- "In the Year of the Storm: The Topography of Resurrection in New Orleans"
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A year in the destroyed city.
Harper's
- "The Swarm: An Eruption in the French Quarter"
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The clash of man and termite, reported from New Orleans.
Harper's
- "The Duke"
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An obsession with cigarettes, power, and immortality.
Southern Cultures
- "Pig Sins"
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Essay on pork and love.
The Oxford American
- "The Art of Politics"
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General Wesley Clark's next move is anybody's guess.
The Oxford American
- "The Lion in Summer"
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A profile of Winston Groom in his mountain retreat, where there are no Gumps.
The Mobile Register
- "The Pickle Predicament"
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Essay on nostalgia, marketing, and the triumph of the pickle.
The Independent
- "Newspaper Columns"
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Short essays from Pittsboro, North Carolina.
The Chapel Hill News
- "Futures Market"
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Essay on risk, and the boredom of a golf range attendant.
Lather Weekly
- "Purification"
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Essay on basketball and time.
The Independent
- "Measures of Success"
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Essay on publishing.
Poets and Writers
- "A Short History of Stonecutter Mills"
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Paper on the effects of textile mill closings on the small town of Spindale, North Carolina. Presented at a conference sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina.
The Center for the Study of the American South
- "Semper Fi"
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Essay on the Marines and 9/11.
The Independent
