Fast Company Features - on Pinterest, Windows 8, Uniqlo and Coursera

After not reading Fast Company for a few months, I went through three issues recently and found several features that stood out.

The Aug issue had "Cheap, Chic, And Made For All: How Uniqlo Plans To Take Over Casual Fashion" with Jeff Chu writing on the fast-growing Japan-based casual apparel retailer. Very interesting company that recently opened it's first West Coast store in San Francisco and next week is launching it's US online store.

The Sept edition of FC had a piece on a topic of interest in "How Coursera, A Free Online Education Service, Will School Us All." Written by Anya Kamenetz, it's an excellent look at the company teaching hundreds of thousands online, for free. Fascinating topic that I've previously linked to pieces about under the tag online education.

The Oct issue focused on Design and included "Can Ben Silbermann Turn Pinterest Into The World’s Greatest Shopfront?" by Max Chafkin and "Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft’s History" from Austin Carr. Interesting pieces both on a new company and an established coporation doing something different.

Outside Magazine on Bill McKibben & Texas Monthly on Kermit Oliver

Two excellent pieces of profile writing to note here... one interesting in the work being done by someone and the other for both the work and manner it's being done.

In terms of a feature on someone doing something important towards a greater good, last month's Outside Magazine had "Boilover" on writer and climate-change activist Bill McKibben. Written by Rowan Jacobsen, it's a thorough look at someone perhaps tilting at windmills, but doing so because he believes the efforts of his organization 350.org are important.

The second in-depth profile to mention here doesn't center around as important a topic as climate change and C02 in the atmosphere, but was fascinating in the person featured. For Texas Monthly, "Portrait of the Artist as a Postman" was by Jason Sheeler on Kermit Oliver, the Waco, TX postal employee who also designs heavily in-demand scarves for French fashion brand Hermes. Absolutely remarkable piece on someone with amazing events in their life (particularly the horrifying story of his son being executed by the state of Texas) and who does his craft in a way that works for him.

Businessweek writing - on Facebook, Apple, Pandora & EcoATM

There were a few Businessweek pieces from the past few issues that stood out as being on interesting companies... with a couple of the stories being fairly short and a couple well written in-depth looks.

The features were from the recent issue with Facebook on the cover and Ashlee Vance wrote a solid lead story with "Facebook: The Making of 1 Billion Users." Fascinating content that delves into the engineering at the company and features interesting revelations such as Facebook basically launching a new site version with tweaks each and every day.

The Opening Remarks piece from the same issue was also terribly interesting with Brad Stone, Adam Satariano, and Peter Burrows writing "Mapping a Path Out of Steve Jobs's Shadow" on Apple.

Finally, the two smaller pieces of interest were "Apple Radio Might Put Pandora in Play" about online music and "EcoATM, the Automated iPhone Pawn Shop" on the mall kiosk company offering money for no longer needed cell phones with $175 "the average going rate for a slightly damaged iPhone 4 or 4S."

"Sutton" by J.R. Moehringer

I wanted to love Sutton, J.R. Moehringer's first novel, but after reading it, found myself somewhat disappointed.

I've been a fan of Moehringer's writing from first reading the Andre Agassi biography Open he co-wrote. Since then, there was one of my favorite books, The Tender Bar, his memoir leading up to a writing career and various excellent magazine pieces like "Yesterday's News" from a few years back for the Denver magazine 5280.

I heard about Sutton from a Military.com announcement early last year and while the writing in the book certainly had some moments of brilliance from Moehringer, I wasn't that into the narrative of Sutton's post-prison conversations with with a photographer and reporter getting his story. More importantly, though, I found the ending (well, the climactic scene just prior to the ending) to be confusing as to what was going on and not terribly satisfying.

After finishing the book, I went and looked for reviews online and the first two I found at least somewhat shared my view with an Entertainment weekly review by Karen Valby and then one for the New York Times by Dwight Garner. All in all, I still think Moehringer a great writer and he took on an interesting subject, just perhaps the techniques Moehringer used in writing a novel detracted from the reading experience for me.

Great Sports Writing by Dana O'Neil & Sam Page

Two really exceptional pieces of writing I came across today... both dealing with sports figures and each telling a compelling story way beyond what would be seen in a box score.

For ESPN, Dana O'Neil wrote "Chris Mooney's immeasurable impact" which delved into the Richmond Spiders NCAA men's basketball coach and how he helped a team student manager. Just excellent heartwarming storytelling provided by O'Neil.

The second piece actually stood out even more to me in that it (while not necessarily having the same feel good gravitas) featured the writer, Sam Page, telling a personal tale in relation to a famous athlete (and fellow Nashville private high school alum), R.A. Dickey. Super interesting piece posted to Deadspin that was titled "What The Best Pitcher In Baseball Taught Me About Prep School, Socrates, And The Art Of Not Selling Out."

Compelling Writing from Lake, Gethard, Knapp and Kluwe

There's been some excellent writing from a few different sources to note here.

For Sports Illustrated last month, Thomas Lake wrote "The Boy They Couldn't Kill". It's a remarkable piece that features the subtitle "Thirteen years ago, NFL receiver Rae Carruth conspired to kill his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn son. The child has not only survived but thrived—thanks to the unwavering love of his grandmother." Additionally of interest from Lake was his "Inside Story" about writing the feature.

On the Tumblr blog of writer and public access talk-show host Chris Gethard was a public response he wrote to a depressed fan. Really thoughtful and compelling writing from Gethard.  

Finally, Gwen Knapp wrote for the site Sports on Earth "Flipping the Script" about Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo and his support for gay rights including same-sex marriage. Excellent piece from Knapp which also references Vikings punter Chris Kluwe's brillilant and profane takedown of a bigoted Maryland politician posted to Deadspin.

ESPN Writing - by Keown, Jones and McGee

There were a few pieces of writing that stood out from both a recent and several months back edition of ESPN the Magazine.

From the Oct 1 ESPN Age Issue was "The Master" by Tim Keown on Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer. Interesting and well written piece on someone playing (and playing well through most all of his just completed season) under huge public scrutiny with a huge contract in his home state.

Also from this issue of ESPN the Mag was the Chris Jones back page column "Boot It" on the suggestion from Tampa Bay Bucs football coach Greg Schiano to eliminate the kickoff in an effort to curb major injuries in the game. Was a pretty compelling case put forth with the Jones piece including the statistic that "In college football, 1 in 5 injuries during kickoffs is a concussion; during other phases of play, it's 1 out of 14."

