Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife
By Bill Sherwonit Given my love for essays (both writing and reading them), it’s a special delight to have a collection of my pieces published this fall by Alaska Northwest Books. Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife includes thirty-four essays, written over two decades’ time. One of the joys of doing the book was to re-read scores of the essays I’ve written across the years and to find that a good number of them still “hold up” (at least as judged by me and the editors). To give a sense of the book’s scope and intent, I’ll here borrow from…
Deer Hunting in Paris
Congratulations to Mudflats contributor Paula Lee who has won a big, fancy, and prestigious award for her wonderful book Deer Hunting in Paris! She’s given us an excerpt to enjoy. Winner of the 2014 Travel Book award of the Society of American Travel Writers, Deer Hunting in Paris is an unexpectedly funny exploration of a vanishing way of life in a complex cosmopolitan world. The liberal author, Paula Lee, recovers her roots in rural Maine by running after a headless chicken, learning how to sight-in a rifle, shooting skeet, and butchering game animals. Along the way, she figures out how…
News Junkie: An Excerpt
The epic tale of addiction, News Junkie, by friend and occasional contributor to The Mudflats, Jason Leopold, has been reissued. The book looks behind the scenes into the life of one of the best living investigative journalist on the trail, and his double addiction to cocaine, and journalism. News Junkie brings you along for investigations of Enron, Karl Rove and many more. It’s one of my favorite books on journalism, and should be mandatory reading for anyone going into the field. Leopold, who now writes for Vice Magazine, and Al Jazeera on the NSA, Guantanamo, and other issues, has been called a ‘FOIA (Freedom of…
Part Two – Detroit: An American Autopsy
This is part two of our excerpt from Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy (out in hardcover now). You can read part one here. Journalists parachuted into town. The subjects in my Detroit News stories started appearing in Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal, on NPR and PBS and CNN, but under someone else’s byline. The reporters rarely, if ever, offered nuanced appraisals of the city and its place in the American landscape. They simply took a tour of the ruins, ripped off the local headlines, pronounced it awful here and left. And it is awful here, there is…
Detroit: An American Autopsy – Book Excerpt Part One
Charlie LeDuff is awesome. He’s the ultimate local news man. You may remember his name from a post I did on a hilarious but pointed broadcast on police response time. A couple of months ago he released Detroit: An American Autopsy – it looks amazing and couldn’t have been better timed. I’ve just started reading it and highly recommend that you do as well. You’ll notice in the excerpt below he even has an Alaska connection. Look for part two tomorrow, and my review of the book in a couple of weeks. (I’m not that slow of a reader… just…