Dear Jack
A father writes his son a note on election night. It gets passed around their family and friends—and soon the entire world. What viral impact looks like, post-Trump.
Personal Essays
A collection of 167 issues
Where Death Lies
Each year, the Japanese government expects dozens of people to die from eating ill-prepared blowfish, and yet the dish remains a delicacy.
Life Before Death
If you had to choose between the life of a loved one or the survival of a dozen other people, would you be capable of a rational decision?
Love in the Time of Catholicism
The Pope spoiled his trip to America by meeting with a Kentucky clerk. But his unheard praise of a different radical provides a silver lining.
The Problem of the Flying Puppies
Catfishing is usually part of an online romance scam—not the world of expensive French bulldogs.
Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy
Before he was America's favorite philosopher comic, he was just another comedian out on tour. And she was the journalist he wanted to meet.
Detroit State of Mind
What I end up saying when I try to explain to people, and myself, why I bought a vacation house in Detroit.
White Rabbit
When illness erases the fine line between love and obsession.
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.
The University of Marias
Daily life can wear you down when your freshman-year roommates are gray-haired and flirting with dementia. Then again, the best lessons may come that way.
The Real Me
The internet is an unrelenting enabler of our flaws and an unforgiving archive of them—so should you google your new love interest, or hold off? And what if they google you first?
Pause, Panic, Gringo
When your name prompts questions in several continents, how you answer—and whether or not you stick an accent above the “a”—says a lot about who you are.
Hiss and Hers
When you fall for someone, you fall for everything that comes with them: their beliefs, their passions, and American history’s most infamous typewriter.
It’s All in Your Head
It begins as a dull ache, then the skull becomes hot and brittle, then the neck stiffens—and then there’s no escaping a migraine. A search for relief, temporary or otherwise.
Giving Up the Guns
When your life is opened in front of you, all your old attachments shucked off, the task of finding a new ending can be as simple as handing over a bag of guns.
Fly Girl
Even if you grow up crushing on the jets in Top Gun—and not Tom Cruise—it can be tough to preserve a dream of defending your country from a plane. But some girls do.
Clenching the Night Away
A mouth guard can do more than save our enamel from nighttime gnashing. It may also shield us from our daily anxieties.
Separate Housewives
A happy cul de sac experiences its first affair. Soon every living room—every computer screen—reverberates with news bulletins. Even for the Facebook generation, divorce comes with surprises.
Habitat for Humanity
Manhattan is rife with lumberjacks, Los Angeles is hot for Appalachia, and the latest trend in pornography is cabins. Yes, cabins. But when a woman leaves New York for a log structure of her own, a metamorphosis occurs.
Learning to Talk
When a voiceover artist temporarily loses the use of her primary asset, the struggle back to speaking unearths what’s gone unsaid for too long.
The Wolf Is Waiting
Imperceptibly and without warning, your pulse accelerates, your mind races, and panic grips your body—for anxiety attack sufferers, every day is a case in survival. A journey to the wild to confront the fear.
Big Blue Nights
Victory has many faces—some of them just happen to be painted. A story of violence, true love, the road from New York to Lexington, and the religion that is college basketball.
The Storm Comes Around
Tornado season is a distant concept for most people. For some, it’s a scary but known part of life. Then there’s what happens when one of the South’s deadliest storms in history destroys your house.
The Art of Choking
Some people require the Heimlich Maneuver a bit more than the rest of us. A report on the four times—so far—that the author has relied on the assistance of others.
Call and Response
Sometimes a book appears in your life and starts to pester you. The characters act like your friends. Events occur in the plot that reappear inside your home. It’s enough to drive a man to wonder which world is more real, until danger appears.
Along the Horizontal
The link between Occupy Wall Street, the environmental doom of Czech villages, and the noise of a wailing child on a freezing, black morning in Sweden is not obvious—but it does count for everything.
Now That Books Mean Nothing
When you’ve long been identified as a “literary type,” how can it be that receiving books as get-well gifts leaves you feeling empty, angry, and determined to chug YouTube straight?
Address Unknown
In New York’s St. John the Divine Cathedral, a letter to a dead man, tucked under a plaque near his ashes, offers the first and only clue in a mystery about faith.
Our National Posters
People say you can never go home again. But you can go back on vacation. Notes on the specific tragedy that occurs when, revisiting the great national parks of your childhood, you realize all your memories of the wild derive from gift shops.
Hard Up
When you’re feeling perky as a teenager but the doctor says your prostate is basically a Chinchorro mummy, a little erectile dysfunction can be suffered on the path to wellness. Oh, but the sex drive...
The Man Who Loved to Have Coffee With Women
From playing with childhood friends to sharing tips with other new parents, the author concedes he just gets along better with girls.
The Secret Point of Money and Power
Over time, a couple shares a bed, a past, and money. But when the relationship ends, as accounts are counted and paid, some debts are more complicated than they seem.
