This week’s list is a little shorter, with New York as a common theme.
Goodbye To All That – Having lived in New York briefly in my mid-20s nearly 50 years after the author did the same, I am amazed with how deeply this piece resonated with my experience there, especially my sense at the time that “nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.” (Joan Didion, 1967)
Everything In This City Must – What can 6 months in a new city teach you? Follow this professor and author who takes a six-month leave to Leipzig, in the former East Germany, and returns to find his home city, New York, potentially unfit to live in. (Alexander Chee for the Morning News, 2013)
For An Auschwitz Survivor, His Son’s Graduation Spelled Freedom – No matter how challenging your life has been, most likely it is not as challenging as surviving Auschwitz. An amazing story of what never giving up looks like, and how it can create a better future. (Harley Rotbart for The New York Times, 2013)
Here Is New York – “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” (E. B. White for the New Yorker, 1949)