Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande was a remarkable book with the subtitle “Medicine and What Matters in the End” from a doctor and author I've posted on a number of times in the past. The book covers a lot of ground on the subject of health choices for people aging or with catastrophic medical conditions and seems it can be broken down into three related categories of (1) doctors who treat the elderly, (2) where those in need live and (3) the decisions that are made around care.

Doctors who treat the elderly

Gawande fairly early in the book writes of how when people in the past died of illness it was more frequently a sudden death, but now illness leading to death is often a case of peaks and valleys until there then becomes one calamity after another as the body stops working. With there now being more ways to prevent death, the doctor-patient relationship becomes more important and Gawande notes how the approach of a given doctor to their patient can either be paternalistic, informative or in the best scenario, interpretive based on someone's desires about their care. This is especially the case with the elderly, but the branch of medicine that deals with aging, geriatrics, doesn't get enough attention and doesn't have enough doctors. People are less interested in going into geriatric care in part because patients don't have one discrete and interesting problem to try and fix, rather they have fifteen that are being pushed forward by the aging process. Additionally, care for the elderly is typically not really about the devices or expensive procedures that would be covered by Medicare. Rather it’s about looking for common problems and attempting to head them off in a quest to preserve quality of life for as long as possible. It’s noted in the book that the biggest danger facing many elderly is falling and risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications and muscle weakness.

Where those in need live 

Gawande also writes extensively about how and where the elderly live, often in their homes for as long as they can, then with younger family members, in assisted living facilities or communities and nursing homes. In relation to assisted living facilities and nursing homes, Gawande notes how many hate living there as in the quest to provide a safe environment, caregivers can take away from the elderly their basic rights to privacy and making their own decisions, even if those decisions not always the healthiest. The result can be a dehumanizing with the elderly finding themselves in situations they simply don't want to live, safe or not. Gawande does note there’s another path that can be sought out and gives examples. There’s services like Athens Village in Ohio that people can join and which help them stay in their homes, "living centers with assistance" that were started by Keren Brown Wilson who then created the Jessie F. Richardson Foundation, New Bridge on the Charles in Boston, Peter Sanborn Place and the Green House concept, with one of its facilities the Leonard Florence Center for Living that all about not forcing the elderly to sacrifice autonomy to live in some form of assisted living facility. In some cases the facility will also include pets and frequent visitors, something to help the people living there both feel empowered and have a purpose. There might be a slight drop off in safety from more regimented facilities, but studies have shown that people are happier, require less emergency care and tend to live longer.

Decisions about care

Related to this idea of people being empowered to make decisions about their lives is the notion of people having frank discussions with doctors and especially family members about what choices they want made on their behalf, including what level of risk they want taken and what amount of pain and infirmity they're willing to suffer in order to have a shot at getting better. For some people they’re willing to take huge risks to have better health, but for others, they’d rather not take as large of a chance that they could get worse as the result of treatment, especially if that treatment may not buy that much more healthy time. The choice is all about one’s life and what it could potentially be like, for better or worse, and having the patient set the direction based on guidance from the doctor, with the alternative medical professionals or family members having to make the decisions on behalf of someone incapacitated. If left to doctors and family members, the natural inclination is going to be to press forward for a cure, but too often this may be bullheadedly pursuing a medical fix to a problem that's simply going to result in death. At the same time, it could well be that a patient has given direction that they’re willing to proceed with risky procedures that could make them worse, but as long as they understand, it’s the choice they’re making. This is where the idea of the doctor as someone who provides guidance based on a patient’s wishes, things that matter to them and risk tolerance, becomes so important. The role of medicine is to heal, but also to provide council based on the wishes of patients.

A key part of this discussion and patient decision around their care has to do with hospice care, which is often provided in the home. Covered by Gawande is how hospice care not something that’s simply the last step before death, but something that’s designed to have people feel as good and fulfilled as possible for each day they’re still alive, a concept of living for the best possible day. Additionally, hospice care doesn't have to mean giving up curative treatment as it could be done concurrently with treatment for the illness at the same time there’s palliative care designed to make someone as comfortable, fulfilled and happy as possible. Studies have shown many cases of patients receiving hospice care actually living longer than those without it.

The big take-away from this discussion of hospice care is that patients should hopefully be making the decisions themselves on their care after discussions with medical professionals willing to advise on the best options based on people’s wishes for how they want to pursue treatment. People need medical help, they need council and they need to live their lives in a way that they've got as much control as possible over what happens in it. It’s fascinating reading from Gawande that definitely goes way beyond the idea of a doctor and the medical community as simply being there to try to fix a health problem. Great book, highly recommended.

Boy On Ice by John Branch

Boy On Ice by John Branch is a solid book that was written out of a lengthy three-part series on the late NHL player Derek Boogaard that Branch wrote for the New York Times.

The magazine series and then book show how the pressure is bad enough in someone trying to become a professional player, but seems to take it to a whole new level when they're early on put onto the track of being a hockey enforcer. They've got one role as a fighter all the time, don't know when they’re going to do it, aren't directly getting points that lead to winning and losing and can suffer repeated concussion head trauma through the process of it, along with normal injury risk that other skaters take. Related to this idea of the hockey enforcer as a specific subset of players different than the rest, I found interesting how in reading of Derek’s minor hockey career, the same names of fighters kept popping back up, and they were often people who I recall then going on to play in the NHL as he did.

Branch split the book into thirds, with the first part about Derek growing up and then playing minor hockey, the second on his time as an NHL player in Minnesota and third his brief time as a New York Ranger prior to his death. Derek grew up in Saskatchewan and it’s covered in the book how it was challenging growing up the son of the local Royal Canadian Mounted Police representative, never staying one place long, as well as being a bigger hockey player than others. Derek played top level youth hockey due to his size, 6'4" and 210 pounds at 15, but wasn't a great skater or player and other parents would complain about him. At the age of 15, Derek had an incident playing youth hockey where he fought someone, then went into the penalty box of the opposing team and sent them scattering. From this, he was invited to the training camp of the Regina Pats Western Hockey League team and then at 17 was traded to a team in Prince George, British Columbia. Again, it’s got to be tough for any kid to make that kind of move away from family at such a young age and seems particularly hard for someone like Derek who was playing in the leagues he was simply for his ability to be the team enforcer. When Derek was 19, he was drafted in the seventh round by the Minnesota Wild, went to training camp with the Wild in 2001, then was sent back to Prince George and subsequently traded to a team in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Twenty year old Derek then wound up playing with the Louisiana Ice Gators, an East Coast Hockey league affiliate of the Wild and at 21, Derek was sent to the Wild's American Hockey League affiliate Houston Aeros, with the Wild sending instructions to Aeros coaches Todd McLellan and Matt Shaw that Derek was to be groomed as the future enforcer for the Wild. In Houston, Derek began to get injuries and was first prescribed pain relievers, then after two seasons in Houston made the Wild roster out of training camp in 2005.

Derek instantly became a popular player in Minnesota, both because of his fighting and how he was a mild-mannered and nice kid. At the same time that he was having success on the ice, again as an enforcer who played little and fought regularly taking and receiving blows, his body started to betray him and he began being prescribed by Wild team doctors lots of drugs, ranging from Ambien for sleep and Toradol, Oxycodone and Hydrocodone pills for pain. Additionally, Derek supplemented his readily available supply of drugs he was getting from team doctors with illegal sources for pain medications. People began to see changes in Derek’s personality with him becoming more sullen and withdrawn and an additional interesting note that Branch made about Derek’s time with the Wild was how even as he was loved in the community, he as an enforcer was treated differently than other players, he was the one fans wanted to have a picture taken where he pretended to punch them. Derek in 2009 was put in the NHL/NHLPA substance abuse program and after that he didn't get team doctor prescriptions for some painkillers, but still got prescribed lots of other drugs. Really, the amount of drugs that team doctors would prescribe him in the NHL, both before and then while he was actually in the NHL/NHLPA drug treatment program, was astounding.

