For a more complete list, please see this page.

BOOK REVIEW

Human Traffic

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, by Patrick Radden Keefe. The Nation, January 4, 2010. full article

ARTICLE

Slipping From Shangri-La

(teenagers leave an isolated valley in Ladakh via the only winter road, a frozen river) Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring, 2009. full article

BOOK REVIEW

On the Books

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, by Sudhir Venkatesh. The Nation, February 4, 2008. full article

BOOK REVIEW

Fuel Lines

Oil on the Brain: Adventures From the Pump to the Pipeline, by Lisa Margonelli. New York Times Book Review, March 11, 2007. full article

ARTICLE

Wild Things

(a family trip to the Peruvian Amazon) Travel & Leisure Family, September/October 2006. full article

ARTICLE

Capitalist Roaders

(a tour at high speeds down the new highways of China) New York Times Magazine, July 2, 2006. full article

ARTICLE

The Checkpoint

(both sides of the control of roads in the West Bank) The Atlantic, March, 2006. full article

ESSAY

Backstage Man

(an appreciation of Stanley Booth’s The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones) Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2006. full article

OP-ED

Get Lost

(do we really need the GPS device?) New York Times, December 14, 2005. full article

BOOK REVIEW

The Wobbly Wheels of Justice

Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse, by Steve Bogira. New York Times Book Review, May 1, 2005. full article

OP-ED

My Life as a Guard

(on the meaning of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib) New York Times, May 7, 2004. full article

BOOK REVIEW

Force of Habit

Blue Blood, by Edward Conlon. New York Times Book Review, April 18, 2004. full article

ESSAY

Ministering to the Enemy

(on being the Muslim chaplain at the prison at Guantánamo Bay) New York Times Magazine, October 12, 2003. full article

ARTICLE

In the Land of Guantánamo

(an early, and very brief, visit to the prison camp; and a first visit to the house for its “juvenile enemy combatants”) New York Times Magazine, June 29, 2003. full article

ARTICLE

Peru’s Long Haul: Highway to Riches or Ruin?

(the trip that got me thinking, hmm, writing about the right kinds of roads could be really interesting!) National Geographic, June, 2003. full article

ESSAY

The Points That Prisoners Can Make

(on homemade knives, and pointlessness) New York Times Magazine, July 21, 2002. full article

BOOK REVIEW

Guided Tours of Hell

Seek: Reports From the Edges of America and Beyond, by Denis Johnson. New York Times Book Review, June 17, 2001. full article

BOOK REVIEW

A Soul That Won’t Heal

The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams: A Memoir, by Nasdijj*. New York Times Book Review, October 15, 2000. full article
*(It turns out that the author of this book, Nasdijj, was a fake. See the article, “Navahoax,” in the L.A. Weekly.)

ARTICLE

Guarding Sing Sing

(“A firsthand account of the dysfunctional relationship between guards and inmates”) New Yorker, April 3, 2000. full article

ARTICLE

Shifting Sands

(on the road with a rare American tour group in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia) Travel & Leisure, March 2000. full article

ESSAY

Kadi Diallo’s Trial

(on the journey of the mother of a West African mistakenly killed by the NYPD) New York Times Magazine, January 9, 2000. full article

BOOK REVIEW

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean.

New York Times Book Review, January 3, 1999. full article

ARTICLE

The Last Best Friends Money Can Buy (also titled: The Last Nanny)

(an account of the last days of a 99-year-old woman, mainly through the eyes of her Jamaican home health aides) New York Times Magazine, November 30, 1997. full article

ARTICLE

Looking for Poppa’s Alaska

(“Eighty years ago his grandfather set out to explore uncharted land on horseback. Then the horses ran off. Ted Conover and his father attempt to wrestle the same route.”) Travel & Leisure, July, 1997. full article

ARTICLE

Truth & Betrayal in the Editing Room

(documentary filmmakers get very, very close to a teenaged theater troupe) New York Times Magazine, March 30, 1997. full article

ARTICLE

Hacking

(a hatchet murderer turned software entrepreneur struggles to overcome his past) Wired, August, 1996 full article

ARTICLE

First You Fall

(learning to snowboard) Travel & Leisure, March, 1995. full article

OBITUARY

Eve in the Garden of Aspen

(an appreciation of the First Lady of Aspen) New York Times Magazine, January 1, 1995. full article

ARTICLE

The World In Between

(a drive along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border) Outside, December, 1994. full article

ARTICLE

Cowboy Christmas

(twenty-four hours with rodeo cowboys in Utah and Montana). full article and

Learning the Ropes

(a personal passage through bareback riding school). full article Travel & Leisure, July, 1994.

ARTICLE

Christie Picks a Mother

(a single mom with AIDS resolves to line up her replacement before she dies) New York Times Magazine, May 8, 1994. full article

ARTICLE

Trucking Through the AIDS Belt

(five weeks across East Africa with truck drivers at the center of the pandemic) New Yorker, August 16, 1993 full article

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