The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever by Michael J. Mooney

That superlative of that title might seem a bit much, but I’m inclined to agree with the assessment. The article is an extraordinary piece of writing, tracking one Texas bowler’s dalliance with greatness during one of his multiple league nights with absolutely mastery of building suspense frame after frame. With lovely empathy, Michael J. Mooney connects the athletic effort to the biography of the man hurling all the strikes, bringing earned poignancy to the story. This piece is published by D Magazine.

Why Scores of Female Athletes Are Speaking Out on Abortion Rights by Kurt Streeter

Writing in The New York Times, Kurt Streeter reports on a brief filed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of hundreds of female athletes. The brief correctly excoriates the regressive, hateful law in Texas that essentially aims to push abortion providers into quitting out of fear that vigilantes will harass them in pursuit of a five-figure bounty. This article focuses on the specific story of Crissy Perham, an Olympic swimmer who got an abortion in college after her birth control failed. Her candor in the face of a reactionary society intent on stigmatizing her decision is incredibly admirable.

The Power Broker (1974) by Robert Caro

I’m a little dazed that I was able to finish this Volvo-sized book. Before Robert Caro devoted most of his professional life to writing a mammoth, multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, he delivered offered roughly twelve hundred pages on the the rise and fall of Robert Moses, the New York–based planning powerhouse who oversaw the creation of acres of parks, miles of roadways, and countless other projects. Caro is a master, and that mastery is on full display in The Power Broker. Details are dense, rich, and telling, and Caro’s balances appreciation for Moses’s considerable accomplishments with appropriate umbrage at his offenses. As the title implies, the book is about power, and Caro makes a convincing case that too much of it placed in the hands of one person, especially without trut public accountability, can’t help but corrupt.