From the July 23 Body Issue of ESPN was a feature "120,000 ways to die" on BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner. Written by Ryan McGee, the story is very timely now with Baumgartner planning for a Monday Oct 8 skydive from 23 miles above the earth.

My New Book - 111 Books Reviewed

Yep, I wrote another book... 111 Books Reviewed.

After I at the end of March finished the project to put 3 ½ years of blog posts into book form, I considered what would come next with my writing.

I felt there was something additional that could be done with past work and came up with a few posts trying to distil out the most interesting things written on the subjects of Writing and Business, but then started thinking about the Book Reviews category from my first book. Work done there struck me as less a compilation of blog ramblings and more actual writing for others. In short, something that could be turn from a pet project into a commercial venture with the offering of a book reviews book. Incorporating reviews that made it into my first book as well as those posted to the blog in the past six months, there was close to 130 reviews that could be worked with. Each was then significantly cleaned up to be less blog post-like (removing both references like “just finished reading” and “link to blog post here” and made sure book title and author at the beginning of review with book name in italics).

Of the reviews done, 111 of them were deemed to be interesting enough (interesting of course an extremely arbitrary assignation) to make it into the book and each book assigned a one, two or three star rating and then put into the category sections below, with reviews in each sorted newest to oldest:

 6 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Writing                                   
12 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Personal improvement / Work 
10 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Adventure / Danger               
18 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Sports                                 
 6 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Comedy                                 
11 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Business                               
 7 books reviewed: Nonfiction – History                                   
 5 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Parenting / Family                   
26 books reviewed: Nonfiction – Everything else                       
10 books reviewed: Fiction                                                     

While I was working on the actual content, I had the idea in mind of making the book available cheaply on the Kindle (or Kindle app)… again, that commercial offering thing. The Kindle Direct Publishing site links to a Building Your Book for Kindle PDF guide and from here I found information on using Microsoft Word Headings to build the Table of Contents and specific things around Kindle formatting like how to create a front cover (with the public domain image from the site WPClipart).

After submission of the Kindle book files to Amazon, I then realized the web exclusivity requirement of the KDP Select Amazon program I enrolled in (largely for the purpose of being able to offer the Kindle book for free for five days) meant I had to take down the blog post book reviews the book content based on (was an easy step to select all Book Review tagged blog posts and revert them to draft). After the book content was completed for the Kindle, it wasn’t much additional work to create a paperback version on CreateSpace (as I did for my first book) so went ahead and did that even though the primary intent was to publish this one electronically.

Similar to the first book, the creating of this book was more of an editing of past work project than original writing, but means I’ve now both got another book published and one that’s a more defined offering which can be purchased through Amazon for $.99 (and free for five days every three months). I’m pretty happy with that.

Excellent Pieces by Gladwell, Heckert & Lewis

There were three solid (and lengthy) feature stories that stood out from recent issues of some of the bigger national general interest magazines.

For Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis provided "Obama’s Way" an in-depth look at the President and how it is to hold the office. Tremendously interesting content that shows someone well aware of the gravitas of their position.

By another best-selling author was Malcolm Gladwell's "In Plain View" in The New Yorker. Compelling piece on not only Jerry Sandusky, but that expands farther with the subtitle "how child molesters get away with it." While it's true that each case of evil deviance not the same, Gladwell does an excellent job showing commonalities and steps taken towards the crime.

The third piece was by someone not nearly as well known, but outstanding writing nonetheless. "How to Build an American Car" was written by Justin Heckert for Esquire Magazine and centers around the Cadillac ATS, Esquire's 2012 Car of the Year. It's an interesting subject and Heckert does a really good job of showing the individual effort that's gone into creating and producing the vehicle.

Great Sports Writing - by MacGregor, Wetzel & Tomlinson

Three pieces of sports writing recently that struck me as particular compelling work from three different sources.

For ESPN, Jeff MacGregor wrote the column "Waiting for Goodell" on the NFL commissioner and his role in relation to the referee lockout. Brilliant writing based on work by Samuel Beckett... and done prior to the Monday Night Football fiasco in Seattle.

The other two pieces were much longer feature profiles done really well. "Dabo Swinney travels long road to restore Clemson to prominence" was done by Dan Wetzel for Yahoo Sports and chronicles Swinney's incredibly trying childhood and how it's guided his efforts as a head coach.

Final story to mention was a riveting piece by Tommy Tomlinson posted last week to Sports on Earth. "Minus One" is on Tulane safety Devon Walker who suffered a broken neck playing earlier this season and is portrayed in glowing terms by Tomlinson.

"Triburbia" by Karl Taro Greenfeld

Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld is a fictional slice-of-life work from a guy who I’ve previously found to have written great non-fiction for various magazines.

I had high hopes for the book based on Greenfeld and found myself captivated by his descriptions of many characters in the book and was looking forward while reading to seeing how everyone would come together.

The web of relationships between everyone was interesting to see develop, but issue I had is things never really seemed to come together in any conclusion. Basically, it struck me as really good character based fiction, but lacking in an additional compelling plot.

That said, there were great characters in the book and I agree with Jay McInerney who in his New York Times review of Triburbia wrote of Greenfeld's excellent description of Cooper, the 4th grade despot.

Writers on Writing - Stout, Jones, Gutkind, Boo, Streitfeld

There’s been quite a few solid pieces I've come across lately that deal in the subject of writers and their writing.

A profile of someone knee deep in the writing industry was "Glenn Stout Lives Way Up There" for The Classical. Really interesting piece on a guy who’s taken a fairly meandering path in his writing (including his now 20 plus years as series editor of the excellent Best American Sports Writing books).

In terms of some of the nuts and bolts around producing great narrative non-fiction were three different pieces. For Guernica Magazine, there was “Reporting Poverty:Emily Brennan interviews Katherine Boo”. Really interesting content from the journalist who wrote her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, out of time spent with people in the slums of Mumbai. Additionally, posted to the site Gangry is a Q&A with Esquire and ESPN writer Chris Jones on both his own writing and journalism in general. It was solid stuff from Jones that brings to mind some of his past dishing on writing. Third piece around producing narrative non-fiction was by Lee Gutkind, author of the recently published You Can't Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction--from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between”. Posted to the New York Times website was Gutkind’s interesting piece “The Yellow Test” about the importance of writing scenes when producing compelling non-fiction.

Finally, a couple of other interesting things I came across lately were mention of a writing conference and another New York Times piece. The conference is East Meets West: A Gathering of Literary Journalists in mid-November at Cal Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and New York Times piece was written by David Streitfeld. Titled “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy”, it’s on the practice of writers paying for reviews (not surprising that these purchased reviews tend to be positive) to sites like Amazon.