The Querent
Fortunetelling is easy to ridicule, frequently misunderstood, and, for some people, extremely powerful. Unfortunately, what’s very tough to predict is what reading futures will do to the person with the cards.
The Crap in My Head
Little things people say can get stuck in your brain and become triggers, forcing you to relive moments you’d rather forget. Well, for aspiring linguists, it’s much, much worse.
The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
When it comes to in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.
Letters to a Pitchikoo
Shoes, cars, T-shirts—it’s easy for people to become attached to favorite objects. But something is horribly wrong when a girl begins writing fan mail to her ring.
Where the Choices Are Endless
After a childhood in the country, awaking as a freshman in a college town, where the inhabitants are willing and strange.
Caught Telling Fiction
The gap between literary and historical fiction is mostly a marketing ploy--at least until a novelist meets a survivor of her story's plot.
How the Dead Live
There’s a peculiar odor to burning hope—it’s the smell of exhaust fumes, human sweat, and a fast-food container interred under a seat cushion.
Not for Navigational Purposes
Maps are useful in jungles, classrooms, and when you need to cross a bombing ground during a storm. But they’re pointless when love implodes.
Will the Real Frank Smith Stand Up
Sharing a name with thousands of other men, even hundreds of thousands, can make for interesting email. Some of the messages that have landed in his inbox.
Work Is a Four-Letter Word
After 15 months of unemployment, our writer lands a job—complete with benefits, direct deposit, and a modern workspace design. Time to shop for dumpy sweaters.
When the Crescendo Is the Least of Your Worries
After practicing with his iPod—and feeling pretty good, actually—a novice discovers the extreme fear of conducting a professional orchestra.
A Song for Aretha
For decades, America has taken Aretha Franklin for granted, heard and loved and danced to her music without a second thought. Now’s the time to think again.
The Impossible Everything That Everybody Wants
In western Maryland, where the state’s already skinny, being a stutterer who can’t eat doesn’t help growing up. Paying tribute to 1980s Appalachia, home to American chariots.
Modern Hospitality
Faced with a stranger at the door seeking shelter for the night, what do you do?
The Karma Bum
When Allen Ginsberg stayed with my family, we played video games and read together. But the harmony was broken when the yoga began. It wouldn't be the last time.
Give and Take
December is the season for taking: taking money from strangers; taking care to avoid crying on the phone. Holiday confessions from a charity call-center employee.
I, Reader
You are what you read. For some, that means 22 boxes of books. Facing a storage crisis of bibliolatry proportions, our writer surveys e-readers and a life spent reading.
My Kingdom for a Ginger Beard
Faced with a city full of strangers, you do what anyone would do: You give them nicknames and puzzle out their stories. Herewith, the story of an unemployed redhead.
Heads of the Family
At Thanksgiving, a family takes stock of what they’re thankful for by weighing the most valuable things they own: their heads.
Mama’s Boy
After the dust settles from their own stormy relationship—and their torrid relationships with others—a daughter learns her mother’s big secret.
Bright Sun, Long Shadows
As the Cardinals fought for a playoff berth in August, I watched my father-in-law in his own personal battle. A tale of victory and loss.
My Name on My Milk
After belt-tightening forces relocation to a boarding house in Yonkers, our writer learns the ropes of his new situation, where hallways lead to the most unexpected places.
Intensive Care
Every mother worries her child could suddenly become ill. For one, motherhood requires living with the fear that her son could become just like her.
The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High
Gambling addiction is a simple disease. Living the addiction is a bit more complicated. A chronicle of dependency in seven parts—about poker, “Lolita,” and how to lose $18,000 in less than 36 hours.
Why I Don’t Run
Runners run, readers read, and some even do both at the same time. A bookish guide to outpacing your insecurities.
The Other Esters
Middle school can be tough even if you don’t share your oddly spelled name with the class beauty. A tale of adolescent confusion and metamorphosis.
Singing It Over Again
When you’re used to regular doses of applause, giving up the stage for a 9-to-5 gig can produce acute withdrawal. Reclaiming past glories by singing backup.
Finding Positive
When pregnancy showed up unbidden, a writer demands a second test, and a third, and a fourth. But then she saw a result many women spend years searching for.
To Chelsea, and Climate Control, Cheers
From the awkward phase through the sweater phase to the riot grrrl phase and the New York phase, growing up with a First Daughter I’ve never met.
In Tennis, Love Means Nothing
A pro author challenges a pro tennis player to a tournament. A story of dueling, drumming, and one extraordinary victory.
The Rough Cut
When you share your life with a reality TV editor, you learn that reality often winds up on the cutting-room floor.
Nest
Where people build homes, birds sometimes build nests—and there’s no guarantee cohabitation of the species will be idyllic.
Cheater Cheater
Everyone remembers their first, especially English professors. A professor confronts a student he busted for cheating—and who caused him to completely rethink plagiarism.
Justice With a Tagline
When your publisher won't pay you for translating a popular German guide to anal sex, don't take the law into your own hands--take 'em to court. But which one?
