Author Archive
Articles by Jordan Michael Smith | Email the Author
When McGovern met Mailer
Revisiting an unjustly forgotten account of the 1972 political conventions
By Jordan Michael Smith Oct 26, 2012 at 06:50 AM
When former U.S. Senator George McGovern died in late October, he was valorized as the rare decent man working in... More
How the US captured the real 9/11 mastermind
Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer take us deep inside the hunt for KSM
By Jordan Michael Smith Jun 29, 2012 at 06:50 AM
The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed | By Terry... More
America’s forgotten war
Historian Troy Bickham revisits the War of 1812
By Jordan Michael Smith Jun 27, 2012 at 06:50 AM
The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 | By Troy Bickham |... More
What it takes to win the White House
A review of Samuel L. Popkin’s The Candidate
By Jordan Michael Smith May 14, 2012 at 03:00 PM
The Candidate: What It Takes to Win—And Hold—The White House | By Samuel L. Popkin | Oxford University Press... More
Revisiting Henry Luce’s “American Century”
Andrew Bacevich and others examine the influential essay
By Jordan Michael Smith Feb 29, 2012 at 01:46 PM
The Short American Century: A Postmortem | Edited by Andrew J. Bacevich | Harvard University Press | 296 pages, $25.95... More
The Literary Roots of the Gay Revolution
Reviewing Christopher Bram’s Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
By Jordan Michael Smith Feb 2, 2012 at 03:48 PM
Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America | By Christopher Bram | Twelve Books | 371 pages, $27.99 In... More
Tracing the Roots of Modern Conservatism
Remembering the legacies of Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft
By Jordan Michael Smith Sep 14, 2011 at 12:09 PM
The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party | By Michael... More
Searching for D.B. Cooper
Geoffrey Gray joins the hunt for the vanishing bandit
By Jordan Michael Smith Aug 10, 2011 at 02:22 PM
Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper| By Geoffrey Gray | Crown | 302 pages, $25.00 In the winter of 1971,... More
Critical Condition
Can a retailer-sponsored book review keep its critical hands clean?
By Jordan Michael Smith Feb 25, 2010 at 03:33 PM
Christopher Hayes is a European-style social democrat, who worked at the left-leaning In These Times before assuming his current job... More
Contra Iran
Looking back at media coverage of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, thirty years later
By Jordan Michael Smith Nov 4, 2009 at 09:22 AM
Thirty years ago today, Iranian students invaded the United States embassy in Tehran and captured seventy-one American diplomats, keeping fifty-three... More
Stenography Machines
Attention, Mr. Perlstein: there’s nothing new about ‘he said/she said’
By Jordan Michael Smith Aug 25, 2009 at 08:00 AM
In a much-discussed Washington Post essay last week--“In America, Crazy is a Preexisting Condition”--the liberal historian Rick Perlstein argued that... More
Woman’s work - The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
Sourcing Trayvon Martin ‘photos’ from stormfront - Not a good idea, Business Insider
Elizabeth Warren, the antidote to CNBC - The senator schools the talking heads on bank regulation
Art Laffer + PR blitz = press failure - The media types up the retail lobby’s propaganda
Reuters’s global warming about-face - A survey shows the newswire ran 50 percent fewer stories on climate change after hiring a “skeptic”
In one tweet
Luke Russert is the Golden Boy of DC
And it drives young journalists crazy
It’s official: We never need to worry about the future of journalism again!
The NYT shows us why
Why does Florida produce so much weird news? Experts explain
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
ACEsTooHigh.com – Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