After the 2009-2010 season Derek was a free agent and signed with the New York Rangers. Following an injury he suffered from a December 9, 2010 fight with Matt Carkner, Derek poured himself into his use of Ambien and pain medications, now heavily supplemented by a local illegal source for OxyContin. Derek for the rest of the 2010-2011 season was injured, not part of the team, lonely, depressed and addicted to painkillers. Additionally, his behavior was becoming increasingly erratic, likely exacerbated by the mix of toxins going into his body and the abuse it had taken over the years. The Rangers sent Derek back to rehab in April 2011, but he appeared to have different rules than everyone else, coming and going as he pleased and was back in Minneapolis in May with team approval to go there for physical therapy. During that trip he overdosed on painkillers and alcohol, double the legal alcohol limit for driving, and died.

After his death, Derek’s parents gave permission to have his brain examined for CTE, a degenerative brain disease that can only be diagnosed posthumously and is caused by repeated blows to the head. Examination of his brain showed stage two (of four) CTE, more severe than the doctor looking at his brain had ever seen in a 28 year old. While doctors couldn't say for sure what led to Derek's behavior, manifestations of the disease are memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, disorientation and addiction and Branch notes that Derek may well have had dementia in his 30's had he lived. The idea of the hockey enforcer could be seen as culpable, but more specifically, the role of team doctors and the NHL/NHLPA drug treatment program seems to bear examining. The amount of drugs Derek was prescribed was astounding, as was how he abused legally and illegally obtained drugs throughout his time in the treatment program. As a result of this Derek’s family in 2013 filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NHL.

His story is a sad one on many levels and in both the book and shorter New York Times series, Branch tells it very well.

Great sports pieces by Powell, Saslow & Parrish along with ESPN video segment on Lauren Hill

Three recent pieces of great sports writing were from the New York Times, CBS Sports and ESPN, with an additional powerful ESPN video segment.

The ESPN article was "The Long Way Home" by Eli Saslow on Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas. It was the same type of brilliant and detailed storytelling that Saslow regularly provides for ESPN and the Washington Post and this particular piece began with an 11-year-old Thomas being woken up by police bursting into the house and arresting his mother and grandmother for manufacturing and distributing crack cocaine.

The Times piece was an interesting one in that it came from an approach so different than traditional sports writing. "‘OMG. You’re So Much More Than Awesome.’" was done by Michael Powell out of time he spent in rural North Carolina with Kevin Bumgarner who was proudly watching his son Madison Bumgarner make history with his World Series pitching performance against the Royals.

For CBS Sports was a story by Gary Parrish with "More Than a Game" on John Redman and Brittany Huber. Redman is a 24-year-old assistant basketball coach at Dalton State near the Georgia-Tennessee border and he last May barely survived a car accident, caused by a blown tire, that took the life of Huber five days prior to their wedding. Just really well done and solemn writing from Parrish.

Also very much worth noting here was the ESPN video segment "Lauren Hill: One More Game." Filmed leading up to and including her first collegiate basketball game, moved up by the NCAA so she could play prior to dying of cancer, it's a great story told well.

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick was an interesting nonfiction account of the last voyage of the whaleship Essex and the fight for survival of its crew after being rammed by a huge sperm whale, with this sinking the basis for Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick.

Philbrick’s story was an historical tale of danger, resiliency and horrible decisions and definitely compelling reading. He wrote of how the Essex in August 1819 sailed out of Nantucket, 24 miles of the coast of New England, and then was rammed by a sperm whale on November 20th, 1820 and subsequently sunk in the middle of the Pacific. Twenty men then boarded three small whaling crafts and the captain of the Essex, George Pollard, wanted to sail these crafts to the Marquesas Islands some 1,200 miles away or the Society Islands (home to Taihiti) roughly 2,000 miles away but first mate Owen Chase and second mate Matthew Joy convinced Pollard that the dangers of cannibals there too great and they should return to South America, some 4,500 miles away.

The sailors had limited food and water and likely would have all perished if not for hitting land December 19th, roughly a month after the whale attack. Their first concern upon reaching the shores of Henderson Island, only 400 miles northeast of Pitcairn Island where they would have been rescued, was being attacked by natives, of which there were none, and after a week of finding and consuming limited food and water on Henderson, the ships (minus three men who decided to stay on island) left with a target of Easter Island, about a third of the 3,000 miles to the coast of Chile. The boats were unable to hit Easter Island and continued towards South America, with this being the point that sailors began to die of starvation and dehydration. Eventually the cannibalism that the Chase and Joy cited as the reason to not head towards Tahiti came about, only now it was the men eating those who passed as way to survive.

First mate Owen Chase and two additional sailors were the remaining crew of one of the boats and rescued February 18th off the coast of South America by the ship Indian and captain Pollard and one remaining crew member on his craft rescued five days later, also close to South America, by the crew of The Dauphin. As a result of this, a ship then went to Dulcie Island where the three crew members were said to be on, found it uninhabited, and then correctly surmised that they may actually be on Henderson Island 70 miles away. With five crew rescued from the two small boats, this left the whereabouts of the third boat unknown, until five years later when it was found up washed ashore of Dulcie Island, with three skeletons in it.

The book wraps up with the eight men returning to Nantucket and the captain of the Essex, George Pollard, being so accepted upon his return from disaster that he was made captain for another voyage and three months after his return sailed out on the whaleship, the Two Brothers, which then sunk several hundred miles west of Hawaii after hitting coral reefs during heavy winds. While this sinking effectively ended Pollard’s career as a whaleboat captain, he returned to Nantucket and lived out of the remainder of a full life. The story of the Essex and its men is a remarkable one and told very well by Philbrick with both huge detail and a focus on entertaining the reader throughout, and will be told in film by Ron Howard with a March 2015 theatrical release of In the Heart of the Sea.

Interesting feature writing - by Bissinger, Poulsen & Sager

Three different recent magazine feature stories were on different topics, but all well written and interesting pieces.

The most recent of them to note here was from the November issue of Vanity Fair with "The Stradivarius Affair" by Buzz Bissinger. It's a fascinating sort-of high crime piece about a $6M Stradivarius violin stolen in Milwaukee.

The October edition of Wired Magazine also had an excellent story on an attempt to make money, but through much less nefarious means. "Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich—Then Vegas Made Them Pay" was written by Kevin Poulsen and compelling reading that both tells an entertaining story and delves into the questions of whether actions illegal vs. just crafty.

The last piece to mention was from the October issue of Esquire for which Mike Sager wrote "Are There Still Boy Scouts?" on the 104-year-old organization and it's new volunteer national president, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. It's easy to find fault with positions taken by the national office of the Scouts, but the piece from Sager paints the portrait of an organization that appears to be doing a fair amount of good.

Stories of technology & the future - on Graphene and Space X

Two pieces of recent interesting writing very much dealt with future technology and also brought to mind some past stories of note.