A Simple Flying Phobia
The air conditioner puckers as the door closes. The landing gear creaks as the plane departs the jetway. Above your head, the call button dings.
The Dinner Party
Your roommate, your girlfriend, and her (and your) boss: It’s a tough table, and they’ll scrutinize your food—and your dwindling frame.
Brief Scenes From Our Marriage
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the Opposite of Feng Shui. A marriage, told in four parts.
To Will a Mockingbird
Fashions come and go, but names tend to stick around forever, even hippie ones.
From Cover to Cover
Music connects to memories, and so do album sleeves. From ELO’s spaceship to Róisín Murphy’s see-through top, the covers that made one writer a fan.
The Game of Love
Anyone who says video games shouldn't appeal to adults, let alone women, has never flirted with General Carth Onassi. Exploring a virtual courtship.
Making the Bird
To entertain themselves and their friends, two brothers formed a band, Birdhead. Now one traces the history of "the critically acclaimed power duo from Rancho Cucamonga."
My First Sonogram
A television news report begets a routine doctor’s appointment begets a personal health scare.
Annie Dillard and the Writing Life
Writers aren’t born, they’re made—from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine. And sometimes tutelage.
Jack & Ginger
Moving back to your hometown offers opportunities to rekindle old friendships—and start new ones. An 80-proof love story.
When the Sun Is Constantly Setting
Eight years later, we continue to struggle with September 11, the day our city was attacked. A report from a more remote position: aboard a military vessel in the Arctic Circle.
A Taste for Flesh
America has a problem with death; zombies have a problem with life. The difference, explained by more than 60 zombie movies.
The Surrogate Life
Being unemployed, and bearing colossal amounts of debt, can drive you to rash measures. Discovering the difficulty of renting out one’s womb.
Gimme Shelter
Everyone knows a relative who dabbles in conspiracy theories. For one writer, seeing her brother be targeted by a global cabal—and develop schizophrenia—was all too real.
Lacoste of Living
After three-quarters of a century, a quintessential shirt picks up a lot of baggage—some good, some ironically so, all obsession-worthy.
This Loop of Light and Life
The supernatural is all sheets and spooks—Hamlet, Casper, and Field of Dreams—until it’s sitting in your bedroom.
Breakfast With the Beeb
Sounds can take us home—even when that home belongs to someone else, and the sounds are of obscure gardening comedy.
Breakfast, Lunch, and Winners
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has been picked to lead the war in Afghanistan, and on only one meal a day. One week spent in the general's reduced-calorie footsteps.
Reading With Scissors
If not for a tragic car accident in 2001, W.G. Sebald would be celebrating his senior citizenship next week. Recalling an obsessive introduction to the author's unclassifiable genre.
La Vache Qui Rit and Another Cow Altogether
A passion for French cinema turns into an offscreen romance. Never mind the language barrier, because the cultural barriers are so much funnier.
The Transient, Digital Fetish
As the world goes Kindle and iPhone-mad, paperbacks and mixtapes become worthy of devotion. Watching a music collection disappear and wondering what it meant.
Pink Suede Shoes
Sometimes it takes the right pair of shoes to kick you over the edge into adulthood. For one writer, it’s other people’s shoes that do the kicking.
Stereoblind
After a lifetime of visual miscues, I finally decided to do something about my optical condition. Now comes the hard part: seeing the world through both eyes.
How to Survive a Crush
Two decades after high school days spent yearning to be a part of the “in” crowd, our writer confronts her former dream date, now a best-selling author, and her former self.
One for You, Nineteen for Me
The president in his speech last night urged for greater federal and personal responsibility to stimulate our economy. But will Americans heed the call on their tax forms? What it’s like to get audited.
Ballad of a Thin Man
In a country so proud of its apple pie, there is an element of distrust for thin men.
Civil Plights
Is there room for civility in Civil Rights? On the day of Obama's inauguration, facing down the moment you nearly brought President George W. Bush to task.
Jewish Like Me
To be Jewish in America can be a gefilte fish served with wasabi and a dollop of paranoia. And things get even more complicated when you don't look the part.
Drink Your Meds
The impulse to weigh decisions with coffee spoons can seem charmingly eccentric on TV. But real-life obsessive compulsive disorder is no fun, what with the imminent death and all.
Our 2008 Holiday Letter
No matter how factual the accomplishments gained or the tragedies sustained, holiday letters, like the season itself, are often sugarcoated. But not this time.
Pilgrimage
Many people hope to be authors, even some in the publishing business. Going back to a monastery to see both sides of the story.
Hard Times Dog
From the financial crisis to the election and even the weather, unhappiness abounds.
Plan B
Determining that precise instant when life starts is a big subject in American politics, but it’s rarely discussed with much nuance.
My Life in Jest
When floating through post-collegiate limbo, you can use an anchor. Recalling when a very large book played a very large role in life.