University of Wisconsin English professor Bukoski grew up—and still lives—in the Polish community of east-side Superior, Wisconsin. It’s been the setting for several books of short stories that form a kaleidoscopic portrait of Bukoski’s community, like Yoknapatawpha on the Gitchee Gummee. The latest, Time Between Trains, contains thirteen new tales that show Superior the way … Read more
Minnesota’s most venerable company landed one of the biggest private contracts ever awarded by the Chinese government. And promptly lost it, because of—what else?—sex and cars. The Orient promises untold riches. And yet for centuries those riches have remained untold. From Marco Polo to AOL, Queen Victoria to General Motors, the history of foreign investment … Read more
In the publishing biz, excellence awards are often a travesty. If you win one, you’re brilliant. If you don’t, the judges are idiots. Just so, it’s gratifying to know that the American Society of Magazine Editors each year publishes a selection of what they consider the best magazine journalism of the previous year. We consider … Read more
If you don’t like the society you live in, you can either try to change it or leave. In 1891, the painter Paul Gauguin left, fleeing bourgeois France for an existence filled with art and unashamed sensuality in Tahiti. In 1844, his grandmother Florita had embarked on a lifelong career of ardent political activism for … Read more
Australian novelist Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang was an inventive explosion of the myth of outlaw national hero Ned Kelly. He continues pulling at the loose, frayed edges of legend in Fake, a tale that plays off a real-life scandalous Aussie literary hoax. Carey’s con artist, Chubb, forges the life’s work of … Read more
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the procedure. What they don’t tell you is that it’s basically having a kid, even though the kid is you. They all make it out to be a “perfect genetic copy,” they get all lathered about “genomic imprinting.” Yeah, but it’s a DNA snapshot of me in a … Read more
You’re the greatest living explorer, standing shoulder to shoulder with Jacques Cousteau, Robert Peary, and Amelia Earhardt. Now you’re heading back to the Arctic. I see dead deer everywhere, their yawning red abdomens, stiffening legs, their black eyes. It’s one of the hazards of driving around Ely on opening weekend. I went literally to the … Read more
Mille Porsild agrees that the life of an explorer can seem awfully selfish. “You think about it all the time, leaving your loved ones behind,” she says. Most of Porsild’s immediate family is halfway around the world in her native Denmark. But some of them are right here: Her husband Paul Pregont and, arguably the … Read more
1944 Will Steger born and raised in Richfield, the second of eight children 1959 Steger, a freshman at Benilde, buys a motorboat and, with his brother, drives it down the Missippippi–and back 1963 Steger devises a kayak trek to the headwaters of the Yukon River. It involves a long portage—over the Rocky Mountains 1967 Steger … Read more
The gales of November still rage with controversy and treachery, as shipwrecks and their grisly cargo become the hot new tourist attraction. A beacon of light shines out from the tip of an eighty-mile stretch of shoreline known as Lake Superior’s Shipwreck Coast. It shines from the lighthouse at Whitefish Point, Michigan, over an area … Read more