Posted to Medium was "Materials That Will Change the World: Graphene" by Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize awarded for private spacecraft development and author of the book Abundance: The Future is Brighter Than You Think that I wrote about a few months ago. It's a fascinating piece on Graphene as a material that Diamandis notes as having potential applications in the following areas: energy storage, flexible screens, desalinization/filtration of water, medical applications/sensors, photovoltaics/solar cells, material composites and computing/electronics. Graphene is obviously written of as a material with breakthrough technological ramifications and it will be interesting to see what occurs with it.

The other story to note here was "What it took for Elon Musk’s SpaceX to disrupt Boeing, leapfrog NASA, and become a serious space company" by Tim Fernholz for the business news site Quartz. It's a pretty lengthy, but also solid piece on one of the efforts from a fascinating individual, with Musk someone that's at least in part the subject of multiple pieces I've linked to and written about.

Writers on writing - Gillian Flynn, Hunter S. Thompson & many on Gangrey

There's a few pieces on the subject of writing that I've seen over the past few weeks and found to be absolutely captivating. The most in-depth by far of the three was the post "Eating Jack Hooker's Cow" from the writing site Gangrey. About the 1997 Esquire story by Michael Paterniti, the Gangrey post really is a master class in writing with many great journalists giving their views on the piece and writing in general.

The other two pieces on writing to note here were much shorter ones with the much more recent being Joe Berkowitz for Fast Company Magazine writing on Gillian Flynn, author of both the book Gone Girl and screenplay of the excellent movie of the same name. Additionally, the site Boing Boing recently posted the highly entertaining "Hunter S. Thompson's 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job" from the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas among other well-known books.

Factory Man by Beth Macy

Factory Man by Beth Macy is an interesting book about offshoring, rural America and where income equality comes from.

The book tells the story of John Bassett III and his Vaughn-Bassett Furniture Company that employs more than 700 people in the South and manufactures entirely in America. While the book provides a largely positive view of both the man and company, which has a section about Macy's book on it's website, it's definitely not a puff piece, but rather an account of a family, company, industry and the costs of globalization on U.S. manufacturing and the works who used to do it.

The book was an excellent one and further information on it can be found in a New York Times review by Mimi Swartz and Businessweek Q&A with Macy.

Interesting sports pieces - by Wickersham, Anderson & Holmes

A couple of great pieces of recent sports writing included work from the Boston Globe, ESPN and Bleacher Report.

Two Bay Area-centric pieces were "Bill Russell, K.C. Jones treated like ‘Rock’ stars at Alcatraz" by Baxter Holmes, who is leaving the Globe to write for ESPN, and the Seth Wickersham story "Jim Harbaugh comfortable in chaos" for ESPN on the 49ers head coach.

Sticking with the football head coach theme (just in this case college and Ole Miss) was an excellent piece by Lars Anderson with "Good Guys Finish 1st: The Hugh Freeze Story" written for Bleacher Report.

Really excellent pieces all from Holmes, Wickersham and Anderson.

Businessweek writing - by Bennett, Stone, Vance & Homans

There's been a number of interesting stories from the past few issues of Businessweek, including one feature and a number of shorter pieces.

The longest of the stories was "What Can the McLaren Racing Team Teach the Rest of Us?" by Drake Bennett and it was a fascinating look at data science and decisions (in racing or any number of other pursuits) being made based on probabilities derived from a constantly expanding number of data points.

The shorter pieces of note included two from Brad Stone with "California Print Magazine Is Born From Pop-Up Storytelling Show" on California Sunday Magazine and "Thync Lets You Give Your Mind a Jolt" on the at first weird to me, but then more logical when the idea of drinking a cup of coffee considered, idea of mild electrical stimulation of the brain to improve cognitive performance.

The other two short pieces to mention here were "Stand Stand: A Portable Standing Desk for the People" from Ashlee Vance on the Kickstarter-funded standing desk company and a review by Jon Homans of the Walter Isaacson book The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution.

Airplane calamity stories - by Langewiesche & Bissinger

Two pieces of phenomenal writing I've seen recently were on airplane calamities with one a feature from the October issue of Vanity Fair and one a Longform reprint of a St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper story from 1981.

For Vanity Fair, William Langewiesche wrote "The Human Factor" on the crash of Air France Flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean, a disaster that's written in this excellent piece as being one that both become more rare with automated flight systems and was caused in part by pilots not being prepared to deal with problems that arise, given due to their reliance on... automated flight systems.

The much older Pioneer Press story by Buzz Bissinger, who later became well known for writing the book Friday Night Lights and I've a few times written about pieces from, was also brilliantly written and fascinating in that the details recounted are almost the counterpoint to those told of in the Vanity Fair story. "The Plane That Fell From the Sky" told the story of TWA Flight 841, one that suffered severe mechanical failure (as opposed to the human failings from the doomed Air France flight) and then required herculean efforts from the captain to try to land the plane safely.

Both stories were remarkable, with the first featuring amazing pieced together detail from flight recordings and the second just amazing events retold really well.

American Hippopotamus by Jon Mooallem

American Hippopotamus by Jon Mooallem was an entertaining Kindle single (estimated by Amazon at 71 printed pages) about the seemingly fictional effort at the start of the 20th century to import hippos to live in the American South and become a cattle substitute.

The story has been optioned to be made into a film and features the larger than life characters of Frederick Russell Burnham, the inspiration for Indiana Jones and model for the Boy Scouts, and Fritz Duquesne, a spy and constant schemer.

The story was written about in a Q&A with Mooallem for Wired and as a Kindle single, it's definitely a short read, but an interesting and true one nonetheless.

A Sudden Light by Garth Stein

A Sudden Light by Garth Stein was an entertaining novel from the author of the excellent 2008 book The Art of Racing in the Rain.

This latest effort from Stein is set in his home city of Seattle about tells a story of family, secrets, ghosts and big choices made by the book's 14-year-old narrator. I don't know I found myself terribly happy with the ending (as opposed to the writer of this Seattle Times review of A Sudden Light who found the finale "immensely satisfying"), but I thought the book an interesting and at times poignant read.

Atul Gawande essays - on Ebola & end-of-life care

Noted surgeon and author Atul Gawande had two solid pieces of writing publish recently in The New Yorker and New York Times, respectively.

I've read three of Gawande's books and posted on his writing a number of times and was particularly interested to see the Times piece as noted a new book Gawande has coming out. "The Best Possible Day" is excerpted from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End and a fascinating personal story of an end-of-life care approach that came out of taking the time to understand what a patient really wants.

The other recent piece to note here was "The Ebola Epidemic is Stoppable" out of The New Yorker that Gawande is a staff writer for and it's a very measured telling of how the dangerous disease not easily transmitted from person to person.

Writing on fascinating people - by Mooney & Weil

Two recent stories on fascinating people included one on a female explorer and one on a woman's struggle with her sexuality.

For the New York Times, Elizabeth Weil wrote "The Woman Who Walked 10,000 Miles (No Exaggeration) in Three Years" on Sarah Marquis and Michael Mooney for D Magazine wrote "A Changed Woman" on Amanda Barbour. Both stories are remarkable tales of people with their own individual struggles and each piece really well-written.

Deep by James Nestor

Deep by James Nestor was a really interesting book that starts off about freediving and then covers so much more about the ocean and life in it.

Nestor for a 2012 issue of Outside Magazine wrote "Open Your Mouth and You're Dead" on competitive freedivers going down hundreds of feet below the ocean surface on a single breath and Deep reminded me of the great Susan Casey book The Wave (which I wrote about in 2010), but Casey's book probably more about what happens on the surface of the water and Nestor's underneath it.

