Pick of the Week: "Out in the Great Alone" by Brian Phillips

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Pick of the Week Out in the Great Alone Brian Phillips • Grantland A trip to the Iditarod. In the summer of 1977, a fire swept across the wilderness of interior Alaska, west of Mount McKinley. Tundra burned to rock; 345,000 acres of forest — more than 530 square miles — disappeared in flames. When the smoke cleared, it left behind a weird scar on the map, a vast, charred crater littered with deadfall. In the winter, when temperatures in the interior dive to 40 below, the skeletons of burned trees snapped in the cold or were ripped out by powerful winds. The tussocks of tundra grass froze as hard as bowling balls. Every year in early March, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race sets out from Anchorage, in the south-central part of the state, and runs northwest toward the finish line in Nome, on the coast of the Bering Sea. In its early stages, the trail runs upward, into the mountains of the Alaska Range, then plunges down, into the interior, where it enters the fire’s scorched country. [...] More Picks My Foreign Mom Mary H K Choi • Aeon • Apr 2013 "I love my mother a not-normal amount." Allen Iverson, NBA Icon, Struggles with Life after Basketball Kent Babb • Washington Post • Apr 2013 Basketball's iconoclast is a broke recluse at 37. Carjack Victim Recounts His Harrowing Night Eric Moskowitz • Boston Globe • Apr 2013 When a 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur pulled over to answer a text message he was carjacked by Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. This is what happened that night and how he escaped. This Is What Humane Slaughter Looks Like. Is It Good Enough? Mac McClelland • Modern Farmer • Apr 2013 How an uncompromising cattle ranch does its work. Them and Them Benjamin Wallace-Wells • New York • Apr 2013 In Ramapo, New York, the immigrant community and the growing population of Hasidic Jews had eyed each increasing wariness for years. Then the Hasidim took over the public schools, schools their children do not attend, and proceeded to gut them. News Longform Podcast: Ted Conover "My identity is a rubber band. It can stretch that way and it can stretch this way. When I get home it goes mostly back into the shape it's been, but not completely. And it's that not completely that is interesting and makes me who I am." Listen

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