“The Best Magazine Articles Ever”

“The Best Mag­a­zine Arti­cles Ever” – Sure the list is sub­jec­tive. It’s all in Eng­lish, and heav­i­ly slant­ed toward male writ­ers. But you can’t quib­ble with this. This curat­ed col­lec­tion fea­tures pieces by some of the finest Amer­i­can writ­ers of the past gen­er­a­tion. We’ve high­light­ed 10 nota­bles ones from a much longer list avail­able here.

1 ) John Updike, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 22, 1960.

2) Nor­man Mail­er, “Super­man Comes to the Super­mar­ket.” Esquire, Novem­ber 1960.

3) Tom Wolfe, “The Last Amer­i­can Hero is Junior John­son. Yes!” Esquire, March 1965.

4) Hunter Thomp­son, “The Ken­tucky Der­by is Deca­dent and Depraved.” Scan­lan’s Month­ly, June 1970.

5) Stew­art Brand, “Space War: Fanat­ic Life and Sym­bol­ic Dearth Among Com­put­er Bums. Rolling Stone, Decem­ber 7, 1972.

6) David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “The String The­o­ry.” Esquire, July 1996.

7) Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air.” Out­side Mag­a­zine, Sep­tem­ber 1996.

8) Susan Orlean, “Orchid Fever.” The New York­er, Jan­u­ary 23, 1995.

9) Mal­colm Glad­well, “The Pitch­man.” The New York­er, Octo­ber 30, 2000. (Yup, he’s Cana­di­an, I know.)

10) Katie Hafn­er, “The Epic Saga of The Well.” Wired, May 1997.

via @caitlinroper