One of the details covered by Nestor included the distinction between competitive freediving as an odd and somewhat sadomasochistic sport and freediving not for depth records, but as a way to reach and interact with the ocean and life at depth. In this regard, there's great material in the book about freediving for the purpose of studying shark behavior as well as sperm whale communication.

Additionally, Nestor writes about depths that freedivers can't reach, with him journeying over 2,000 feet underwater in a submarine off the coast of Honduras and writing about research done in the hadal zone some 28,000 feet deep. This part was particularly fascinating with writing of how much life down there as a result of hydrothermal vents and a process known as chemosynthetic life.

Really a fascinating and wide-ranging book from Nestor.

Vanity Fair articles on Sam Simon & The Shawshank Redemption

There were two really interesting recent Vanity Fair articles with one on a co-creator of The Simpsons and one on The Shawshank Redemption.

"Always Leave Them Laughing" was written by Merrill Markoe about Sam Simon and an interesting tale of how the co-creator of the hugely successful show The Simpsons spends his final days battling a diagnosis of terminal cancer and supporting multiple animal-rights causes.

The other piece to note here was by Margaret Heidenry with "The Little-Known Story of How The Shawshank Redemption Became One of the Most Beloved Films of All Time." Just really fascinating information from Heidenry about a slow build towards iconic status.

Pieces on writing - about Jeff Pearlman, interviewing subjects & giving yourself permission

There's been a few different pieces I've seen lately that seem to group together as being about both the want to and how to of producing great writing.

The most recent of the pieces was "The Making of a New York Times Bestselling Sportswriter: The Jeff Pearlman Story" by Jon Finkel for the site ThriveWire and it featured the interesting tale of how Pearman became a successful writer. On one hand, I find it somewhat flummoxing to read of someone who knew at a young age what they wanted to do and then did it (I mean, if only we all knew when young what we wanted?!), see Stephen King from his excellent book On Writing, but on the other hand, there was great stuff from Pearlman on both his repeated and creative efforts to eventually get hired at Sports Illustrated and about the importance of reporting, rather than just writing.

This idea of reporting and interviewing very much ties into another interesting piece I've seen recently. "The Art of the Interview, ESPN-Style" was by David Folkenflik for NPR in 2006 and about Jack Sawatsky, a writing professor turned interviewing guru that was hired by ESPN to teach the craft.

The last piece to note here wasn't on the how to in becoming a successful creative, but very much the want to as Brian Koppleman on his person website wrote "Permission Granted!" about career advice he gave to a young writer/director and Koppleman finished his piece with...

"You are the only one who can give yourself permission. I am the only one who can give myself permission. And this young man is the only one who can give himself permission. And that is great news. That is freedom. If we let it be. We just need to listen to ourselves, to speak honestly to ourselves, to permit ourselves. And then, we are off and running."

Great sports writing - by Moehringer, Van Valkenburg & Rushin

A few different pieces of great recent sports writing included from Sport Illustrated an opus out of the 6oth anniversary issue and from ESPN, a shorter opus on Derek Jeter and feature about offensive football mastermind Hal Mumme.

The Sports Illustrated 60th anniversary review was written by Steve Rushin and unfortunately isn't online now, but the 20,500 word story is a remarkably written piece on the events and people that shaped the world of sports through the past six decades. The piece from Rushin followed up on his SI 40th anniversary piece from 1994 and very much reminded me of the great SI 2012 Sportsman of the Year profile of LeBron James by Lee Jenkins that seems to not be online anymore, but I wrote about here.

The two recent ESPN pieces are both online and excellent work with J.R. Moehringer doing some 9,000 words in "The Final Walk-Off" on Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter and Kevin Van Valkenburg writing "Yoda of the Air-Raid Offense, He Is" on former Kentucky football coach Hal Mumme. This piece by Van Valkenburg was published about a week ago for ESPN The Magazine and brought to mind for me the Chuck Culpepper story "Uniquely Memorable" about former Pacific Lutheran coach Frosty Westering, another coach who worked to have the game be fun for his players.

Interesting business pieces - by Stone, Carr & Ringen

Three compelling pieces of recent business writing included cover stories from both Businessweek and Fast Company as well as an additional Fast Company feature.

The Businessweek piece was "Tim Cook Interview: The iPhone 6, the Apple Watch, and Remaking a Company's Culture" and an interesting look by Brad Stone and Adam Satariano at Apple and it's CEO.

The Fast Company pieces were "The $3.2 Billion Man: Can Google's Newest Star Outsmart Apple?" by Austin Carr on Tony Fadell and Nest as well as "Tastier, Healthier, And Animal-Free: Can Ethan Brown Reinvent Meat?" by Jonathan Ringen on the company Beyond Meat. This last story in particular was a fascinating one with Brown's company offering a becoming widely available substitute for meat that has all the flavor and proteins, but without the negative ramifications of meat. Ringen in his story noted it taking 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of steak, a figure that seems high, but is actually lower than the 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat that was noted in the book Abundance that I reviewed a month ago.

Writing on the CIA and Secret Service - by Leonnig, Burt & Wax-Thibodeaux

Three recent excellent stories seemed to group together with the CIA being the topic of two of them (one a heroic tale and one simply an interesting story) and an extremely poor response by the Secret Service the topic of the third.

The larger and more gravitas-having of the two CIA stories was for Slate by Andrew Burt with "Your Future Is Very Dark," a remarkable tale that carries the subtitle "The incredible story of former CIA agent John T. Downey, the longest held American captive of war." Downey is now a judge and the story of him being held by the Chinese for 20 years until his 1973 release is simply an amazing one.

The other CIA story to note here certainly an entirely different one than that on Downey, but Emily Wax-Thibodeaux wrote a pretty interesting short piece with "At CIA Starbucks, even the baristas are covert" for the Washington Post.

Also published in the Post was "Secret Service fumbled response after gunman hit White House residence in 2011" by Carol Leonnig and it's a sobering tale of bumbled response by those in an extremely important job.

Shadows in the Vineyard by Maxamillian Potter

Shadows in the Vineyard by Maxamillian Potter was an interesting tale with the subtitle "The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine."

The book is about the poisoning and ransom demands put to the famed French vineyard Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and its winemaker Aubert de Villaine. While the book could be interesting to many, it's also an "inside baseball" sort of account of wine, with a ton of compelling to oenophiles material about the industry, famed Burgundy region and Romanée-Conti, a wine so sought after, bottles can go for thousands upon thousands of dollars.

In a way the conclusion to the story is a bit of a letdown, but seems more a function of just what the story told is rather than anything wrong done in the writing, and Potter wrote an interesting book that would likely be especially appreciated by wine lovers.

Great sports pieces - by Van Natta Jr., Drehs and Thamel

There's been a few sports stories I've seen recently that I found to be excellent, including two long profiles for ESPN and a story for Sports Illustrated that related to a fantastic ESPN video.

The profile pieces were "Jerry Football" by Don Van Natta Jr. on Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and "Two in a Million" by Wayne Drehs on MLB superstars Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout. Two exceptionally well done features from Van Natta and Drehs on compelling people.

The other piece of writing to note here stood out to me due to what it was about with Pete Thamel for Sports Illustrated writing "Boston College uses emotion and its running game to shock No. 9 USC" on the heels of BC honoring at the game Welles Crowther, the former Eagle lacrosse player who perished saving others on 9/11 and the subject of a great ESPN video segment.

