Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools” blog is calling upon the web to pull together a list of the best magazine articles of all time (via BoingBoing). Given the propensity of the web to generate all manner of “best of” and “top ten” lists and other rankings, I’m a little surprised I’ve never seen anyone try this before, but I think the rather transitory nature of magazine journalism and the sheer overwhelming volume of material generated by periodicals probably put the idea pretty far down on the list of thing people were looking to rank. Nevertheless, what’s already been generated is a pretty awesome list of outstanding pieces of work, and the refinement of the list is ongoing.
Because the bias of the list is for things than can be read online, much of the material being considered is pretty recent, but as magazines begin to put their back issue archives online it is getting easier to find material from the ’80s, ’70s, even the ’50s. Some of the first ones Kelly listed are well-established classics: John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”, Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Atlantic article that presages the computer era, and pieces by Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, et.al. David Foster Wallace is rising to the top of the list as people begin to contribute, and anyone who reads The Atlantic or The New Yorker with any regularity will recognize names like James Fallows, Malcolm Gladwell, Rebecca Mead, and Calvin Trillin.
You could easily cobble together a reading list from this that would keep you busy for a long, long time. I know I am looking forward to doing just that, but let me also offer some recommendations of articles I’ve already read that are on the list that might be a good starting place for you:
“The Mountains of Pi” — Richard Preston, The New Yorker, March 3, 1992. Two mathematician brothers in New York who built a supercomputer in their apartment to calculate Pi. Truly memorable.
“Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein’s Brain” — Michael Paterniti, Harper’s Magazine, October 1997. A first-hand account of the author’s encounter with Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the pathologist who autopsied Albert Einstein and kept his brain for decades. The Harper’s article Kelly links to requires a subscription to read online, but Paterniti published the piece as a book a few years later.
“The Pitchman” — Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, October 30, 2000. Gladwell profiled Ron Popeil, the guy behind Ronco and all those “as seen on TV” products, and how he actually invented many of them himself.
“The Peekaboo Paradox” — Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Magazine, January 22, 2006. Gene Weingarten is one of my favorite journalists, and this story about a DC-area rent-a-clown who calls himself “The Great Zucchini” is a masterpiece.
“Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?” — Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Magazine, March 8, 2009. Another Gene Weingarten piece that you may even remember, since it was published only last year and won him a Pulitzer Prize. Even if you read it then, it’s worth reading again.
“The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is” — Errol Morris, The New York Times, Opinion, June 20, 2010. This is the first part of a series of articles by Morris that the NYT recently ran (he is an occasional contributor there, but his stuff is always fascinating. I actually thought the third article of this series, which is about the end of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, when he was seriously debilitated after a severe stroke, and how his wife and doctors hid the condition from everyone, was the best one.
