Articles Written By Jonathan Gourlay
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The Travel Desk
The Mother Wave
Before the days of GPS, sailors navigated using the feel of the waves. On a mission to learn the ocean’s secret rhythms, a researcher discovers a coded message in a ship logbook.
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The Travel Desk
One Small Store
Two men, separated by more than 150 years, discover the folly of attempting Western-style capitalism in Micronesia.
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Personal Essays
Born, Still
A newborn wavers between life and something else. For the father, a walk in the woods elucidates the struggle between nature and nurture.
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Disarmed
Heartplunger
A childhood ban on toy guns didn’t erase the specter of death from a neighborhood.
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Our Foreign Correspondence
Smog of War
More than a decade after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan—now our longest war—most Americans still know next to nothing about the people who live there, and the liberties denied them. Lessons from a rapid education.
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China Welcomes You
How to Officially Forget
More than two decades later, a return visit to Tiananmen Square finds it scrubbed clean—just as it was immediately following the Incident. Except now there is thick smog, and ghosts. In contemporary Beijing, the past is like Kentucky Fried Chicken: unavoidable.
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Our Passions, Our Day Jobs
The Day Borders Got the Wobblies
As Borders liquidates its merchandise, a former employee of store #21 looks back at a glorious workplace—of quirky managers, Borders gypsies, the odyssey to stack more than Hobby/Collectibles—and the moment when salvation seemed at hand to save the chain.