Interesting Businessweek writing - by Waldman & Vance

There's been a number of interesting pieces from Businessweek recently with feature stories out of the September 8-14 issue by Ashlee Vance and Peter Waldman and two additional short pieces by Vance.

The story from Waldman was "How to Get Into an Ivy League College—Guaranteed" on Steven Ma and his Bay Area-based ThinkTank Learning. It's a pretty fascinating read that shows the lengths some families will go to in order to help get kids into the best schools.

The Vance feature was "Silicon Valley's Most Hated Patent Troll Stops Suing and Starts Making" and an interesting look at both why the Seattle-based Intellectual Ventures so reviled in tech circles and new initiatives at the company.

Also by Vance, the same magazine issue had the short pieces "As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google) and for the BW website Vance did "Why Microsoft Might Pay $2 Billion for Minecraft," with this last piece bringing to mind Robin Sloan's excellent "The secret of Minecraft" piece for Medium.

Great writing on outdoor danger / adventure - by Sundeen, Murphy & Sanchez

Three really excellent recent pieces of writing that seemed to group together for me were on travel deep into Mexico, attending a wilderness survival course and calamitous flooding in Colorado last year.

For the New York Times, Mark Sundeen wrote "Ignoring the Warnings for a Honeymoon in Mexico" and it's a short piece that pulls the reader in with the question of what's going to happen next. Really well written from Sundeen and brings to mind for me his 2012 feature "Why Noah Went to the Woods" for Outside Magazine.

Another interesting recent short piece was "I Will Survive: Going Wild at the Bear Grylls Survival Academy" by Austin Murphy for the Sports Illustrated website and a great recent lengthy feature was from Robert Sanchez with "The Rising" for 5280 Magazine. Sanchez wrote of the September 2013 cataclysmic flooding of the Big Thompson River near Loveland, CO and it's a great tale of danger and heroism. Seeing the piece in the Denver-based 5280 brought to mind for me the excellent essay for 5280 "Yesterday's News" by J.R. Moehringer about starting out as a writer at the Mountain News.

Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by X Prize founder and Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis and author and entrepreneur Steven Kotler was a solid read about actions around earth's available resources. The book early on contains the statement "technology can make the once scarce now abundant" and Diamandis and Kotler write throughout the book about exponential technologies, with the solving of one problem then serving as a multiplier and having positive downstream impacts in other areas.

Covered as the probably the most important basic need is that of access to clean water. If this can be solved, people’s health can improve, hunger be reduced and time freed up to do other productive things. The authors note how we need entirely new approaches to water, not simple conservation and some of the innovations both here now and potentially to come are inventor Dean Kamen’s company DEKA Research in New Hampshire and its Slingshot that generates clean water from anything wet, no matter how dirty, a smart grid to allocate water usage and smart toilets that can generate freshwater, fertilizer and power. In relation to food supply, it’s noted that we spend too much money and energy moving food, and the solution is to "move the farm" and do vertical indoor farming through hydroponics. Additionally, fish farming, genetically engineered seeds and in-vitro meat grown from stem cells (as meat from animals can both be a source of disease and requires roughly 2,500 gallons of water per pound) are all written about as things that can bring about abundance in relation to food, with the science of designing food systems that mimic the natural world being known as agroecology.

Diamandis and Kotler cover how some of the areas of improvement in energy availability are solar power, biofuels, like those being worked on by Craig Venter and his company Synthetic Genomics Inc., and nuclear power. Also covered is both a local level smart energy grid that can store energy during the day and then release it at night and a large scale energy grid for widespread distribution of power based on demand. Robotics was additionally noted as an enabler of abundance, with mention of the company Willow Garage in Menlo Park and Intuitive Surgical in the Bay Area that makes the da Vinci system surgical robot. Also in relation to health was stem cell treatments and growing artificial organs out of cells using 3-D printers, which are a fascinating innovation even if not using cells to build stuff. In terms of information and education, Diamandis and Kotler mentioned the internet's ability to disseminate information quickly as a key enabler of abundance and in the future, the potential benefit of the Internet of Things, basically devices in the home that all have unique IP addresses, along with education advances and personalized learning like through the Khan Academy and game learning.

Also noted was the new philanthropists, those like Jeff Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, Warren Buffett, and Bill & Melinda Gates putting huge sums of money towards fixing difficult problems and one interesting thing in the book was the distinction between the top and bottom of the pyramid in terms of people globally and their standards of living, and how large improvements may well come from the bottom. These individuals collectively have great spending power, huge needs and likely more than wealthier people in developed countries would benefit from force multipliers, like when someone get a basic need like clean water, it frees up time to be productive in other areas.

All in all, it was a very interesting book and makes the case well that prospects for the future not as bad as they sometimes seem.

Great sports writing on college football and tragedy

Two recent pieces of great sports writing about college football included a feature story for SB Nation and book excerpt published in Sports Illustrated.

The SB Nation piece was "The right thing to do vs. the state of Florida" by Michael Kruse about the death of 18-year-old Devaughn Darling during a 2001 Florida State University off-field practice and what's occurred since. Darling's family sued the state of Florida over the circumstances of Darling's death and agreed to a $2M no-fault settlement, with $1.8M of it still not paid to them as it's up to the discretion of the Florida state legislature whether they actually pay the settlement money. It was a maddening piece to read at times due to both the money and details around and after Darling's death, but Kruse wrote the story incredibly well.

The book excerpt by Anderson for SI was from The Storm and the Tide: Tragedy, Hope and Triumph in Tuscaloosa and a riveting account of the tornado that hit in 2007. The book followed up on a feature Anderson wrote for the magazine and posted to the SI website earlier this month from Anderson was "writing The Storm and the Tide was a deeply personal experience."

Writing on interacting with the world - by Brand, Jones, Finkel & Breznican

There's a few different pieces of great writing I've seen recently that grouped together for me under the subject of how people interact with the world.

The first two pieces to note were profound and well-written essays, one by Russell Brand for The Guardian and one by Chris Jones for Esquire. The Brand piece was "Robin Williams’ divine madness will no longer disrupt the sadness of the world" after Williams' suicide and was great writing remiscent of the piece "For Amy" that Brand wrote after the passing of Amy Winehouse in 2007. The piece from Jones was "Some Days You Just Want to Kill Yourself" from a 2011 issue of Esquire and posted online earlier this month after the death of Williams. It's a highly personal piece about depression and one I wrote a pretty lengthy post on after first reading.

The other two pieces of great writing to mention here weren't about depression, but covered well people leading theirs lives in a fascinating manner. For GQ Magazine was the Michael Finkel piece "The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit" on Christopher Knight, who spent close to 30 years by himself in the woods of Maine off supplies he pilfered. Knight's story is a tremendously interesting one and Finkel wrote the piece with himself in it as someone who visited Knight in prison. This first-person approach definitely worked in the story and was made even more interesting with Finkel's own back-story as a journalist fired for creating a composite character, and Finkel then having his identity assumed by a murderer. It's a remarkable tale that Finkel wrote of in the 2006 book True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa that's the basis of an already filmed movie starring Jonah Hill and James Franco.

The last piece to note on someone with a unique approach to life, or at a minimum to his career, was "Zen and the art of casting Bill Murray in your movie" by Anthony Breznican for Entertainment Weekly. Really an entertaining look at the famously difficult to get reach and get attention from comedic genius.

