A century-defining album’s improbable genesis.
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Posted inEditor's Pick
Jerry Tarkanian and Walter Byers: Adversaries Who Left Mark on N.C.A.A.
In the New York Times, Joe Nocera looks back at the battle between college basketball coaching great Jerry Tarkanian and former NCAA executive director Walter Byers, who both died in 2015.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Icy Elegance of Arthur Ashe … And the Passion of Muhammad Ali
The sportsmen’s lives read as a conversation on what it means to be American.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Two Enemies Shaped the Future of College Sports
Byers, who became the executive director of the N.C.A.A. in 1951 — a position he held for the next 37 years — transformed a toothless association into a powerful force that mirrored his own personality: secretive, despotic, stubborn and ruthless. He helped turn the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament into the financial windfall we now know […]
Posted inBlog Post, Nonfiction
What’s in a Name: 2016 Presidential Campaign Edition
Hillary, Bernie, Trump, Cruz. Discussing the politics of first and last names used in the 2016 election.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Betting Against the Relationship Bubble
Joe Berkowitz has been writing a series for the Awl about modern relationships, and his final installment was published this week.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Surveying Sin in American Music
What a blast! But there’s danger in the air─someone on the dark floor’s got a gun, and everyone “does his best to act just right, ’cause it’s gonna be a funeral if you start a fight.” In [Billy] Hughes’s terms, folks “struggle and they shuffle” until the sun comes up, delicate diction for a Saturday […]
Posted inCommentary, Nonfiction
The Problem With Hollywood’s Portrayal of Pregnant Women
Can Hollywood get pregnant women right?
Posted inEditor's Pick
No Room at the Inn for Innocence
There are more than half a million homeless children in California and budget motels have become the last resort for many families with nowhere else to go. Joe Mozingo profiles a group of kids growing up in the shadows of drugs and despair at a San Bernardino motel.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Thelonious Monk on the Moment He Became Aware of the Police
During the 1960s and 70s, legendary jazz drummer Art Taylor interviewed his fellow musicians. The interviews are collected in the 1993 book Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews, and it’s one of jazz’s greatest. The familial, casual conversations are also serious and insightful, full of history, portraiture, and revelations about race relations in America, and the […]
