Recently the National Association for Science Writers’ book editor Lynne Lamberg asked me to talk about finding the idea for Cork Wars,…
This fall I had the honor of speaking to a gathering of hundreds of professional tree people in California about an episode…
Michael Ondaatje’s first book, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, was my first encounter with that sort of metafiction — a…
My post for the Wilson Center‘s New Security Beat explores how rare earths–natural ingredients in our smartphones and other electronics–are now a…
I’m the last person you’d want for grassroots action. I’m not organized and I don’t really like meeting new people. Truth is,…
One morning last October, a middle-aged man named Francisco Letelier stepped to a microphone in Washington, D.C.’s Sheridan Circle, surrounded by light…
Varian Fry, an American journalist, set out for France in the summer of 1940, as that country became the latest to fall…
Last week the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence agency during World War II, received the highest Congressional honor. My new…
As featured in the Washington Post, my trip to Portugal tracked some delicious adventures in Lisbon, as well as up the coast…
A few months ago Smithsonian published my article about the experience of Italian-Americans in the early 1940s, when public fears motivated a…
