For my family, reading Scarry together was itself like a car trip — the rare sort where no one gets cranky and the world, as seen from the back seat, is fresh and startling.
In his biography of a city bureaucrat, Robert Caro created a lasting portrait of American corruption by turning the craft of journalism into a pursuit of high art.
Her own is among the anonymous tales included in “Want,” a new collection she has edited: “It only felt right, given I was requesting courage from everyone else.”