Businessweek Features: on Elon Musk, Distributed Work & College Tuition Grants

Three different Businessweek features stood out lately as being on particularly interesting topics.

In particular, the latest cover story of "Elon Musk, the 21st Century Industrialist" by Ashlee Vance was a solid piece of writing on a compelling guy.

From the same issue was a feature by Brad Stone titled "My Life as a TaskRabbit" on the new "distributed workforce" with people bidding on one-time odd jobs needed done by others. As Stone details, the industry and it's players including TaskRabbit, Postmates and Cherry utilizes technology such as smart phones to systematize what began with Craig's List odd job postings.

Finally, a prior issue of Businessweek contained "The Debt-Free College Degree" by Melba Newsome. It was an interesting look at the much in the news escalating cost of higher education and how places like Davidson College are moving towards need-based grants and away from student loans.

"Alaskan Travels" by Edward Hoagland

Alaskan Travels by Edward Hoagland was written as a sort of travelogue of the time Hoagland spent in the Alaska some 30 years ago while in his early 50s and had at times hard to follow writing, but that was on a topic of interest.

In the book, Hoagland recounts stories of both time spent in Anchorage as well as off the beaten path in other areas of the state. From interviews conducted in Anchorage, Hoagland recounts the stories of business leaders and developers such as Bob Penny, Bob Uchitel, Larry Carr and Pete Zamarello.

Outside of the state's (by far) largest city is where the majority of the book is focused, though, with Hoagland and his travelling companion health care professional going to some of the more remote areas where she would diagnose, catalog and care for tuberculosis. It’s noted in the book that were some 100 cases of TB statewide, but with the remoteness of the places they travelled to, Hoagland’s companion often because the default general care provider and the two of them as white people were very much minorities in many places visited.

It was interesting reading of people Hoagland came across living their lives different than most (at least different than most living in a City environment) and his depiction of the changes in lives and culture pretty compelling. In many areas jobs and industry hadn’t really come, but what had were the trappings of modern life in the form of television and alcohol. For younger villagers, this exposure to modern life was oftentimes causing them to go away from subsistence living and Hoagland had an interesting anecdote of older Eskimos often being the buyers at fur sales because the young people don't deal with that sort of thing anymore.

Definitely some interesting content in the book, but some of the areas were not so compelling and the difficulty I had following certain sections made me think favorably back on some of the other books I’ve read on Alaska and enjoyed more… with fiction efforts being Journey by James Michener and Call of the Wild by Jack London and an excellent nonfiction book Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins.

Outside Magazine Pieces by Bruce Barcott and Tom Vanderbilt & Nat Geo story by Michael Finkel

There were two piece of writing that stood out from the September issue of Outside Magazine... with one of them finally now posted online with the October issue having been published.

Larger of the two stories was "The Devil on Paradise Road" by Bruce Barcott and it featured the heading "It started as a bluebird New Year's Day in Mount Rainier National Park. But when a gunman murdered a ranger and then fled back into the park's frozen backcountry, every climber, skier, and camper became a suspect—and a potential victim." Extremely captivating writing reminiscent of the Bob Friel story "The Vanishing" from Outside earlier this year.

The other piece from this Sept edition of outside was also solid writing, but first caught my attention more for the writer himself than the subject. Tom Vanderbilt, author of the excellent surprise bestseller, Traffic (which I reviewed back in 2008) wrote "Born in the USA" on the business trend towards manufacturing being done in the U.S., otherwise known as insourcing.

Not from Outside, but on the same type of "living different than most" topic Outside frequently writes on was another piece of really good writing to note here. For the August issue of National Geographic, Michael Finkel did "Tibet’s Golden 'Worm'" on the caterpillar fungus known as yartsa (or "worms") found only in the high mountains of Tibet and sought after in Asian cultures for it's supposed healing qualities. Terribly interesting subject described well by Finkel.

Danger of Football Pieces by Melissa Segura, Gregg Doyel & Patrick Hruby

There were three recent pieces on the danger of football that were each excellent and made me think of past solid writing I've linked to on the harm that can come from the sport.

First of the pieces to mention was the cover article from last week's Sports Illustrated, "The Other Half Of The Story" by Melissa Segura. Riveting content on the damage caused by football as seen through the partners/caretakers of three ex-players, Jim McMahon, Dave Kocourek and Ray Easterling.

Second was a story I just came across tonight, "Tulsa doctor stays calm in scary situation, thanks to emergency training" by Gregg Doyel for CBS Sports. About the lifesaving care administered on the field last weekend to Tulane football player Devon Walker, it's profound stuff on a calamity all too possible to occur on the field.

Additinally there was the simply titled "Game Over" by Patrick Hruby. Written for Sports on Earth, the recently launched joint venture between USA Today and MLB Advanced Media, it's well reasoned prose on why Hruby can't enjoy football anymore and won't be watching this fall.

It's not surprising to read of this being Hruby's feeling given past pieces from him I've linked to such as "Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?" and "End Game: Brain Trauma And The Future Of Youth Football In America", but he's not the only writer to do excellent work on the subject. The two pieces that come to mind which I've noted in the past are from J.R. Moehringer with "Football is dead. Long live football" and "The Boy Who Died of Football" from Thomas Lake.

Just a tough subject... there's certainly a lot of different ways that people can get hurt and a lot of sports that can cause harm, but football seems to stand perhaps with only boxing or MMA for company as sports that each and every play involve potentially concussive events.

Mark Singer on marathon fraud & writer discussion of it

There was a fascinating piece in The New Yorker last month followed by an equally compelling writer discussion of the story, it's merits and shortcomings.

Piece itself was "Marathon Man" by Mark Singer and features the writer framing and pursuing the question "Is Kip Litton a Marathon Fraud?" in relation to his claims of marathon exploits. Similar to the story my last blog post about, Litton's history as chronicled by Singer traffics in the unbelievable, but also includes Litton being resolute about his claims in the face of all evidence against them... really to the point of making one question whether he delusional.

It was a tremendously interesting piece by Singer that brings the reader forward with a vested interest in finding the truth about Litton, his actions and motivations.

To this point, I heard of the piece from a Twitter link to Gangrey, a writing site by Tampa Times writer Ben Montgomery. The site often features writers discussing pieces of note and in this case, Sports Illustrated writer Thomas Lake posted on "Marathon Man" and launched a back and forth dialogue with Wright Thompson from ESPN as well as other writers I admire. Very thought out and understandable points of view from all the comments posted and excellent reading for those interested in the writing process.

