What Did I Do to Susan Orlean and Other Stories

From the seat of a bicycle, behind the stage of a lumberjack competition, atop a boatful of oyster shells, and from other unusual perspectives the nonfiction stories in this collection explore a variety of subjects. In some cases I position myself as an outsider, learning through research, interviews and observation. In others I begin as an outsider and then dive in personally, making myself the subject of the experiment. Through it all I hope to make readers, at least temporarily, as interested in online encyclopedias, fixed-wheel bicycles, replica schooners and hungry stingrays as I am. The proper audience for the stories in this collection is people like me—curious people who want to explore new subjects not because they are strictly useful, but because, in fact, everything is interesting when you look at it in the proper light. News is not statistics or battles or financial crises or explosions. News happens when individual people do things, and individual people are always complex, multi-faceted creatures. Dig beneath the surface of any simple-seeming news story and you'll find an infinite rabbit hole of paths to follow.