A historic Little Rock building and its owner, before and after a catastrophic fire.

What prison does to a man.

“Has anybody in Westchester County ever called the New York Times his or her ‘friend’? I realize that the rest of America, in its post-Katrina fatigue, is pretty tired of hearing New Orleanians, the city’s acolytes and defenders, always carrying on about how it’s the most unique city in America, but, the fact is, it is. Get over it.

And so, too, is its newspaper.”

On “soldiers for credibility” and the tug of war over truth.

An essay on televangelists and a missing mother.

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.

Teaching Emily Dickinson at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida.

An essay about the weeks after the author’s brother nearly died.

An essay on African-American Republicans.

The making of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville.