The Barnes & Noble Review published a few of my words on the death of Hitchens.
Author: gcaw
I visited Nag Hammadi for the IHT and found an Egyptian Wild West.
Read my story here.
I visited the northern oil fields of Afghanistan.
Read about it at the IHT Global Opinion site.
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Terrence Malick and Wael Ghonim
I wrote about Terrence Malick and Wael Ghonim for The Atlantic‘s “Brave Thinkers” package.
Originally published on the IHT‘s Latitude blog.
CAIRO — It has been nearly three months since the last really big, unmanageable crowd converged on Tahrir Square and threatened to stay until its demands were met. On the eve of Ramadan, in early August, the Egyptian military smacked and clubbed that group — a broad but woefully inarticulate coalition opposing the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ hold on power — out of the square. And much to the protesters’ horror, the majority of Egyptians seemed fairly satisfied with the pushback, preferring a return to order even if it came with a military policeman’s truncheon.
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South Carolina Town Sitting on Gold Mine
Originally published in The Daily:
KERSHAW, S.C. — Let the gold rush begin at what will soon be the only active gold mine east of the Mississippi River.
A Canadian company has just announced plans to reopen a historic mine in this small Southern town with a depressed economy and double-digit inflation. It believes there may be billions of dollars of gold still left at the site.
“We want to take this opportunity,” Kershaw resident Sonya Poole said, “and grab it.”
And if the Canadians find that the gold veins lead under the nearby state prison, she said, “I’ll help them tunnel right underneath it.”
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The Twin Towers
Originally appeared in The Daily.
The World Trade Center site is now hallowed ground, and to denigrate the architecture of its enormous rectangular towers is vaguely uncouth, as if to denigrate not just the towers but the great city that produced them. But critics were not always so respectful. When the towers went up in the early 1970s, everyone found something to hate. Those who liked shiny glass skyscrapers moaned at these opaque figures now marring the skyline. More classically inclined critics asked whether this was where modern architecture had brought us — to big rectangles, witless and inert, as ugly as they were inhuman. The unkindest cuts came from those who said they were not up to the Big Apple’s standard — “so utterly banal,” wrote the critic Paul Goldberger, “as to be unworthy of the headquarters of a bank in Omaha.”
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Jersey Gore
Originally appeared in The Daily.
For today’s summer vacationers, the Jersey Shore presents few dangers worse than bad calzone, unwanted encounters with reality TV stars, and venereal disease. But the beach bums of yesteryear faced a danger much more terrifying, and not curable with a dose of Imodium or penicillin. It measured about 10 feet long, stalked swimmers along a 125-mile stretch of coastline, and feasted on human flesh throughout the summer of 1916. No one can be sure, but most scientists now think the culprit was one or several great white or bull sharks.
Graeme Wood 