"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

Recently heard of the film and saw the movie trailer for Life of Pi, coming out late November and directed by Ang Lee.



Based on the Yann Martel book Life of Pi, it hopefully will tell as compelling and fantastic story as in the 2002 bestseller. Was just a very cool work of fiction that afterwards leaves someone thinking back on the events and will be very interesting to see how it translates to film.

Businessweek Writing - Greenfeld on ESPN / Stone on Marissa Mayer / Bennett on Social+Capital VC Fund

Three excellent features from Businessweek to highlight here...

The most recent issue included "ESPN: Everywhere Sports Profit Network" by the excellent Karl Taro Greenfeld, whose writing first came across and posted on some 3 1/2 year ago. I've since linked to a few Greenfeld features for BW over the last year or two and just like the other work, this ESPN piece is thorough and interesting. In many ways, it reminded me of the James Andrew Miller & Tom Shales book Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN that I read and reviewed last year. Just remarkable to read in Greenfeld's story of the growth at ESPN with "headcount doubling in the last 7 years to 12,000 employees worldwide" and think of how influentation the company was already back in the last 90's when we we would discuss it in business school.

The two other Businessweek features to note in this post were from a few months back with "Yahoo: Help Us, Marissa Mayer. You're Our Only Hope" by Brad Stone and "Social+Capital, the League of Extraordinarily Rich Gentlemen" by Drake Bennett.

Stone is similar to Greenfeld in that I like and look forward to his writing and he provides a fairly short and interesting look at the former Google exec and now Yahoo CEO.

In the Bennett story, he profiles the Venture Capital Fund led by former Facebooker Chamath Palihapitiya and backed in part by Silicon Valley heavyweights Kevin Rose and Peter Thiel. Solid piece on an interesting fund build on the idea of backing companies trying to accomplishing something good... and yep, in reference to the title of Bennett's piece, the fund backers and leaders have done very well in past ventures.

"The Hunger Games" Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

After reading the first two books and most of the third back in late May, finally finished Mockingjay, the third book in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy.



The Hunger Games books are in the same Young Adult fiction category as the Twilight novels by Stephenie Meyer and while I agree with Stephen King's assessment of The Hunger Games as being being more well written, it did seem the books from Collins followed a similar downward path as those from Meyer.

The later Twilight books often had a theme of overall weepiness and "can't live if living is without you" and in a similar fashion, the first Hunger Games book seemed the best and the second and especially third just had too many scenes where it hard to follow exactly what was going on. Fast paced can certainly be a good thing in writing, but just too many confusing spots particularly in Mockingjay as the third book.

I saw The Hunger Games movie first, enjoyed it quite a bit and then thought excellent the book it was based on. The second book Catching Fire still seemed fairly solid and then I just didn't care for Mockingjay very much.

Solid Writing from Sports Illustrated on Baseball & ESPN on Football

There's four excellent pieces of sports writing to note here with two from ESPN the Magazine and two from Sports Illustrated.

The ESPN features came from the September 3 NFL Preview issue and both dealt extremely well with the important and much discussed idea of the negatives of the game weighed against the positives. The lead story was a J.R. Moehringer essay "Football is dead. Long live football" that featured the subtitle "Concussions, lawsuits, death -- but fans are still cheering" followed by 120 points to consider about America's most popular sport.

Additionally, David Fleming wrote the piece "Neither saint nor sinner" that looks at Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita and the suspension the NFL gave him from the Bountygate scandal while he was a New Orleans Saint. Tremendously interesting story that similar to the Moehringer piece delves into the good as well as dark side of pro football.

Switching to a different sport, two Sports Illustrated pieces a few months apart shared for me the common bond of being very good writing about baseball superstars. The recent August 27 issue had Angels 21 year old outfield Mike Trout on the cover and the story within was "Kid Dynamite" by Tom Verducci. It was an well written piece and brought to mind past pieces I've linked to on phenoms Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg and Trevor Bauer.

Going a while back in time, but also on a baseball superstar was the June 11 SI cover story "The Curse Of Bigness" by S.L. Price on Josh Hamilton. The piece featured the same type of great in-depth writing that Price seems to always provide and showed a fascinating portrait of Hamilton. Some of the stories told showed character tendencies towards the dramatic and attention craving and that certainly doesn't make Hamilton a bad guy, but does seem to tie into his past drug and alcohol addictions and the possibility (certainly not the guarantee, but possibility) of future struggles.

Great Tennis Writing from John Jeremiah Sullivan & S.L. Price

There was an excellent profile of Venus and Serena Williams recently that brought to mind another solid piece of writing following Serena's Wimbledon championship last month.

The recent story was the remarkable "Venus and Serena Against the World" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times and piece last month on the Sports Illustrated website "Emotion and all, Williams breaks through for fifth Wimbledon" by S.L. Price.

Two exemplary writers who did revealing work under entirely different circumstances, Sullivan as a feature profile and Price a shorter match recap that he still managed to put a lot of heft into. Both highly recommended.

Sports Illustrated Writing: from Layden, Jenkins & Wertheim

There's been a few cases of Sports Illustrated writing lately that stood out as excellent and can be linked to (an additional solid story from the recent issue should be online in about a week).

From the August 20 College Football preview issue was a profile of USC quarterback Matt Barkley as well as a piece on a horrific injury and the two University of Georgia baseball players involved.

The Barkley piece is titled "Trophy Life" and in it, Lee Jenkins writes a thorough look at the Heisman Trophy contender. Striking from the feature was the friendship detailed between the USC signal caller and a man 70 years his elder, Olympic athlete and Japanese POW Louie Zamperini. It's an odd connection, but Barkley being close to the awe-inspiring subject of one of my favorite books of the year, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, seems reason to like him.

The other piece of note from this Aug 20 issue was "Why Ask Why?" from Jon Wertheim. It's a powerful story on Zach Cone and Jonathan Taylor and the paralyzing injury suffered by Taylor after they collided going for an outfield fly ball. Wertheim reveals in the story a remarkable resiliency from Taylor... as well another UGA baseball player paralyzed not long before.

Final SI piece to note here was from the website rather than the magazine. Following on the heels of my blog post a few weeks back on great Olympic writing was a story featuring two of my two favorite story lines out of the London Games. From Tim Layden, "In a Games filled with memorable moments, few resonate like Bolt" covers of course the accomplishments of the great sprinter, but also the double gold by U.K. distance runner Mo Farah (who had been featured in one of the earlier pieces of excellent writing noted). Excellent writing from Layden on two amazing athletes.

"Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey" by Todd Denault

Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey was a book that I wanted to enjoy more than I actually did. Written by Todd Denault, it's a biography of the Hall of Famer best known for becoming the first NHL goalie to wear a mask.



While I was drawn to the subject, the book itself didn't really hold my interest as it struck me as too much of a collection of "this happened and then that happened" event recaps. It definitely seemed to be extremely well reported (especially for a first book from Denault), but I found it lacked the heart of other hockey writing, like by Jack Falla, that I enjoyed quite a bit. Interesting to me, this criticism I had of the book was also said (down to the Falla book comparison) in a review I came across online... with that review having a more positive impression.

Things may potentially have changed later in the book as I set it aside a third of the way through, but just not enough human drama to compel me to keep going.

College Football Pieces by Rick Bragg, Wright Thompson & Kevin Van Valkenburg for ESPN

Three features from the Aug 20 ESPN the Magazine College Football preview stood out to me as excellent.

Lengthiest was the profile "Urban Meyer will be home for dinner" on the Ohio State head coach. It's an excellent piece by Wright Thompson that delves into whether Meyer will be able to coach at the level he's accustomed to while avoiding the deterioration in health and loss of family time that plagued him at Florida. It's definitely a question with an unknown outcome and Thompson frames it exceptionally well (with a Thompson interview about the piece here).

Also from this issue was another another excellent profile revealing internal conflict. From Kevin Van Valkenburg, "Who's afraid of the Honey Badger?" is on Tyrann Mathieu, the now dismissed from the team Heisman trophy finalist for LSU. It's fascinating to know that Van Valkenburg wrote this piece questioning whether Mathieu's story "the beginning of a cautionary tale?" prior to him getting booted from the Tigers.

Final story that stood out was from Rick Bragg with "Down here: To understand football's place in the South, you first have to see it from the inside." Reminiscent of the Warren St. John book Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania, it shows (for better or worse) just how much college football matters to people in SEC country.

Writers on Writing - from Thompson, Whitehead & Stout

I've come across a few different pieces lately that feature some really solid content by writers on how they do (or have done) their work. Most recent was insight from Wright Thompson of ESPN via an interview he did with Brandon Sneed titled "Can Urban Meyer Really Make It Home For Dinner? Wright Thompson On Profiling The Man Who Can't Quit Coaching." Sneed is a freelance writer who has published in a number of major magazines and I've linked a number of times to his website... particularly when like is the case here it's to interviews he does with writers dishing on their craft. It's excellent stuff from Thompson, with two of most interesting things being the description of how much work he puts in to his writing and the importance of caring about your subject and what you write (which brought to mind a similar perspective from Anne Lamott).

Also of interest in the craft of writing category was a recent New York Times piece "How to Write" by Colson Whitehead. With 10 (well, 11 sort of) rules for writing, it's insightful content from the acclaimed novelist.

Finally, it's a different angle on the topic, but another excellent piece I've seen of late on writing was by Glenn Stout, series editor of the Best American Sports Writing books. On his blog "Verbplow: Where I Turn Words Over" Stout posted "How I became a writer: a true story." Super fascinating missive by a guy who sought out and then seized an opportunity.

Favorite Olympic Writing So Far

There's quite possibly been better pieces that have been and are still to be written on the London Olympics, but a few have stood out to me so far for the subject covered and/or excellence of prose.

In the category of post-event recap writing was Bruce Arthur for Toronto's National Post newspaper with "Canada delivers something worth remembering in Olympic soccer loss to U.S." Really great work done quickly.

With an insightful and important take from the Olympics was the Jen Floyd Engel column "Games of the Girls? Not really" for Fox Sports.

Finally, two additional pieces that stood out were "Painful, Poignant Memories of 1992" by Joe Posnanski for the site Sports on Earth and "Olympics 2012: Rupp follows good friend Farah to podium in 10K" by Pat Graham in the Washington Times. Both were short works of writing that covered tremendously cool events on the track.

Two great pieces on light and dark side of football - by Wright Thompson & Patrick Hruby

There's two pieces of writing I've seen lately that take completely different approaches to looking at football and which seem equally well done and true.

With the view of football as a fan experience is "Pulled Pork & Pigskin: a Love Letter to Southern Football" by Wright Thompson for ESPN. The piece is from 2007 and covers all that's great about college football, particularly in the states that care about it the most. The pageantry, the fan devotion, the gameday traditions... all chronicled by Thompson in a way that reminds me of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird (which I reviewed the other day) urging a writing approach of reverence to the subject.

Not necessarily exactly on the flip side, but with an approach looking at the player rather than fan experience was a recent Patrick Hruby feature for The Washingtonian. "Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?" is on the impact of concussions in the sport and tells the at times gut-wrenching piece of a Virginia high school player. Hruby often writes of the darker side of sports (with the most recent piece I've linked to being on the business of sports) and it's solid writing he provides on Trenum, the dangers of concussions and things any parent of a concussed young athlete should be aware of.

Again, both very different pieces, but both excellent in their own right.

"Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

In the oldie but goodie category is Anne Lamott's 1995 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life about... both of those things.



I head about the book from author Chris Guillebeau who recommended Bird by Bird for anyone wanting to write better and found myself drawn to not only Lamott's views on writing but also her take on the world. I like interesting contradictions in people and Lamott comes across as religious (with her citing C.S. Lewis and his Surprised by Joy as an influence), profane, funny and with good insight. One thing that particularly stuck with me was how she seems to see the world with reverence and have that come across in her writing. At the same time that she write with wonder, though, she very much writes her world, with all it's warts.

In terms of the more nuts and bolts advice she gives around writing, the biggest notion that stands out is a writer writes. It's appointment work that requires putting in the time and good writing something that often can come when you just keep writing and then gleam the good out of the bad. The eloquent (and memorable) phrase used by Lamott is "shitty first drafts." Not to cause injury patting myself on the back, but this idea very much reminds me of the process of writing college English papers way back when... actually, just prior to the original publican of Bird by Bird.

Lamott also notes that if stuck on what to write about, someone should narrow down as much as possible (with the idea of "writing through a one inch frame") and just start describing. She recommends giving yourself short assignments about things as random as school lunches from childhood and people interacted with. The point is to just get started... with the Bird by Bird title coming from Lamott's father telling her brother how to get a report on birds done.

Just a very cool book that strikes me as a kind of (extremely honest, warts and all) love letter about writing by someone who has also taught classes on the subject. She also references the writer as a chronicler of events who stands apart and takes notes as things occur (or just occur to them) and the benefit of writing groups for people who take on this at times solitary pursuit.

