What You Should Be Reading Now

Here, a reintroduction to a feature that had fallen by the wayside a bit:

• It’s a few weeks old at this point, but I doubt you’ll read a better profile this year than this Chris Jones piece in Esquire on Roger Ebert. By turns heart-wrenching and uplifting, it’s the kind of article that makes you appreciate the magic that can happen when a gifted writer encounters a compelling subject. Also recommended is Will Leitch’s Deadspin post about how he gained Ebert’s friendship…and then almost lost it.
• This piece in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about a black preacher representing an overwhelmingly white county in Alabama recalls Faulkner’s famous quote: “The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”
• New York chronicles the next moves to be made in the Big Apple’s media wars by News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch.
• Speaking of media warfare, Michael Wolff has a piece in Vanity Fair about who’s going to win the coming Internet information showdown.
• In last month’s issue of The Believer, Roger Cohen has a long essay on why and how writing styles change with age.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates on getting past your past (and finding success in spite of it).
• And two pieces from GQ: Chuck Klosterman on the return of Pavement and Terry Ellis on the love lives of educated black men in the Age of Obama.