Interesting business pieces - on high-end coffee, stealth boats and Twitter

Three different interesting pieces of business writing I've seen recently ran the gamut of subjects included coffee, a new boat engineered to evade radar and Twitter.

The latest issue of Businessweek had the Caroline Winter feature "This Stealth Attack Boat May Be Too Innovative for the Pentagon" on entrepreneur Gregory Sancoff and his company Juliet Marine, maker of an invisible to radar small winged boat, Ghost. It was a fascinating read on some remarkably engineered technology and will be interesting to see if it's adopted by the military.

For Fast Company Magazine, Danielle Sacks wrote the excellent feature "The Multimillion Dollar Quest to Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee" on artisinal third wave coffeemaking efforts (with the standard offering from Starbucks as second wave). The piece from Sacks covers everything from heavily venture capital funded Blue Bottle Coffee to the company Alpha Dominche and its up to $16K Steampunk coffeemaker as well as Starbucks' increased rollout of the high-end Clover cofeemaker in it's stores.

The final piece to note here is one I came across a few months back and was actually written three years ago. For his venture capital focused site AVC in 2009, Fred Wilson wrote a short post on Twitter usage titled "The Logged Out User (continued)" and it's an interesting look on how Twitter is used in different ways by different people, and what a great thing that is for the company.

Stories on parenting, education & kids - by Hewitt and Rosin

Two excellent stories I've seen in the past few months dealt with the topic of kids, how we let them play and have them learn and whether a reader agrees entirely with what's featured in the pieces, they're both well written and interesting.

The more recent of the two was "We Don't Need No Education" by Ben Hewitt for Outside Magazine and it's a fascinating piece that the author writes about his 9 and 12 year old boys and their "unschooled" education. The family lives on a farm in Vermont and are a subset of homeschoolers, with "unschooled" kids learning subjects only when they say they're ready and not having a formal cirriculum. It's an interesting read from Hewitt on an education concept that seems a bit like Montessori learning, but to a different level. 

The piece from The Atlantic was by Hanna Rosin back in March and titled "The Overprotected Kid" about The Land in Wales, an adventure playground for kids that's somewhat reminiscent of a junk yard and lets kids play with and use things they never would in a traditional swing and monkey bars type playground. It's a tremendously interesting idea and one that's also being done at some U.S. locations, like the adventure playground in Berkeley, CA.

Great pieces from and related to events in Ferguson, MO

I've found myself riveted lately by what's been going on in Ferguson, Missouri over the past nine days and there's been some amazing writing on what's happened there, as well as other great writing and a speech that come to mind as I follow the unfolding events.

The most detailed piece I've seen about the shooting death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson that precipitated everything was "In Ferguson, three minutes — and two lives forever changed" for the Washington Post by Manuel Roig-Franzia, DeNeen L. Brown and Wesley Lowery. The story was published on August 16th so additional details have and will continue to come to light, but it seems a really solid account.

In terms of the police action both that August 9th day and since, two pieces of writing I keep thinking of that weren't about Ferguson and the events there, but seem very much related, were by Jason Fagone and Matt Taibbi. For Mother Jones, Fagone wrote "How a Squad of Ex-Cops Fights Police Abuses" on retired cops working as investigators for a Florida Public Defender's Office and Taibbi authored the book The Divide (which I wrote on a few weeks ago). Taibbi provided an excellent and infuritating look at the application of justice in America and how there's different sets of consequences for breaking laws depending on what group someone a part of.

Two really well done pieces of writing done as a result of police reaction to protestors in Ferguson were both political in nature, and from two people perhaps often on different ends of a political spectrum. For Time Magazine was "Rand Paul: We Must Demilitarize the Police" by the Kentucky Senator and for his own company site, Venture Capital investor and Barack Obama backer Chris Sacca wrote "A few thoughts on race, America, and our President" about what the unfolding situation calls for.

The last thing to note here on something that I've seen posted in relation to Ferguson and which has stuck with me was video of the speech Robert F. Kennedy gave in which he annouced the death of Martin Luther King Jr. I six years ago linked to an audio-only version and the speech more powerful today than ever.

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey was an interesting and at times lyrically written book about Hainey as both a journalist and son looking for information on the circumstances of his father's death decades ago. It wasn’t so much a question of whether foul-play involved in the death, but rather why the details provided around his father’s death didn’t make sense to Hainey, and what the actual truth of where he died and with whom was.

There was definitely an element of “is it worth it trying to find out?” to this question of what happened some thirty years prior and at times the story felt to drag a bit, but it mattered to Hainey and was interesting to see what he would learn. Also, the book itself was a fairly impressive read in terms of the dexterity with language used and duality in relation to words and their meaning throughout, with everyday events serving as metaphors or indicators of much larger quests ongoing.

Hainey was able to find the truth of where his father was at time of death through dogged reporting and it was interesting reading of both his quest for information and the power someone can still hold long after they're gone. There’s also a fascinating and profound conclusion to the book as the author shares with his aging mother what he learned, leading to a discussion of who people were, how we remember them and how we work through the things that are most important at any given point in time.

No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald was an interesting book from the writer who Snowden provided untold numbers of classified NSA documents for Greenwald to publish stories on.

The book feels to be split into thirds, with the first two chapters about Greenwald and Snowden and their lives intersecting (as a result of Snowden reaching out to Greenwald), chapters three and four being on the surveillance of largely U.S. citizens done by the NSA and then chapter five containing Greenwald’s thoughts on the response of the media to Snowden as well as Greenwald when the stories began to publish.

I did find myself skimming the two middle chapters on data the NSA collected, but all in all, it struck me as a good read, especially for anyone interested in the role of government as well as that of journalism in our society. I found particularly noteworthy the final chapter in which Greenwald wrote of both Snowden and he having their characters impugned as an attempt to discredit the sources of the information, and distract from an examination and discussion of NSA surveillance and its legality.

Great Esquire writing - by Paterniti & Richardson

Two sensational pieces from Esquire that I've seen recently including one from an issue that hasn't arrived in the mail yet and one from a September 1999 edition.

The older of the two features is "The House that Thurman Munson Built" by Michael Paterniti on the New York Yankees catcher from the 1970s and it's a remarkable story on the man who died in 1979 and his impact on the author who grew up a fan of Munson. Paterniti reports some amazing details throughout the piece and similar to other stories I've his I've posted on, it's great writing and tacked on after the conclusion of the piece was a writeup by Paterniti about doing the story, taken from the writing site Gangrey and with the full post including story reprint and comments here.

The other piece to note here is "The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker" and it's an account from John H. Richardson of the doctor at the only remaining Mississippi abortion clinic. Really excellent storytelling from Richardson on an important topic.

The Divide by Matt Taibbi

The Divide by Matt Taibbi is a thorough and well-written book that definitely deals with income inequality, but beyond this is about how in America today we have laws that are supposed to apply to all, but completely different sets of consequences for breaking them depending on income level.

The book appears to have come out of, or at least is related to, Taibbi's 2011 Rolling Stone piece "Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating" and is richly packed with examples and details how white-color financial crime by the wealthy rarely leads to the arrest and prosecution of individuals, but punishment for nuisance offenses and other crimes perpetrated by the poor are often pursued zealously by the police, courts and government. Taibbi makes the point that neither the harsh nor lenient approach wrong, just that they shouldn't simultaneously exist depending on income class.

