My old boss is a sucker for good endings, and he would send us far and wide to find just the right anecdote. In 2011, a worker from a Pennsylvania firm whose drilling technology helped save the Chilean miners said, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.” The President loved the quote, and turned it into an entire ending about American greatness and aspiration.
politics
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What It Was Like to Cover Mario Cuomo as a Reporter for the New York Times
Four years of covering Cuomo as a reporter have put me at his side day after day, week after week, from the Soviet Union to Canada, from San Francisco to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We’ve drunk vodka together at backyard cookouts and in a Leningrad hotel. (Often after a few vodkas, and in other times […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Did We Have the Sense that America Cared How We Were Doing? We Did Not’
In The Atlantic in 2014, James Fallows examined how Americans and political leaders became so disconnected from those who serve in the military—and the consequences of that disconnect: If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
When Mitch McConnell Met Roger Ailes: An Early Lesson in Winning At All Costs
In 1984, Mitch McConnell hired Roger Ailes to help him win elections. He’d soon learn what that really meant.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
When Mitch McConnell Met Roger Ailes: An Early Lesson in Winning At All Costs
In 1984, Mitch McConnell hired Roger Ailes to help him win elections. He’d soon learn what that really meant.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Brutal Dictator, and the Wall Street Hedge Fund That Gave Him $100 Million
Mugabe’s men were setting up command centers for torture and killing in areas that voted for the opposition, the man told McGee, and regional party leaders like him were told to draw up lists of people to target. The ambassador learned that Mugabe’s government had landed critical funding, totaling $100 million, only days after the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Brutal Dictator, and the Wall Street Hedge Fund That Gave Him $100 Million
Mugabe’s men were setting up command centers for torture and killing in areas that voted for the opposition, the man told McGee, and regional party leaders like him were told to draw up lists of people to target. The ambassador learned that Mugabe’s government had landed critical funding, totaling $100 million, only days after the […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
The ‘SNL’ Skit on Racial Profiling That Never Made It to Television
Robert Smigel, writer: It wasn’t until my last season that the network refused to air a “TV Funhouse.” It was a live-action one that was meant to be about racism and profiling, an airline-safety video with multilingual narration, and whenever you heard a different language, they would cut to people of that nationality. First, typical […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Step Back for The Civil Rights Movement
Over the next three decades, Hank Sanders became a fixture in the statehouse, ascending to the chairmanship of the Senate’s Finance and Taxation Education Committee. From his expansive office just off the Senate floor, he controlled Alabama’s Education Trust Fund, the largest operating budget in state government. Sanders tried to exercise his power to represent […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Hidden Truth About the Cold War Roomba
Over at Paleofuture, Matt Novak looks back at the 1959 Cold War cultural exhibitions hosted by both the United States and the Soviet Union. For the United States, the Moscow exhibition was a chance to show off the newest products and technology from companies like IBM, Sears and Kodak—and perhaps the most important innovation of […]