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Dept. of (my) History: The Last Lecture

Dept. of (my) History: The Last Lecture

I don’t usually write in memoir, but my dad’s retirement, at the age of 88, made me think about how the generations look differently at the concept, and whether it’s okay to retire 30 years before your father. Here, then, is a conversation full of...
WINNER: Best Magazine Writing

WINNER: Best Magazine Writing

My debut in Smithsonian Magazine is this strange but true thriller about the swashbuckling 18th-century naturalist Andre Michaux. A pioneer of the New World, Michaux made hundreds of discoveries on his travels through the Appalachian Mountains that formed in his...
Home Court

Home Court

In this chronicle of the struggles of African Americans to play tennis in the segregated south, a five-year-old novice meets a doctor who changes history by building a clay court in his back yard.
The Dept. of (my) History

The Dept. of (my) History

In 1998, Penthouse Magazine sent me to Las Vegas to interview Bodacious, the meanest rodeo bull that ever lived. He’d been retired for three years, and I arrived to find him in a Home Depot parking lot, looking surly while his manager, Big Bob Tallman, sold...

The Demagogue

The Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol set the stage for this story in GQ about alt.right’s most surprising survivor.