In terms of why white-color crime so infrequently leads to jail time for individuals, and more often to no-admission-of-fault settlements with financial institutions, Taibbi offers a number of different reasons why. More than anything else, it seems that it comes down to prosecutors wanting easy cases to win and that financial crime can often be both complex and made out to be even more complex by legions of defense attorneys arguing technicalities and reasons for exclusion from prosecution. Additionally, the courts have frequently used the argument that to punish too severely either a guilty company or individuals within those companies could have a detrimental impact on markets and jobs, with the courts citing “industry experts” as being those arguing against criminal charges within the same industry. The examples from Taibbi are fairly brutal in the fraud committed, ranging from Barclay’s giving $112M in bonuses to nine Lehman Brothers executives while they were negotiating a $5B profit on the sale of Lehman assets to Barclay’s, to financial titans employing thug-like tactics in their attempts to destroy a company they had shorted and would profit greatly from it going under.

Taibbi writes in the book of how if white-color financial crime can often be complicated to prosecute and at times difficult to pinpoint the guilty individuals to blame, the crimes of the poor can be much easier to see and prosecute, or to just accuse someone of the crimes and then make their lives difficult. It’s noted that over the past 20 years, violent crime has dropped heavily, poverty has risen, and prison populations have skyrocketed, the result of aggressive policing methods against the poor, basically spreading a huge net and seeing what sticks in it, based on the idea that the poor are probably doing something wrong anyways. From nuisance arrests for things like loitering or obstructing traffic (basically standing on a sidewalk) to the zealous pursuit of welfare frauds and illegal immigrants, it does appear to be a wide scale denigration of the poor and application of the Bill of Rights as being on a class basis rather than applied to all.

Similar to how Taibbi writes that it’s not wrong to have either lenient or strict standards of justice, just wrong to have both depending on income level, he writes that it’s not that welfare fraud shouldn’t be policed and not that illegal immigrants shouldn't have consequences from being here illegally, but rather it’s a question of how we treat those that may be guilty and what rights we give to them. The assumption of guilt and zealous pursuit of the perhaps guilty poor matched up against the too-complicated-of-a-tale to find guilt with the wealthy is where the concept of The Divide comes in. Along these same lines, the point is made that people on one side of the divide in general have no idea how bad it is on the other side.

Taibbi closes the book with a touch of optimism about the prosecution of financial crimes at the same time that New York City's stop-and-frisk laws are being challenged in courts, but even with that, it’s definitely a sobering and well-told story of two different ways treating people based on class.

Great sports writing - by Pollak, Ballard & White

There's been a few recent pieces of sports writing I've seen that I found particularly noteworthy, with two of the pieces very much profound and the third an entertaining tale.

The first piece was from the Baltimore Sun with the 1997 Pulitzer Prize winning "The Umpire's Son" by Lisa Pollak on MLB umpire John Hirschbeck and his family. In 1992 they learned of the rare genetic disease Adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, that would claim the life of eight-year-old John Drew Hirschbeck and leave his younger brother Michael afflicted with the disease, along with his two sisters as carriers that could pass it along to any males they might eventually give birth to. It's an empathically written story from Pollak that becomes even more profound with the Hirschbeck family's tragic news from April of this year.

The second story of heft to note here was from the recent July 28 issue of Sports Illustrated with Chris Ballard writing "A First-time Skydiving Experience, a Fall to Earth and a Terrible Accident." The piece is a detailed account of the cataclysmic 2009 injury suffered by instructor Dave Hartsock as he saved the life of his first-time jumper client Shirley Dygert and a great retelling of a heroic act.

The final piece to mention didn't necessarily have the same gravitas as the first two, but was a well-done story on an topic geographically close to my heart. Set on the Richardson Highway between Glennallen and Delta Junction (middle of nowhere Alaska sort of between Anchorage and Fairbanks) is the annual race and party Arctic Man and written about it was "Artic Man: Wild Rides and Crazed Nights at America's Most Extreme Ski Race" by Matt White for SB Nation Longform. It's an entertaining story and brought to mind the also entertaining segment on Arctic Man by the Adam Richman show "Fandemonium" on the Travel Channel.

Assorted excellent writing - by Flynn, Kruse & Sloan

There's a few pieces of excellent writing I've come across recently that don't necessarily have a huge connecting thread between them, but all really well done on interesting topics.

Each story I came across via Twitter and by far the oldest of them was from the July 2000 issue of Esquire with "The Perfect Fire" by Sean Flynn. It's about about a giant warehouse blaze fought by firefighters in Worcester, MA and remarkably tense writing that brought to mind some of the best works of authors like Sebastian Junger or Jon Krakauer.

The second piece to note here was from the August 2014 issue of Charlotte Magazine with "Period.
The man who writes obituaries, the people who hire him, and what we learn from our last words" by Michael Kruse. It struck me as as well-written and kind of quiet piece about death, and about a writer in Ken Garfield who attempts to describe well the lives lived by others.

The third story was published in June with Robin Sloan writing "The secret of Minecraft: And its challenge to the rest of us" for the site Medium. If the Flynn piece could be characterized as being about tension and drama and the one from Kruse about reverence and meaning, that from Sloan strikes me as being on secrets and exploration. There's something about the tone of how he describes Minecraft and the appeal and positive of it for kids that really resonated with me. Additionally, description of the game and its creative element for players made me think back to a 2008 Esquire story by Jason Fagone on game designer Jason Rohrer and how he "turns video games into art."

Excellent business writing - by Riley, Vance & Thurston

Three interesting and well-done pieces of recent business writing included two stories from Businessweek and a post done to the site TechCrunch.

The larger of the two Businessweek pieces was by Michael Riley with "How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq." It's a fascinating in-depth look at what appears to be a government-sponsored break-in to Nasdaq, done for reasons unknown. It was a really compelling and somewhat chilling story that brought to mind for me the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys that I wrote on a few months ago.

From a more recent BW issue was "Netflix's Ken Florance: The Man Who Keeps the Video Streaming" by Ashlee Vance. It's a short and interesting piece that covers how Netflix paying Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for better connectivity... something that wouldn't be required were there net neutrality.

The last solid piece of writing to note here was "Christensen Vs. Lepore: A Matter Of Fact," posted by Thomas Thurston to TechCrunch. Thurston is a guy who I worked with back when he was in college and his essay done in response to criticism of Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen by a fellow Harvard professor. I've a few times posted on work from Christensen (best known for his writing around "Disruption Theory" in business) and Thurston provides some solid logic in support of  the theory as a way to predict the success or failure of a business.

Writing on careers - by Horwitz, Woolever, Hoffman, Cashnocha & Yeh

There's been a few interesting pieces of writing I've come across over the past month that dealt with the subject of careers & work, each piece doing so in a very distinct way.

On writing as a career, there was the fascinating New York Times opinion piece "I Was a Digital Best Seller!" by Tony Horwitz a month ago. In it, the author wrote of his experience in online publishing and how the exciting new digital world of the writer not all he dreamed of.

Also a few weeks ago was "From Botanical Gardens Intern to Anthony Bourdain’s Assistant" for The Billfold. Written by Laurie Woolever, it's a remarkable first-person walk through Woolever's career and all its twists, turns, ups and downs.

The third piece to note here isn't traditional writing, but rather a slideshow about the new book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age from LinkedIn Founder and CEO Reid Hoffman and his co-authors Ben Cashnocha and Chris Yeh. One idea from the book that's covered in the slides is how employers and employees should focus on a mutually beneficial relationship based on what each gets from working together and the knowledge that the working relationship won't continue if no longer mutually beneficial to both parties. This approach of "we're both benefiting for now" is in opposition to the idea of employees feeling a company owes them jobs or companies viewing an employee as disloyal if they leave for another job.

