Bill Donahue is a writer for Outside, Harper’s, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and more…
Lon Myers was the greatest American runner of the nineteenth century and also a Sephardic Jew. In 1882, he ran a series of three one-on-one footraces against England’s best runner, Walter George, at the Polo Grounds, in New York City.
Runner’s World
Edited by Christine Fennessy. Illustrations by Bruce Emmet.
Read this story »…
Searching for the ghost of Russian novelist Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia.
The Washington Post Magazine
Edited by David Rowell. Photographs by Oleg Gritskevich.
Read this story »…
In August, 1913, pudgy middle-aged Joe Knowles stepped naked into the woods of Maine, to see if he could live as a primitive man. When he returned home to Boston two months later, clad in a bearskin, 200,000 people greeted him.
Boston Magazine
Edited by Toby Lester.
Read this story »…
Inside the Catholic Church and the mysterious process of anointing the holy dead.
Byliner Originals
Edited by Laura Hohnhold.
Read this story »…
Bicycling to the world’s largest statue of Genghis Khan, in Mongolia. Edited by Tim Lavin.
The Atlantic
Edited by Tim Lavin. Photo by Jeffrey Kerby.
Read this story »…
On a warm summer evening in 1919, a comely young factory worker named Bella Wright set out for a bicycle ride through the country lanes outside Leicester, England. What happened next involved a revolver, a raven, and a shady character on a high-end green bicycle.
Bicycling
Edited by Bill Strickland. Illustrations by Chris Gall.
Read this story » …
The poet Mary Barnard was an extremely private person, and single throughout her entire life. Her verse was spare and a bit cold, devoid of people. So how is that her 1958 book—Sappho: A New Translation—perfectly captured the Greek lyric poet, in all her sublime sensuality? Edited by Chris Lydgate.
Reed Magazine
Edited by Chris Lydgate.
Read this story »
…
In the love letters he wrote to his sweetheart, my grandfather extolled the joys of fighting in World War I. In one 1918 note from Paris, he wrote, “The beauty here is punctuated by the boom of long range shells (one just went off in the front of the hotel), but no one seems to mind, unless they are actually hit.”
The Washington Post Magazine
Edited by David Rowell. Photo by Michael Grimm.
Read this …
Long the debate has raged: Did Frederick indeed summit Mount McKinley in 1906? Edited by Alison Osius.
Climbing
Edited by Alison Osius.
Republished in 20 Years of Climbing Magazine.
Read this story »…