Monthly Archives: November 2009

A Brief History of the Mall Kiosk

Posted on 27 November 2009 by

[Slate's The Big Money / The Washington Post] We all avoid mall kiosks, and we also ignore them. If they pop up in print, it’s generally in a cornball book of get-rich schemes, right next to collecting baseball cards and … Continue reading →

Posted in All History is Local History, Features | Leave a comment

Sex, Lies, and Athletic Tape

Posted on 25 November 2009 by

[Deadspin] Over at Deadspin, I’ve got a dispatch from this year’s Harvard-Yale game. It’s the 126th time the two have met, and, in both pretension and pageantry, it lives up to your expectations. One of my favorite details from this … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, All History is Local History, Features, Sports | Leave a comment

Gladwell Agonistes

Posted on 17 November 2009 by

[x-posted at The Rumpus] I’m not sure why Malcolm Gladwell’s fourth book, What the Dog Saw, which collects 19 of his New Yorker essays, has been the one to incite a riot of review-essays. Were the first three books not … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, The Media | 1 Comment

“The Grateful Dead Approach to Intellectual Property”

Posted on 11 November 2009 by

[NUVO] That quote came from Moira Smith, the librarian for folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University. I interviewed Moira for my NUVO cover story on Google Books’ basically unnoticed foray into Indiana, and one question I asked was whether she … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Features, Hoosiers | Leave a comment

Review of Memoir: A History

Posted on 11 November 2009 by

[Christian Science Monitor] This week, Ben Yagoda’s new book, Memoir: A History, comes out, and I got to review it for the Christian Science Monitor. One interesting thing I couldn’t fit into the review: Yagoda decides to use “autobiography” and “memoir” … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Leave a comment