August 2012
68 posts
4 tags
Something Wicked This Way Comes →
by Chuck Klosterman
Each summer, 500 goths descend on Disneyland to smoke cigarettes and mock Snow White. Why? Because it’s the only place where they can truly feel at home.
1 tag
Tourist Traps Worth a Visit →
by Peter Jon Lindberg
A destination’s most popular sites got that way for good reason. So why not embrace the masses along with the monuments?
5 tags
Bad Girls →
by Beth Schwartzapfel
Doing time in the Rhode Island Training School is punishment for young women who break the law. What’s surprising is how many would rather be in the big house than out.
1 tag
Consumer Vertigo →
by Virginia Postrel
A new wave of social critics claim that freedom’s just another word for way too much to choose. Here’s why they’re wrong.
4 tags
What Good Is Wall Street? →
by John Cassidy
Why much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless.
1 tag
Couch Potatoes →
by David Blum
What about all those people in restaurants? And all those tickets sold for Broadway shows? Who’s going to the ballet? And what about all those people who are still looking for the perfect spouse? Aren’t they still going out every night? How can anyone document what people aren’t doing?
5 tags
Can Cellphones Help End Poverty? →
by Sara Corbett
For people living in the poorest places in Africa and beyond the possibilities afforded by cellphones are revolutionary.
1 tag
An Epidemic of Fear →
by Amy Wallace
This isn’t a religious dispute, like the debate over creationism and intelligent design. It’s a challenge to traditional science that crosses party, class, and religious lines.
3 tags
The Distant Executioner →
by William Langewiesche
A sniper must bear the burden of intimate killing for the rest of their life. On the other hand, even when they get it wrong, they kill only one man at a time.
1 tag
My Secret Life of crime →
by Geoff Dyer
There are three episodes in his life that Geoff Dyer prefers not to remember. He could have ended up in jail - but thankfully didn’t. So did he just get lucky?
1 tag
Great Reads About Politics →
A Tetw reading list
Masters of the Universe Go to Camp by Philip Weiss - Head inside the Bohemian Grove to find out what the world’s most powerful men do at summer camp.
Undecided Voters by David Sedaris - An amazing, world-class rant about swing voters.
The Subversive by Michael Lewis - How John McCain set out to challenge the corrupting influence of private money on public life.
...
1 tag
150 Essential Articles and Essays →
A Tetw reading list
A huge collection of the very best magazine length non-fiction. Includes stacks of classics from DFW, JJS, HST, Joan Didion, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Orlean, Tom Woolfe, David Sedaris, Walter Kirn, Chuck Klosterman, Michael Lewis and many others.
4 tags
The Busy Trap →
by Tim Kreider
It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint.
1 tag
The Coming Death Shortage →
by Charles C. Mann
Medicare, Social Security, retirement, Alzheimer’s, snowbird economies, the population boom, the golfing boom, the cosmetic-surgery boom, the nostalgia boom, the recreational-vehicle boom, Viagra - increasing longevity is entangled in every one.
July 2012
73 posts
4 tags
Faking It →
by Michael Lewis
If you wanted a fast-growing economy, you needed to promote rapid change, and if you promote rapid change, children enjoy one big advantage over adults: they haven’t decided who they are. They haven’t sunk a lot of psychological capital into a particular self.
1 tag
Marrying Absurd →
by Joan Didion
To be married in Las Vegas a bride must swear that she is eighteen or has parental permission and a bridegroom that he is twenty-one or has parental permission. Someone must put up five dollars for the license. Nothing else is required.
1 tag
Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet →
by Mark Jacobson
A college education is not required to drive for Dover Taxi Garage - all you have to do is pass a test on which the hardest question is “Where is Yankee Stadium?” — but almost everyone on the night line has at least a B.A.
1 tag
The Most Emailed 'New York Times' Article Ever →
by David Parker
It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank…
4 tags
The Last Don →
by Devin Friedman
Bernardo Provenzano was the boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia. He had been a fugitive since 1963, longer than anyone else anywhere in the world. Then, last April, on a small farm near Corleone, his years on the run came to an end.
1 tag
One Giant Leap to Nowhere →
by Tom Wolfe
The space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.
