Our annual anthology of finalists and winners of the National Magazine Awards 2014 includes Max Chafkin's oral history of Apple from Fast Company, Joshua Davis's intimate portrait of tech pioneer John McAfee's personal and public breakdown from Wired; Kyle Dickman's haunting investigation into the preventable death of nineteen firemen battling an Arizona wildfire; and Ariel Levy's emotional account of extreme travel to a remote land—while pregnant—from The New Yorker.
Other essays include Wright Thompson's bittersweet profile of Michael Jordan's fifty-something second act (ESPN the Magazine); Jean M. Twenge's revealing look at fertility myths and baby politics (The Atlantic); Janet Reitman's controversial study of the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Rolling Stone); Luke Mogelson's harrowing experience accompanying asylum seekers on a potentially deadly sea voyage to Australia (New York Times Magazine); Lisa Miller's poignant report from Newtown, Connecticut, as the town tries to cope with the aftermath of one of the nation's worst mass shootings (New York); Emily Nussbaum's critiques of gender and politics on television (The New Yorker); and Witold Rybczynski's poetic engagement with modern architecture (Architect). The collection concludes with the award-winning poem "Elegies" by Kathleen Ossip (Poetry) and "The Embassy of Cambodia," a short story by Zadie Smith (The New Yorker).
- Table of Contents
- Introduction, by Mark Jannot, vice president, content, National Audubon Society, president, American Society of Magazine Editors
- Acknowledgments, by Sid Holt, chief executive, American Society of Magazine Editors
- The Second Biggest Star in a Remote Little Burg Somewhere in Germany, by Tom Junod
- Apple Breaks the Mold: An Oral History, by Max Chafkin
- The Dream Boat, by Luke Mogelson
- Orders of Grief, by Lisa Miller
- Jahar’s World, by Janet Reitman
- Thanksgiving in Mongolia, by Ariel Levy
- Shark Week and Difficult Women and Private Practice, by Emily Nussbaum
- Overexposed and Radical Revival and Behind the Façade, by Witold Rybczynski
- Sliver of Sky, by Barry Lopez
- Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, by Steven Brill
- How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?, by Jean M. Twenge
- Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building, by Wright Thompson
- Bret, Unbroken, by Steve Friedman
- Dangerous, by Joshua Davis
- The Sinking of the Bounty, by Matthew Shaer
- Nineteen: The Yarnell Hill Fire, by Kyle Dickman
- Elegies, by Kathleen Ossip
- The Embassy of Cambodia, by Zadie Smith
- Permissions
- List of Contributors