Whether someone writes for a living, hopes to, or just loves to write, Lamott notes the reward for a writer in daily work done with devotion and commitment. It's not so important what's written and especially not important what the work starts out being (again, "shitty first drafts"), just to sit down, write... and then repeat the process.

Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism Part 2 - on Joe Paterno & Freeh report

After the Penn State scandal first broke and now convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky was indicted, I did the blog post "Penn State Crimes, Moral Failures & Journalism" linking to a few pieces of great writing on the horrific subject. It's now been a few weeks since the Freeh report came out putting a large amount of blame on late coach Joe Paterno for knowingly covering up Sandusky's crimes and especially in the few days after the report published, there was some new remarkable writing done that's very much worth linking to.

The first two pieces that come to mind were by preeminent sports writers on how they were deceived by Sandusky. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote "Joe Paterno, at the end, showed more interest in his legacy than Jerry Sandusky’s victims" and Rick Reilly "The sins of the father" for ESPN. Both were very well written and an additional column that stood out at the time was "The Deadspin Five-Point Plan To Rescue Penn State Football" by Drew Magary for Deadspin. Magary generally writes very funny stuff and his piece was both caustic as well as seemingly spot-on.

In line with my blog post idea of preserving some of the best writing on the subject were two posts I came across by others. On his personal tumbler site, LA Times writer Baxter Holmes did "Round-up of fine sentences, part 36 (feat. pieces written about Penn State/Joe Paterno)" and Wired Magazine contributing editor Jason Fagone published "The 5 best and 5 worst sentences written about Penn State in the aftermath of the Freeh Report" on his blog. Both noted some excellent work and Fagone's piece especially stood out with his analysis of the writing he found notable.

Finally, it's another approach altogether, but I thought excellent a recent ESPN The Magazine back page column by Chris Jones. Titled "Statue of limitations" it looks at the now mothballed statue of Paterno and the craftsman who built it. It was an interesting story idea and very well written work.

"Start Something That Matters" by Blake Mycoskie

In his book Start Something That Matters, TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie provides a solid business book by guy who appears to genuinely believe in helping others.

TOMS is known for it's One for One practice of giving away a pair of shoe (often via Shoe Drops to needy children) for each pair ordered and Mycoskie in the book provides an interesting tale of his background and thoughts about succeeding in business while also doing good.

He began starting companies at 19 and TOMS came out of a trip to Argentina in which Mycoskie saw both huge numbers of children without shoes and a local shoe that he felt could be adapted and sold in the US. The combination of this philanthropic goal with the intent of a for-profit shoe company turned into what the company is today.

In terms of content in the book, Mycoskie provides some solid ideas for success and references examples of their utilization both by himself and others. Method Products is noted as company which (just like TOMS) uses the power of an authentic story to build towards success and the casual dining chain Chipotle brought up as a company founded and run around simple ideas executed on well. Additionally, Charity: water is noted as being a philanthropic organization that's done great work in part due to it's incredibly open and transparent approach to where donations are spent.

Also noted as important by Mycoskie are the ideas of facing ones fears (with him referencing Tim Ferriss writing about worst case scenarios not being that bad) and the huge import of employee trust and morale. The idea from Mycoskie was that the better a company's employees feel about their jobs, the better business will be... which follows very much in line with the idea I've long felt that how employees treat customers is a reflection on how they're treated by management.

A couple of other things mentioned that Mycoskie didn't devote as many words to, but still seemed of import were writing down ideas as they come to you and living simply... with owning as little as possible. Both solid concepts within what was an excellent book by someone doing good work.

Writing Posts Done

After last month doing a post titled "Business Topics of Interest (& Companies) Written On So Far", it seemed to make sense to also write on some of the things posted about in another area my book segmented into, Writing.

There's been 50 different posts that have Writing as a tag and the contents of them seem to fall into the categories of either (A) accomplished writers dishing on their work or (B) my ruminations on writing as an activity.

Wisdom gleamed from accomplished writers:

Spending the time writing - Biggest thing I saw time and time again written on the topic of writing is if you want to be a writer (or improve as one), just write… and then write more. Between the Internet and available ways to self-publish books, there's avenues to have work seen, but you have to actually be doing writing for those available avenues to matter. Something that seems to be repeated over and over by writers discussing their work is they don’t always produce great work, but they just keep at it. Part of the concept around writing is the importance of rewriting... write it, then write it again, then write more, then repeat, and oh yeah... writers have to read a lot as well.

Writing as building something - Another concept I've seen noted by many different writers is the idea of building a story. This takes difference forms ranging from the importance of researching and reporting to outlining and editing, but the idea is to keep in mind that the work isn't just letting flowery prose flow onto the page... it's often to utilize planning, structure, and a methodical approach to writing works (and rework).

The importance of subject - It may be an obvious point, but good writing on something people don't care about is going to have a lot less impact that something solid on a topic of interest. Going into this idea of interesting... there's both the traditional interesting of a celebrity or sports star, but also a lot of interesting stories on people and things less known, whether they be someone doing dangerous pursuits (which can be very interesting) or just something a bit different than normal.

Having writing matter to you - One thing that I've seen written about often is the need to actually love writing and words to if you're going to spend significant time trying to create good writing. Part of this is the work produced will be better if you care about it, but part of it is writing one of those pursuits that someone may do well, but not get fully recognized or rewarded for (this piece by John Hyduk seems to resonate on the topic). Point is that if writing your thing, then yes, bills have to get paid, but there should also be intrinsic value in the writing itself.

My ramblings on writing:

Some of the posts done where I did the most expository musing on writing are those noted below...

- "Words Written Down Book Process" - posted March 2012

- "Working Towards Something - a Career in Writing" - posted June 2011

- "Wanting to Do Something Not Being Done - Writing as a Career" - posted June 2011

- "Writers Write... And Not Always Well" - posted September 2010

- "How We Value Things & Entertain Ourselves - Roger Ebert on Huck Finn vs a Great Video Game" - posted July 2010

- "Words Written Down - The School Days" posted July 2010

- "Permanence of Words" - posted June 2010

Lots of great stuff from others and lots of personal ramblings that I enjoyed writing.

Writing & Writing Process Pieces by Clay Travis, Family Business, @Bigsportswriter, Chris Jones, Jennifer Khan and Jen A. Miller

With the topic of Writing and it's production being one of the content areas I've posted on, I've come across a slew of interesting web pages lately that cover this fabled idea of getting words on a page.

