On August 5, 2016, Tricia Griffith joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions...
A revolution is an opinion that has got its hands on some bayonets. So said Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew about such things. Fair enough: Throughout history, most revolutions have been brought about at the point of a spear or the end of a...
It’s the first day of summer and everyone’s scurrying to a thing they’re unsure of, eyes locked away from the guy who’s approaching the driver’s side window. Jack the five-year-old rides by on his orange bike with its propellers spinning a...
I found halcyon on a street in New York. Not graffiti, but part of the pavement: a mound of tarmac, in the middle of which was a steel plate where the word appeared. Shining in the light, it looked like frosting. Who put it there? Who...
A library, of course, makes for a stubborn protagonist in a work of narrative journalism. “The reality is, it’s just different writing about something that has all of the complexity of bureaucracy. I don’t do a lot of stories where I have...
“Adam catched Eve by the fur below,” goes an old English song from the swampy fens of Norfolk, “and that’s the oldest catch I know.” The ditty may not be suitable for work or for younger audiences, but it points to a tricky matter of...
On April 21, 2016, David George Gordon spoke with Joshua Foer as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Gordon, who is a science writer, is also known as “The...
