A personal history of “America’s most misunderstood religion.”

A personal reflection on bird-watching and relationships.

The psychic benefits of leaving New York.

On New York City’s “Young Turks of radical urban playground design.”

On life in Los Angeles, and the specter of a second riot.

On collecting books.

I have lived in books, for books, by and with books; in recent years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to live from books. And it was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person; first encountered that deeply intimate bond made when a writer's voice gets inside a reader's head.

Growing up with Charlie Brown.

Listening to the Big Star songwriter, who left the group before dying in a solo car crash at 27.

His voice, on the recordings, is too sensitive. That's meant not as an aesthetic judgment. It wasn't too sensitive for the material, in other words. It was too sensitive for life. You listen to him sing, closely, and if you don't know another thing about what happened to him, you know that the guy with that voice is not going to last.

Nora Ephron on adolescence.

Remembering George Plimpton’s old-fashioned style.

Above all, he was a gentleman, one of the last—a figure so archaic, it could be easily mistaken for something else. No, my father’s voice was not an act, something chosen or practiced in front of mirrors: he came from a different world, where people talked differently, and about different things; where certain things were discussed, and certain things were not—and his voice simply reflected this.

The case against Richard Florida.

“My mother became my daughter when I was nine years old.”

Visiting his daughter in San Francisco, the author longs for food delivery in Manhattan.

An essay on language, fatherhood and forgiveness.

A trip to Disneyland in the mid-1960s.

Previously posted on Longform.org on January 25th, 2012.

On conspiracy theories in sports, from the ‘85 NBA draft lottery to Michael Phelps’ gold medal performance in the 100-meter butterfly.

The author recounts playing herself – best-selling author Sloane Crosley – on an episode of “Gossip Girl.”

Growing up on B-movies.

An essay on the “history, meaning and practice of suicide, from third-century Christian death cults to the Aurora Bridge.”

A married father of two tracks down his free-living doppelgänger, a musician who has avoided responsibility at every turn, to see who’s happier.

A childhood spent with the oboe.

An advertising copywriter adjusts to daily life in Paris, and works in a dysfunctional office.

Office culture in Paris held that it was each person's responsibility, upon arrival, to visit other people's desks and wish them good morning, and often kiss each person once on each cheek, depending on the parties' personal relationship, genders, and respective positions in the corporate hierarchy. Then you moved on to the next desk. Not everyone did it, but those who did not were noticed and remarked upon.

On spending six months on the southern coast of Argentina with the “Jane Goodall of penguins” and several hundred of her research subjects.

On a Victorian-era murder case, and the novel it inspired.