“I showcase the work of other writers who are total strangers to me, but have written some article or essay of exceptional merit.”
Ted Gioia’s annual showcase of the year’s best online writing: Bryan Burrough on earning $166,000 per article during Vanity Fair’s golden era, Amanda Gefter resurrecting a physicist who collaborated with Einstein then died anonymously, a 1955 experiment proposing to expose San Francisco 49ers players to radioactive material, and the story of Alice Coltrane’s lost ashram in the Santa Monica Mountains.