Posts from the ‘Writing’ Category
Review: ‘Where Men Win Glory’ by Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer’s latest book, Where Men Win Glory, is currently number 10 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and has been on the list for six weeks now. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend doing so. I have a review of the book up on The Faster Times website. The first two paragraphs of the piece are excerpted below.
Chinook helicopter over Afghanistan. Photo used with permission.
Jon Krakauer’s latest book, “Where Men Win Glory,” folds two epic stories into one volume: it is both a biography of Pat Tillman, the NFL-star turned soldier who was accidentally killed by his own platoon in Afghanistan in 2004, and a history of Afghanistan beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, charting the horrifying Soviet presence there, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the ongoing U.S. war. The Army tried to cover up Tillman’s death and the Bush administration tried to profit from it politically. It is a large, damning book that takes aim at those who would manipulate the truth.
While Tillman’s life is the thread that holds the book together and his story is expertly told, I was most fascinated by the broader context in which it is set. Especially gripping is Krakauer’s telling of the chain of events preceding the September 11 attacks. Take, for example, Krakauer’s description of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center: “The bomb had been assembled, delivered, and detonated by a Kuwati named Ramzi Yousef…Yousef had learned the art of making bombs from a manual written by the CIA for the mujahideen to use in their struggle against the Soviets.” While anyone who has seen “Charlie Wilson’s War” is familiar with the idea of blowback, it’s still devastating when such connections are made as clearly as they are here.
Click here to continue reading.
New story: An interview with Gary Shteyngart: “On Travel Writing”
Photo by Marion Ettlinger
It was my pleasure to recently interview Gary Shteyngart, a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and author of the wildly successful and hilarious books “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” and “Absurdistan.” Read the interview here, which was published as a feature story on World Hum. Shteyngart’s travel writing has been anthologized in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions of the Best American Travel Writing. Take a look at the interview, and I highly recommend you pick up some of his work.
“The Dogs of Pohnpei” chosen as one of the “Eight Great Travel Stories About Food” by World Hum
The island of Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia. Photo by Rob Verger.
World Hum is celebrating its eighth anniversary this week, and in doing so it has been featuring best-of lists from the site’s history. I’m thrilled that they chose my essay, “The Dogs of Pohnpei,” which originally appeared on the site in January of 2008, as one of their “Eight Great Travel Stories About Food.” (The food in the piece, if you’re wondering, is dog meat. While some don’t consider dog meat to be food, others do. This is an issue the piece explores.) Thank you, World Hum.
Joining World Hum’s blogging team
Photo by Rob Verger
I’m thrilled to be joining World Hum’s blogging team!
World Hum is an outstanding website now owned by the Travel Channel, and they publish some of the best travel writing and travel photography online (and the occasional short travel video, too). I’ll be writing a new blog on Air Travel, which I’ll update multiple times per week. You can always check here for the most up-to-date entry to the Air Travel section of World Hum’s Travel Blog.
Read the Air Travel intro item: “Taking Flight“
Read the next entry, related to U.S. Airways Flight 1549: “A Trip to Battery Park City“
I won’t be cross-referencing all of my blog entries for World Hum here on this website, but I’m sure that I will be linking to them from time to time.
I’ve done several pieces for World Hum in the past, and I’m excited to now be a regular contributor to their blog. Past feature stories for them have been an essay called “The Dogs of Pohnpei,” as well as an essay considering the controversial practice of slum tourism in Brazil, called “Slumming in Rio,” which was accompanied by an audio slide show.
I hope you visit World Hum frequently.
