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Rachel Maddow’s War, the New Travel Memoir, and the Failure of Hip-Hop: Today’s TNR Reader

 Editor’s Note: Well be running the article recommendations of our friends at TNR Reader each afternoon on The Plank, just in time to print out or save for your commute home. Enjoy!

In a culture of blurbs and bytes, Katharine Boo’s pieces keep getting longer. The art of deep reporting is her calling.

Columbia Journalism Review | 6 min (1,403 words)

Rachel Maddow never aims for partisan anger on her show. The war she fights on the air is with herself. 

Rolling Stone | 22 min (5,483 words)

The war on drugs helped birth hip-hop music. Then the music got high on the idea of the “criminalblackman.” 

The Washington Post | 6 min (1,592 words) 

In Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, redemption does not come easy. The journey offers no neat epiphanies. This is the travel memoir turned on its head.

Los Angeles Review of Books | 9 min (2,203 words)