From the category archives:

Articles

A selection of my published work since 2001 is available here. Contact me with any specific requests.

Articles

Music is Cure and Curse

Originally in: San Francisco Chronicle

Tales of Music and the Brain. By Oliver Sacks. Knopf; 381 pages.

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Who is the most important person in your local hospital? Seek – or, rather, listen – and ye shall find, according to Oliver Sacks.

Leading a…

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Articles

Q&A with Lewis Lapham

Originally in: Boston Globe's Ideas section

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Machiavelli predicted the Blackwater debacle. The Qing dynasty’s homeland security experts knew Great Walls make for great neighbors. Riding the rails was safer in Joseph…

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Articles

Literary Death Match

“Judging you is like egging a convent,” observed New Yorker editor Ben Greenman of one contestant, shortly before the flinging commenced at last night’s Literary Death Match at The Kitchen.

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Articles

A Valentine to Science, a Primer for Adults

Originally in: Globe and Mail

THE CANON: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. By Natalie Angier.

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‘Science is huge,” explains Natalie Angier, “a great ocean of human experience; it’s the product and point of having the most deeply corrugated brain of…

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Articles

The Day the Yearbook Died

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Dead-tree books may be passé, but kids still want a place to keep their memories—and keep them current.

When students at El Camino High School in…

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Articles

Librarything.com

Shelf Life column

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As long as there have been books, there have been people eager to judge them–and their respective owners–by their covers. As Rob Gordon, the vinyl…

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Articles

Ian Hundley’s Quilting Bee

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The “B” here should stand for Brooklyn, which is where the North Ontario native Ian Hundley calls home and studio for a haute-quilting operation that…

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Articles

Literary Guide: Vancouver

Originally in: Salon.com

Millennial jewel or map's edge, Vancouver is a blue-green study in literary solitudes.

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The first thing to know about Vancouver, British Columbia, is that it resembles the last, if not no other, place on earth. A sinewy swoop…

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