NEWSPAPER
My work is mostly published in The New York Times, where I have been a staff writer since 2008. This page on its website lists the most recent articles for which I had a byline or a contributor line.
BOOK REVIEW-ESSAYS
I have occasionally been commissioned to write book review-essays by a variety of publications, including The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Nation, and (as a freelancer, since it is not part of my job responsibilities) The New York Times Book Review. They include:
“A Terrible Mistake,” The New York Review of Books, Sept. 19, 2024. (The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq by Steve Coll)
“Mission Creep: What are the lessons of the United States’ 20-year war in Afghanistan?” The Nation, March 21, 2022. (The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock)
“The Rise of Private Spies: What happens when online investigators and detectives-for-hire take on intelligence work?” The New Republic, May 10, 2021. (We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News by Eliot Higgins; Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies by Barry Meier)
“Spy Chief,” The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2020. (Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad By John O. Brennan)
“The Blacked-Out Line: Nicholson Baker in the Labyrinths of American Secrecy,” The Nation, October 6, 2020. (Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Nicholas Baker)
“Eyewitness to Chaos,” The New York Times, Oct. 28, 2019. (Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon With Secretary Mattis By Guy M. Snodgrass)
“Controlling the Chief,” The New York Review of Books, Feb. 8, 2018. (The Pentagon’s Wars: The Military’s Undeclared War Against America’s Presidents by Mark Perry)
“The Terror Hydra,” The New York Times, June 9, 2017. (Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State By Ali Soufan)
“Was Snowden a Russian Agent?” The New York Review of Books, February 9, 2017. (How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft by Edward Jay Epstein; Snowden, a film directed by Oliver Stone)
“General Hayden’s Offensive,” The New York Review of Books, May 26, 2016. (Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror by Michael V. Hayden)
“Glued to the Screen,” The New York Times, March 6, 2016. (Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies By Owen Gleiberman)
OCCASIONAL OFF BEAT/MORE PERSONAL PIECES
Politico Magazine published a special project I undertook about culture war and the history of the relationship between my hometown — Fort Wayne, Indiana — and the Miami Tribe, which controlled the region before the 1794 conquest of what is now the Midwest by General “Mad” Anthony Wayne:
“When the Culture Wars Hit Fort Wayne,” Politico Magazine, July 31, 2020
The Journal-Gazette, my hometown newspaper, published this piece which was based on some unused research from that project about a forgotten but massive tribal cemetery under Fort Wayne’s Spy Run neighborhood:
“Buried Concerns,” The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Aug. 16, 2020
The New York Times Sunday Magazine published this memoir-essay about my weird connection to the experience of listening Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” while watching the first half of “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Pink Floyd, The Wizard of Oz, and Me,” New York Times, June 21, 2023.