“So you’re traveling by yourself?” the woman asked me as we wrapped up a tour of Dexter Avenue King Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, this past April. When I answered yes, she said, “Wow, that’s brave.” The woman — about my age, late forties — was part of a Friendship…

Or: How Do People Write That Fast? Well, this didn’t bode well. I had just, with great excitement, received my packet for my first-ever American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and saw that my contestant number was … 13. …

My grandfather was born in Croatia in 1897, a year and a place that assured his propulsion into the meat grinder of twentieth-century Europe. At seventeen he was drafted into World War I and promptly captured on the Russian front. During his imprisonment—on a family farm, according to my father…