Three of the pieces group together for me as being fascinating takes on the state of online writing today, particularly sports writing on the web. Clay Travis provided "Outkick the Coverage Reaches One Year Old: Thanks to all of you" and it features a lot of great content around the monetization of good writing on the web... and how the people actually producing the writing fare at getting those dollars. Additionally, two other pieces go heavily into the state of written discourse and what actually gets attention in writing, again, particularly sports and particularly on the Internet. "The Aughts Internet Is Over" from the Tumblr blog Family Business and "@BIGSPORTSWRITER On the State of Sports Discussion: 'The Great Ones Are Weary of Those Who Read Them'" posted on Brandon Sneed's blog both feature really good topics to ruminate on.

Three additional pieces (or posts on a site in one case) that stood out to me lately cover a different area on the subject of writing. There's a "Q&A with Chris Jones on his writing" published by Jonah Weiner on his website, "The Science (Not Art) of the Magazine Pitch" from Stanford Journalism Professor Jennifer Khan and finally the blog on freelance writer Jen A. Miller's website.

Great content in all six of these pieces/sources and it may be a generalization to say, but the first few seemed to stand out more as having interesting philosophical takes on writing and the latter had more nuts and bolts content around writing.

Esquire writing - Junod on Obama, Jones on Renner & pieces on the stock market & OLED TVs

The August 2012 issue of Esquire had some excellent content... with one feature in the brilliant writing category and then three additional pieces that stood out as interesting.




The brilliant writing category piece was "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama" by Tom Junod and it's, well... brilliant. I can't say that I'm in any way outraged by the drone killing strategy, but it is a fascinating and important topic that Junod lays out for the reader exceptionally well and with an interesting approach.

The pieces that didn't necessarily reach the same level of prose (which isn't disparaging at all), but still covered some interesting topics were by Chris Jones, Ken Kurson and Peter Martin. Jones did a celebrity profile of Jeremy Renner and "Each Time Slightly Bigger, Slightly Braver" provided a different than expected view of the action star as a home flipper extraordinaire.

Two short and just plain interesting (yet again, that word) pieces from this issue were "But, Soft! What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?" with Kurson's expectation of a post-election stock market rise come November (regardless of who wins) and "The TV That Lets You See Everything" by Martin on the OLED follow-up to High Definition TVs.

Esquire an excellent magazine and lots of good stuff in this recent issue.

Time Magazine Cover Story on Military Suicides

Very profound cover story in the latest issue of Time Magazine that brought to mind other pieces from Time on the same subject.



The recent feature by Nancy Gibbs & Mark Thompson was titled "The War On Suicide?" and details the epidemic of suicides among current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors cite current statistics of one active duty suicide a day and one every 80 minutes among all veterans, but go beyond the horrifying numbers to detail the personal stories of several recent suicides by active duty servicemen. Just painful reading the depiction from a surviving spouse of mental health help that was sought in vain within the military.

Along these lines, the piece very much brought to mind some past Time features I've noted and linked to by the same writers. Mark Thompson penned in April 2009 "Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?" and in December of the same year I did this blog post on the Nancy Gibbs Time cover story "Terrified or Terrorist?" about Fort Hood shooter Nadal Hasan. Both works very much shared with the recent cover story a commonality of showing an active duty military culture of pushing forward and not showing weakness or a need for help.

On the same subject, but with actually a positive take-away was the December 2010 piece "Bringing Dogs to Heal: Care for Veterans with PTSD" by Mark Thompson and then in November 2011, I wrote a blog post featuring another Thompson Time cover story "The Other 1%" about the all too frequent disconnect between non military personnel and those who serve or have served.

It's an extremely difficult problem with no easy solution, but Gibbs and Thompson have done excellent work shedding light on the situation and need for greater efforts by the military at helping it's own.

Writing from latest Sports Illustrated issue - by Gary Smith, David Epstein and Lee Jenkins

There was some really solid writing on remarkable people in the latest "Where Are They Now?" issue of Sports Illustrated.

Longest piece was a feature by Gary Smith titled "Why Don't More Athletes Take A Stand?" on a University of Virginia walk-on football player taking part in a hunger strike to protest the low wages of many University service employees. It's the same type of eloquent writing Smith known for and tells the story of Wonman Joseph Williams while addressing some much larger questions about athletes and contribution to a cause.

From the "Where Are They Now?" section of the issue came two additional pieces of note... both well written and one on an interesting subject, the other on a truly remarkable one. In the interesting subject category was the Lee Jenkins piece "Life's Roses (and Sausages)" on former University of Texas and Houston Oilers running back Earl Campbell. The former Heisman Trophy winner has certainly been through a lot and it's pretty compelling reading on him.

The other piece from this edition of SI that stood out was "The Strength To Carry On" by David Epstein. Just an amazing piece on Nazi death camp survivor Ben Helfgott. After liberation from a concentration camp at 15, Helfgott became one of 732 Jewish orphans brought to group homes in England. They became known as The Boys and through their lives have accomplished quite a bit together in terms of philanthropy and sharing their stories of success... with the 1996 Martin Gilbert book The Boys as a record of it. Well written stuff from Epstein in this SI piece and again, an amazing story.

Time Magazine Pieces - on Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts / Elon Musk / Howard Schultz

There's been a few tremendously interesting pieces of writing from Time Magazine lately to note here.

Cover story from the most recent issue was "Roberts Rules: What the Health Care Decision Means for the Country" by the always solid David Von Drehle. About the deciding vote cast and rationale behind it from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, it's informative writing on what seems to be an extremely measured decision.

Two feature pieces from the past month or two that also stood out as well written pieces on interesting topics were about business efforts from Elon Musk and Howard Schultz respectively. Jeffrey Kluger wrote "Rocket Man" on the founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX who has had big months at each company he leads and Bill Saporito provided "Starbucks' Big Mug" on efforts to both grow the business and aid the economy overall.

Interesting writing in each piece on big steps taken by both company leaders.

"The Startup of You" by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha

Following on the heels of recent good books with career guidance I've seen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman co-wrote with Ben Casnocha The Startup of You. It's a solid read with quite a bit around people being solely responsible for their career... regardless of whether they're entrepreneurs or an employee.



There's a lot that could be gleamed from the book with the principle ideas I took away from each chapter noted below...

Chapter 1: All humans are entrepreneurs
To the idea behind the chapter title, point is made in the book that the business strategies of successful startup companies often mirror strategies employed by successful people in a career.

