Can academic rigor, firm discipline, and a daily dose of religion turn boys from poor families into scholars? An intimate look at one such attempt. Originally published in Duke Magazine. AS AN AUGUST DRIZZLE falls outside, thirty-one middle-schoolers sit at long tables in a North Carolina mountain lodge. It’s the end of summer vacation: Next week […]
Foreign Service
Originally published in the AARP Bulletin. ED MAHONEY GAPED AT THE SPECTACLE. On the edge of the Guatemala City dump, a fetid ravine swarming with vultures, dozens of human scavengers intercepted garbage trucks. They picked through the refuse for anything of value-bottles, cardboard, string-to sell to recyclers. Mothers carried their babies in boxes while older children played […]
Why Do Animals Age?
Scientists studying wild creatures, from turtles and terns to bats and parakeets, are coming up with answers that may help humans stave off some of aging’s most devastating effects. Originally published in National Wildlife. FOR THE REPTILES LIVING in the University of Michigan’s E.S. George Reserve, Justin Congdon is something of a troll under the bridge. A […]
When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?
In rural Pennsylvania, township supervisors battling sewage sludge and hog manure stumble up against one of the biggest mysteries in constitutional law. Originally published in Mother Jones. LICKING TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, IS A ROLLING SWATH of soybean fields and pastures in Clarion County, two hours northeast of Pittsburgh, with 500 residents and quite a few more cattle. Drive […]
Strong Medicine
Writing fiction was a bittersweet remedy for novelist Lee Smith. But it led to her triumphant return from tragedy. Originally published in Pages. FOR MOST OF HER LIFE, THE CIVIL WAR held little fascination for Lee Smith. The daughter of a dime-store owner, she grew up in the Appalachian coal town of Grundy, Virginia, which had no […]
Sudden Debt
Overdrawn by $5? Need a loan until payday? Hidden bank fees and usurious storefront lenders plunge millions of Americans into downward financial spirals. Originally published in AARP The Magazine. FOR MARK KEIL, 45, THE SPIRAL began with some smokes. It was April 2004 when Mark stopped by his favorite convenience store in Dayton, Ohio, and spent $19.45 […]
The Overlooked Island
Watching the scarlet ibises roost and the leatherbacks lay, it’s easy to forget you’re on the Caribbean’s most industrialized island. Originally published in US Airways Magazine. OUR GREEN WOODEN PIROGUE pulls up to the bank of Caroni Swamp, just a few miles south of Port of Spain. The boatman cuts the motor. It is nearing sunset, and […]
Insider’s Guide to the Stockholm Archipelago
The islands dotting the Baltic waters around Sweden’s capital are fertile grounds for exploration and discovery. Originally published in US Airways Magazine. WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, BERTIL ROSQVIST bought a 20-foot sailboat with three other friends and spent his summers navigating the waterways of the Stockholm Archipelago, the island chain that fans out from the […]
Schweitzer’s Dangerous Discovery
When this shy paleontologist found soft, fresh-looking tissue inside a T. rex femur, she erased a line between past and present. Then all hell broke loose. Originally published in Discover. EVER SINCE MARY HIGBY SCHWEITZER peeked inside the fractured thighbone of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the introverted scientist’s life hasn’t been the same. Neither has the field of paleontology. […]
International, Timeless Lisbon
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