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Five Good Books
A good side of the writing/journalistic life is that many of your friends end up being people in the business. Well, most of the time that's a good side. It's also the set-up for the news I'm...
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Who Has a Legitimate Gripe Against Vibram Shoes? The Syndactyly Crowd
Earlier this month I explained why I still wear, like, use, and tout Vibram "finger shoes," despite the company's having settled a claim from those who felt its health benefits were overstated. Once...
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Theories of History: Joe Max Higgins and the Golden Triangle of Mississippi
The man you see above is Joe Max Higgins Jr, who is now in his mid-50s. He grew up in Arkansas as the son of a sheriff, and since the mid-2000s he has worked on economic-development programs for the...
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Mapping America's Prospects, in Mississippi and Elsewhere
On Friday, I introduced the work of Joe Max Higgins, Brenda Lathan, Raj Shaunak, and others who over the past decade have attracted some $6 billion worth of industrial investment to the "Golden...
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Your 3-Letter Guide to the Latest News From China
Lots of readers have written in to ask: Question 1) This episode of a Chinese boat ramming and sinking a Vietnamese craft, apparently inside Vietnamese waters, and apparently with rousing support of...
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The Civil War That Does Not End
Two emails came arrived within minutes of each other over the weekend. Both have to do with the reports my wife Deb and I have been doing from the "Golden Triangle" of Mississippi: the cities of...
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Readings on Strategy: China and Its Islamic Issues
Recent news out of China has involved crackdowns and seemingly looking-for-trouble international provocations, as mentioned here yesterday. The latest occasion for the crackdowns, including the scenes...
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Man Bites Dog: A Small Publisher Speaks Up on Amazon's Behalf
I've long been wary of Amazon, for reasons that have come to a head with its highly publicized struggle with Hachette. This recent Atlantic item by Jeremy Greenfield lays out the stakes well. To...
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Heavy Industry in the Mississippi 'Prairie': Why Are These Factories Here?
This is the story of a man, and a region, and of the tradeoffs that go into the modern movement of industries. What did it take to bring a modern steel mill, a helicopter factory, a drone plant, and a...
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Everything Old Is New Again, and Vice Versa: The Predicament of the Press
For as long as there have been readers, writers, and publishers, and from long before people even used those terms or the word "journalism," the business of providing information about the world has...
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The Endless Civil War, Continued
Over the past few weeks, my wife Deb and I have been reporting on Mississippi's efforts to move itself up from the bottom in rankings of educational achievement, and similarly to move itself up from...
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The Endless Civil War Goes On
None of us planned it this way, but my wife Deb and I happened to be reporting from Mississippi at just the time when when Ta-Nehisi Coates's "Case for Reparations" article, which starts with scenes...
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3 More Good Books: Ignatius, Budiansky, and (Again) Nader
Two weeks ago I mentioned five good books that all happened to be by people I knew and that I thought very much deserved attention. As a reminder, three were about China: Louisa Lim's The People's...
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Now That Mississippi Is In the News
Nearly a year ago, when my wife Deb and I were kicking off our American Futures project, we said that one of the ambitions was to apply a "normal" reporting lens to parts of the country that don't...
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Americana: Wade Stadium, Home of the Huskies
This evening the political news is out of Virginia, and there is upcoming news in this space from Mississippi and from San Francisco, both of them tomorrow. The Duluth Husky builds morale.But for now,...
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Welcome Tide Fallows
There are updates from Mississippi and Minnesota in the queue, but for now let me mention the wonderful news that is foremost in our minds. Please welcome Tide Fallows, who made her debut on Sunday...
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The Cirrus Parachute, as Seen From HQ and from a Swamp
Later this afternoon my wife Deb and I will be talking with, and to, a group of executives and employees of the Cirrus Aircraft company in Duluth, Minnesota. The Cirrus line of small planes—which now...
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Richard Rockefeller, MD
My wife Deb and I were shocked and heartbroken to learn that our friend Richard Rockefeller had died this morning in an airplane crash. He is in the news because he is a Rockefeller, and because of the...
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'The Past Is Never Dead,' Bill Faulkner Told Us—but He Didn't Know About the...
If you're anything like me, when you hear the words "wise insights about the Iraq war," two names that immediately come to mind are Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby. Fortunately the Hertog Institute...
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What's Worth Reading About Iraq
The big difference between pro- and anti-Iraq war camps a dozen years ago was not about the odiousness of Saddam Hussein, nor (with the exception of exaggerated "smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud"...
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