#23: Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey Into the Heart of Darkness by Jeffrey Tayler (2000) I’ve written before about my fascination with the Congo and Africa’s mythical “dark heart.” Conrad. Tarzan. […]
Journey into the heart of darkness
Chris Mackowski
Rachel Carson and the power of wonder
#22: The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson; photographs by Nick Kelsh (1996) It isn’t often that I get to read someone else’s love letters. But read Rachel Carson’s work and you’ll […]
Scenes from the Appalachian Trail, just for us
Turned out to be a pretty good day for hiking on Monday… In my piece this morning about Bill Bryson’s Appalachian Trail book, A Walk in the Woods, I mentioned that a […]
Bill Bryson's pleasant "Walk"
#21: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (1998) I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods […]
Reading John McPhee
#20: selections from The John McPhee Reader (1976) and The Second John McPhee Reader (1996) by John McPhee No one seems to know when “creative nonfiction” emerged as a genre, but John […]
The Perfect Storm still offers up some perfect lessons for writers
#19: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (1997) I never read The Perfect Storm until I saw the trailer for the 2000 movie. There, on the big screen, a fishing boat tried […]
A walk around the great granddaddy of American battlefields
#18: Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James McPherson (2003) Most Civil War historians in the Park Service feel a little battlefield when it comes to Gettysburg. It’s the great Granddaddy […]
The unfinished Civil War—a place and a state of mind
#17: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1998) If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz […]
Walden: How many of you have actually read it?
#16: Walden by Henry David Thoreau Walden is one of those books everyone’s heard of, but I frequently wonder how many people have actually read it. It is, of course, the very stuff […]
Revisiting "Planet China" with J. Maarten Troost
#15: Lost on Planet China: One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation by L. Maarten Troost (2008) The first time I landed in Shanghai, I couldn’t believe how big everything […]
