessly and enthusiastically as a term of general address outside church suppers, chain restaurants and family reunions. It’s fascinating and dreadful in hindsight to realize how quickly these conventions took hold and how widely they spread. And! They have sort of mutated since to liberal and often sarcastic use of question marks? And exclamation points!

Published: Aug 19, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,770 words)

The Elusive Big Idea

It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed. Of course, one could argue that these sites are no different than conversation was for previous generations, and that conversation seldom generated big ideas either, and one would be right.

Published: Aug 14, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,884 words)

Portraits Redrawn: For 9/11 Families, Healing Comes With New Starts and Tributes Paid

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, reporters at The New York Times began interviewing friends and relatives of the people whose lives had so suddenly been ended. The result was “Portraits of Grief,” a collection of brief sketches of the victims. These fresh visits with some of the families were written by Glenn Collins, Anthony DePalma, Robin Finn, Jan Hoffman, N. R. Kleinfield, Maria Newman and Janny Scott, all contributors to the original “Portraits of Grief” project in 2001. #Sept11

Author: Staff
Published: Aug 10, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,879 words)

The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician’s examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen. She didn’t want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment — and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny’s abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt.

Published: Aug 10, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,153 words)

What Happened to Obama?

It was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.

Published: Aug 6, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,306 words)

A Movable Feast: Danny Meyer on a Roll

It has taken Meyer 26 years to go from the owner-manager of a single place to C.E.O. of a company — Union Square Hospitality Group — that employs 2,200 people and oversees the operations of all his restaurants. His mother calls the company “his business family.” Its core is a tight-knit group of five general partners whom Meyer has known for an aggregate of 102 years. Together they oversee three places that are in the Zagat Guide’s Top 5 (Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Union Square Cafe), plus the Modern, Maialino, Blue Smoke, the two cafes at the Museum of Modern Art, the newly opened restaurant at the Whitney, a jazz club, a handful of seasonal stands including one at Citi Field and a catering and events company.

Published: Aug 4, 2011
Length: 22 minutes (5,531 words)

A Drug for Down Syndrome

Early in the evening of June 25, 1995, hours after the birth of his first and only child, the course of Dr. Alberto Costa’s life and work took an abrupt turn. Still recovering from a traumatic delivery that required an emergency Caesarean section, Costa’s wife, Daisy, lay in bed, groggy from sedation. Into their dimly lighted room at Methodist Hospital in Houston walked the clinical geneticist. He took Costa aside to deliver some unfortunate news. The baby girl, he said, appeared to have Down syndrome, the most common genetic cause of cognitive disabilities, or what used to be called “mental retardation.”

Author: Dan Hurley
Published: Jul 29, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,004 words)

Life on the Line Between El Paso and Juárez

El Paso and Ciudad Juárez lie together uncomfortably like an estranged couple, surrounded on all sides by mountains and desert. The cities are separated by the thin trickle of the Rio Grande, which flows through concrete channels, built to put an end to the river’s natural habit of changing course and muddying boundaries. One side is Texas; the other, Mexico. The border’s way of life — its business, legitimate and otherwise — has always relied upon the circumvention of this dividing line.

Published: Jul 28, 2011
Length: 26 minutes (6,727 words)

A Revenge Plot So Intricate, the Prosecutors Were Pawns

In her first extensive interview about her ordeal, she recalled sitting in jail, consumed by one thought: “Jerry is behind this.” But when she insisted to the authorities that he had set her up, they belittled her claims. Now, though, they concede that Ms. Sumasar was right — an astonishing turn of events that has transformed her case into one of the most bizarre in the city’s recent history.

Published: Jul 25, 2011
Length: 6 minutes (1,535 words)