New York Times Magazine
Staff Writer since 2011
I’m a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine.
I’ve written portraits of writers (Haruki Murakami, Anne Carson, John McPhee) and athletes (Russell Westbrook, Bill Walton, Phil Jackson) and odd places all over the world, including Mount Rushmore and a Charles Dickens theme park and the NBA Bubble at DisneyWorld. My work has won a National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing and has been included in several “Best American Writing” anthologies.
I’ve written miscellaneous essays about all kinds of things: waterparks, marginalia, Derek Jeter, Fleetwood Mac, animal videos, the pleasure of looking out the window, and watching “Jeopardy!” with my father. You can find my whole NYT archive here.
My wife, Sarah, came up with the idea for the long-running magazine column Letter of Recommendation — may the trumpets of acknowledgement blare in her honor forever.
Some Stories
Profile: Rick Steves
Steves is so completely American that when you stop to really look at his name, you realize it’s just the name Rick followed by the plural of Steve — that he is a one-man crowd of absolutely regular everyday American guys: one Rick, many Steves.
Feature: David’s Ankles
Perfection, it turns out, is no way to try to live. It is a child’s idea, a cartoon — this desire not to be merely good, not to do merely well, but to be faultless.
PRofile: Russell Westbrook
In the swirling cloud of contradiction that surrounds Westbrook, one paradox stands out. He often looks, on the court, like a force of pure chaos: a wild, petulant, fire-breathing hothead. And yet he is also, especially in his personal life, relentlessly devoted to order and control.
PRofile: “Weird Al” yankovic
After 40 years, Yankovic is now no longer a novelty, but an institution — a garish bright patch in the middle of America’s pop-cultural wallpaper, a completely ridiculous national treasure, an absurd living legend.
