Depending on whom you ask, John McPhee is either the founder of narrative journalism or the savior of it; few, if anyone, would have any qualms with his writing or research.  His subjects range wildly, from oranges to Bill Bradley to farmers' markets to the Mississippi River.  Throughout

Ted Conover has been a correction officer at Sing Sing Prison and a cab driver in Aspen; he hopped freight trains for a year while living as a hobo and crossed the U.S.-Mexican border with undocumented immigrants.  All of this in the name of that particular brand of essayistic narrative journ

If only she weren't so prolific, the thinking goes, that Nobel would be hers.  And Joyce Carol Oates – with the aid of her pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelley – is nothing if not prolific, having written well over fifty books in her lifetime.  But this is not for lack