Again, each of these pieces very different than the other two, but there's fascinating stuff in all three.

One thing that reading these makes me think of is in relation to my own career I feel good having this blog and three books compiled from it as a body of work. I'd rather have my career progress and work opportunities come from what I've done rather than what I say I can do and the blog is as much if not more of a representation of what I've done than my education or actual work experience.

Great sports stories - by Jenkins, Wickersham & Jones

A few of the great sports stories I've read since my last post a few weeks ago on solid sports writing included large feature stories for Sports Illustrated and ESPN respectively as well as two shorter and really well done World Cup pieces for the ESPN website.

The latest issue of SI had as it's cover story a piece titled "Back to the Future" and it's a look by Lee Jenkins at the return to the Caviliers of LeBron James. Jenkins is an excellent writer and it totally made sense to me that James chose Sports Illustrated through Jenkins as the place to annouce the Cavs as his choice given the extremely thorough profile on James that Jenkins wrote in December 2012 for SI (and which I did a lengthly blog post on it's construction).

The recent ESPN issue had as it's largest feature story the great piece "Awakening The Giant" by Seth Wickersham on long-retired NFL star Y.A. Tittle. Each of the stories from Wickersham I've posted on previously were related to football and this probably my favorite story by him as it's a riveting telling of Tittle's life at 87 and the effects of dementia... and correspondingly on his daughter who helps care for him.

The two ESPN World Cup pieces were both by Chris Jones and marvelous storytelling with first "U.S. campaign reaches end of the line" from July 1st and then "Memories of the World Cup" written just prior to the final between Germany and Argentina. Both stories are creatively put together with the U.S. team piece going man by man through many of the players and the Cup wrapup sort of walking a path (well, actually very much walking a path with how Jones wrote it) through the tournament.

My ruminations on writing & work

I've been thinking lately about the point of this blog, specifically  in relation to the labels "writing" and "work" that I've used for some of the posts throughout my six years of regular posting here, with the hyperlinks representing posts in which I had a label of one or the other.

To take these one at a time, perhaps the best way to look at usage of "writing" as a label is through some of the text of my post done in Feb of this year, "My new book compilation - More Words Written Down"...

More Words Written Down is a follow-up effort to the compilation book projects Words Written Down and 111 Books Reviewed with all three coming out of this blog and each an appreciation of words put down on a page in a meaningful order. The blog itself was begun 5 ½ years ago and my approach to it has been to read things of interest and then attempt to describe those pieces well and make connections between them. The result of this is hopefully both a repository of great writing and body of work with my thoughts on the pieces. As part of this body of work idea, the blog and book compilations out of it are also intended to serve as a tangible record for my two boys of what things I found interesting or important early in their lives.

Links noted throughout the print version of the book can be found at the referenced blog post and have as their criterion for inclusion the concept of Interesting. If writing was deemed interesting, it’s noted along with my ruminations on the topic and view of what makes that particular set of words grouped together into a book or story so good that they acquire permanence. The goal of Words Written Down is to highlight and pay homage to this permanence of words. Everybody's gotta have a thing, and for me, one of my big things is words. Here's to hoping that as my boys get older they find the things that have importance for them and get to spend their time pursuing and working on those.

In short, I like words, and that's why I've written this blog.

So, with that, the other label noted above is that of "work." In terms of work, I feel like I've come to the realization that I love reading, love coming across pieces of great writing, describing what it is I like about a particular piece of writing and making connections between it and other pieces of great writing, but I don't feel a particular drive to become a writer producing the type of journalism I love.

Rather, it's the idea of effective communication that I find cool, and to do that for work wouldn't require me to become a journalist, but could well be simply someone helping craft compelling business messages. To this point, one of my more memorable (at least to myself) posts I've done with the label of "work" was titled "The Ethereal Nature of Stock Valuation & Much Corporate Work Activity," with the conclusion to that post noted below...

Me thinks there's also way too much etherealness (yep, it's a word) in the corporate work done at many of the public companies out there. Just as stock valuation can be a matter of (often wrong) perception, corporations can too frequently have their best employees identified on the basis of not terribly important indicators like "being busy." I touched on this phenomenon in the Sept 2010 post "Urgent vs Important Work," but so frequently time gets spent on things that don't really move the success or failure dial much (and this is even using the public company success/failure dial of income/profit).

It's not to say all corporations are filled entirely by employees doing busy work 100% of the time as some corporations (and employees) are going to be much more productive around things of import than others, but it is an interesting morass to try to avoid, both as a corporation and it's employees. Corporate level success or failure at this busy work avoidance isn't going to change the stock increase chasing game, but is probably going to result in the companies that have employees focused on important rather than ethereal/urgent work performing better overall. Not a paradigm breaking statement to be sure, but important nonetheless.

To sum it all up, or as much as I can in this missive, I love great writing that tells an effective story, always will and hope that my boys are going to as well and while business communication may not necessarily carry as much heft as other types of communication, there is a need for people who can both craft and manage it's production effectively and doing this can very much tie into my overall love of great writing.

Great feature stories by Kleinfeld, McCrummen & Baron

Three great recent pieces of feature writing included a story of heroism, one of mental illness and one of a near disasterous situation.

For the New York Times was the story of heroism with "Baptism by Fire" by N.R. Kleinfeld. Just a captivating piece on a rookie New York City firefighter and him in a rarely encountered situation. The story of mental illness was by Stephanie McCrummen for the Washington Post who wrote the incredibly sad "Behind the yellow door, a man’s mental illness worsens" and for GQ, Zach Baron wrote "Cliven Bundy's War: Inside the Rancher's Independent Sovereign Republic," a piece that stood out with it's depiction of an armed standoff between the government and U.S. citizens that could have gone horribly horribly wrong.

Very different topics to be sure, but great writing in each piece.

"The Girl Who Played with Fire" by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson was from the fiction category that I don't read a heck of a lot, but a really fast-paced and entertaining book.

The book is the second in the Millenium Trilogy from Larsson and picks up largely where The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finished off. The Girl Who Played with Fire was really an excellent read and it's a shame that apparently there may well not be U.S. movies made of this or The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

Businessweek writing on HP & Monsato

Some recent interesting Businessweek writing included pieces on corporate behemoths Hewlett-Packard and Monsato.

The cover story of the latest issue to arrive was "Inside Monsanto, America's Third-Most-Hated Company" by Drake Bennett and it provided a balanced look that covers Monsato's technology to aid farmers as well as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) used in food production, their many detractors as well as benefits of GMO usage.

On Hewlett-Packard were two different pieces by Ashlee Vance, first a short story for the web and then an even shorter, but still with new information, piece for the magazine. "With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer" was followed up by "Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?" and they covered the company's long-range bet on new hardware technology based on memristors and silicon photonics. Really fascinating stuff that will be interesting to see how it develops.

Outdoor adventure writing - Jones on Antarctica & Jacobsen on the Colorado River

Really enjoyed two recent outdoor adventure pieces with "The Day We Set the Colorado River Free" by Rowan Jacobsen for Outside and "Beyond Belief: A Journey to Antarctica" by Chris Jones for AFAR Magazine.

The article by Jacobsen is a sort of travelogue of his time floating on the Colorado combined with an interesting dissertation on water availability and usage in the West, both now and what's to come and the Jones piece an almost dream-like read on time in a remarkable place.