Chapter 2: Develop a competitive advantage
Hoffman and Casnocha write about how one's career strategy should be a combination of (A) their assets, (B) aspirations and (C) market realities. Additionally, they cover the importance of someone developing a competitive career advantage (and being able to describe it)... with it oftentimes best to have that advantage or focus area as narrow as possible (an idea I've seen written about previously).

Chapter 3 - Plan to adapt
An idea put forth in the book is people should start to do the things they find interesting and see where it goes, but do so within a framework. To this point, Hoffman & Casnocha describe "ABZ planning"... with A as what someone is doing now, B what they pivot to, and Z their fallback career option. Its also noted that this Z planning can mean the worst case scenario to a career move often isn't that terrible (another idea I've previously noted others writing on).

Chapter 4 - It takes a network
Casnocha and of course Hoffman believe in the idea of LinkedIn as a facilitation tool towards a larger principle of network building and usage... with a focus on genuine networks built around helping rather than simply a focus on what can be gained from a relationship. They note that this network strengthening can come from simply putting oneself out there through regular sharing on social networks. In terms of benefit that might eventually result from this network building and helping others, the authors note how its often not first, but second or third level connections (as shown on LinkedIn) that get people jobs.

Chapter 5 - Pursue breakout opportunities
Two ideas out of this chapter are to look for networks of interesting people and to budget time for personal improvement... or network/relationship development.

Chapter 6 - Take intelligent risks
Interesting concept from this chapter was around developing a strategy of small risk taking to help prevent big risks from occurring or feeling so large... i.e. small fires prevent the large burn.

Chapter 7 - Who you know is what you know
Last chapter before the Conclusion contains the idea that it's the management of information that really counts (with LinkedIn Signal as a tool to use). Additionally noted is the value of being a go to person in a particular area... which brings to mind the aforementioned idea of going narrow in focus / competitive advantage development.

Overall it was an excellent read and the website Startup of You has an additional resources section which includes an executive summary of the book as well as PDF of LinkedIn usage tips.

"The Voodoo Wave" by Mark Kreidler

Written by ESPN writer and San Francisco area radio host Mark Kreidler, The Voodoo Wave was an entertaining book on Maverick's in all its forms... an extreme surf spot off the coast of Half Moon Bay, CA, collection of elite surfers who ride its waves and business venture.



Big wave surfing as a subject was very much in line with one of my favorite books from 2010, The Wave by Susan Casey, and while I thought the writing from Casey perhaps a bit more lyrical, Kreidler seems to have put in solid journalist legwork and provides a very interesting read.

The content about the surfing and surfers themselves was pretty riveting and included depictions of Maverick's surfing godfather Jeff Clark who first rode and then made known its waves, Grant Washburn and Chris Bertish. The business end of Maverick's was perhaps equally interesting with the tale of Keir Beadling, CEO of Mavericks Surf Ventures, and his efforts to create a profitable consumer brand out of the intended to be annual big wave surf contest.

While certainly not as inspiring as the surfers themselves, Beadling comes across in the book as a somewhat sympathetic character with his efforts to make a business while working with the dualities provided by the other people involved. As a direct partner with Beadling, there was Jeff Clark himself... who seemed a solid guy, but who wanted to both get paid and run things completely his way. To this end, Kreidler mentions Clark feeling a bit snubbed by the money and accolades accorded some involved in the excellent surfing documentary movie Riding Giants that he was heavily featured in. Additionally, there was the talent provided by the surfers actually competing in the contest, many of whom didn't mind the idea of making a living at it, but were focused on the love of big wave surfing and not necessarily winning (or even competing in if too corporate and not enjoyable) a big wave contest one day a year.

Definitely fascinating topics that Kreidler did a good job of covering both wide and narrow and quoted a few times in the book as someone else that's covered and published about Maverick's was San Francisco Chronicle writer Bruce Jenkins.

Writing from Across the Web - including Michael Mooney on bowler Bill Fong & Obituary of Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld

As I was posting earlier today on writing taken from Atlanta Magazine, The Daily Beast and FlipCollective, it occurred to me how many different places feature great writing.

With links provided via Twitter, stories from across the web are so much more accessible than in the past and I'm finding great work on sites such as TVFury and Noble Failures as well as those from freelance sports writer Brandon Sneed and Tampa Bay Times writer Michael Kruse.

To this concept of great writing I never would have found without Twitter, two brilliant pieces lately were from D Magazine and The Telegraph.

From the Dallas-area magazine came "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" by Michael Mooney. It's a remarkable look at recreational bowler Bill Fong and his efforts to bowl only the 22nd verified 900 series with back to back to back 300 games.

The Telegraph piece is an obituary with the synopsis "Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, who has died aged 88, escaped from Occupied France to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE); parachuted back on sabotage missions, he twice faced execution, only to escape on both occasions, once dressed as a Nazi guard." Yep, the rest of the piece is... like that.

Businessweek Pieces - on Workday, Nuance, MemSQL & Microsoft Surface Tablet

There's been several pieces of Businessweek writing that stood out lately with the largest a feature by Ashlee Vance on the Pleasanton, CA based company Workday. Titled "The Two Horsemen of the Enterprise Software Apocalypse" it's a detailed look at the fast growing company (and noted Oracle competitor) in the internal business and employee management software space.

Also from Vance recently was "Why Microsoft's Surface Tablet Shames the PC Industry" on the latest hardware entry from the technology giant and "Enterprise Technology: Revenge of the Nerdiest Nerds" on data center software company MemSQL.

Final BW piece from the last few weeks to note was the interesting "Why Nuance Is Giving It Away" by Olga Kharif. Nuance is a company I'd heard of years ago and they're now perhaps best known for providing the voice recognition software used in Siri by Apple.

Profound Writing - Cooper on Coming Out, Rehagen on New Fatherhood & Dinard on a Lifesaving Event

There's been a few different cases of excellent writing I've seen lately that all fit into the profound / important category.

Most recent was an e-mail from CNN Journalist Anderson Cooper that he allowed to be posted online. From Andrew Sullivan's news site The Daily Beast, Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I'm Gay" features a very well written note from Cooper that concludes with "I still consider myself a reserved person and I hope this doesn’t mean an end to a small amount of personal space. But I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter’s shield of privacy."

On the Fatherhood topic I love to read and post on, a few days ago I came across the piece "Daddy Blues" by Tony Rehagen for Atlanta Magazine. It was very cool writing on something that can be both incredibly rewarding and difficult to deal with.

Finally, a very short piece with heft to it was "Toiling in Obscurity" for the site FlipCollective. Tom Dinard writes in it of a stopping a large display case from falling on a toddler. It's an emotional piece that's made all the more interesting with nobody noticing the lifesaving act made.