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The New Yorker interviews J.M. Ledgard: It’s one of the lessons I learned long ago, reporting in the post-Communist environment in Russia and Eastern Europe. I became a really strong anti-Communist at that point, just seeing what that world was and had done. But, after a while, you get into these stories and you realize […]
My short story “Stare Decisis” was the runner-up for the law blog Lawyerist’s 2015 short fiction contest. You can now read it online, for free, here. Previously, this story appeared in print in the great lit mag Midwestern Gothic. Thanks to the Lawyerist editors for selecting it—this marks the first time I’ve earned any money from […]
My review of Richard Flanagan’s Man Book Prize-Winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is in today’s paper and is also online here. A bit: Dorrigo Evans is considered by everyone— except himself — to be a war hero. A physician, he becomes the de facto leader of his fellow Australian POWs who […]
I’m a little late to this party, but if you haven’t yet read Oliver Sacks’ piece in the NYT, you should. Upon learning he has terminal cancer: I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no […]
Fellow Lincolnites: I’m excited to be a part of the selection committee for the Lincoln City Libraries One Book One Lincoln, our citywide reading program of the year. If you have a great book, nominate it at one of our local libraries or online here by February 23. Last year I had a heck of a lot […]
Once again, Jon Ronson delivers. This time it’s “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life”: Eventually I started to wonder about the recipients of our shamings, the real humans who were the virtual targets of these campaigns. So for the past two years, I’ve been interviewing individuals like Justine Sacco: everyday people pilloried […]
Like many others, I followed the podcast Serial—at least for a time. While I don’t have anything particularly valuable or interesting to say on it—opinion pieces have abounded, and it always seemed to me that it was pretty ho-hum and obvious Adnan Syed was likely guilty—fortunately law professor Janeanne Murray does: Had Mr. Syed, then 18, plea-bargained […]
I had the pleasure of reading some of Beatrice native Weldon Kees‘ wonderful—if bitter—poetry a few weeks ago to support a great cause, Lincoln Literacy, and was pleasantly surprised to see a nice write-up of the event in L Magazine. Nebraskans: You should really read some of Kees’ work if you haven’t, and become a member of […]
Proving perhaps that Ian McEwan was on to something, a recent case out of Connecticut seems to be playing out the drama of McEwan’s novel The Children Act: The girl, identified in court papers as Cassandra C., learned that she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma in September. Ever since, she and her mother have been entangled in a legal […]
Writer Hari Kunzru, in a bitter and provocative piece at The Guardian on the Charlie Hebdo attack: Until there are no more self-dramatising young men who prefer the abstraction of death to living a meaningful life, until there are no more wealthy pious bigots to fund them, until there are no more disenfranchised migrants pressed against the […]