Thanks to the Millennium Art Academy High School in the Bronx for inviting me to speak at the Career Day event on Wednesday. My co=presenter Kathleen Cushman spoke about being a writer. Thanks very much to my old friends and new friends of friends who donated magazines to be distributed to the students attending the …
The most discouraging story of the work is a report in The Economist of the progress scientists have made in using machines to read minds. According to a report in the Public Library of Science, scientists at the University of Minnesota have found that by taping electrodes to the scalp, a volunteer can pilot a …
I absolutely love this photo of Hilary Clinton, taken by Diana Walker for Time magazine. Clinton was on a C-17, on her way to meet with rebel leaders in Tripoli. Despite her stated refusals, I think it’s likely she will be Barack Obama‘s running mate in the 2012 election. She not only will help him …
The morning after Steve Jobs died, I watched a usual Morning Joe panel step far outside its sweet spot and try to eulogize Jobs’ impact. Joe Nocera was pretty effective, mostly because he had paid close attention to Jobs and Apple, and Willie Geist was at least in touch with the culture. But Joe, Mika, …
Occasioned by the premiere of The Playboy Club on NBC and Pan Am on ABC, the folks at the Canadian Broadcasting Company thought they wanted to talk about the sudden burst of nostalgia for the sixties, and invited me to appear on their prime time talk show Connect with Mark Kelly, to, ah, connect my …
For eight or nine months after 9/11, I felt pretty depressed about the mass murder of people who were exactly like me and who on another day could easily have been me, and about the brutal attack on the city where I had made my home. Sometime in the spring, however, I read an article …
Ryan Adams shot the video for this gem of a song on September 7, 2001. The World Trade Center looms in all its dopey, stolid earnestness throughout the film, oblivious to its imminent destruction. It always chokes me to see this.
Disunion, The New York Times’ series on the Civil War which I helped create and worked on, was honored by the New Media Institute with one of its 2011 New Media Awards. This marks the second award for Disunion, which was honored earlier this year by the American Historical Association for Best History Writing on …
I had the great pleasure of talking about And the War Came with Jim Fuller and his friend Bill Walker on WOUB radio in Athens, Ohio. Jim and Bill are very knowledgeable about the Civil War, and it was very rewarding to talk with people who are so well informed and so thoughtful about the …