by Michael Shapiro | May 8, 2012 | Blog, Books, Sports, Stories, Travel
It’s not easy to find the right home for a 6,000-word story about rafting the Colorado River in the wake of John Wesley Powell. A civil war vet, Cpt. Powell and his party made the first descent of the Colorado through the Grand Canyon in 1869. Our trip was more...
by Michael Shapiro | May 6, 2012 | Blog, Interviews, Stories, Travel
After seeing what FLW did with the Guggenheim, I expected his desert home to be outrageous and astonishing. Of course it wasn’t – the low-slung building fit perfectly with their desert surroundings. Following is my story on the witty and enormously...
by Michael Shapiro | May 1, 2012 | Blog, Music, Stories
Usually when an actor takes the stage to play music it’s mediocre at best. But Hugh Laurie can really play piano and has assembled a top-shelf band from New Orleans. I profiled Laurie in advance of last Tuesday’s show in Napa, which was superb....
by Michael Shapiro | Apr 25, 2012 | Books, Interviews, Literature, Stories
When my book A Sense of Place came out a few years ago I got compliments about being a good interviewer. But here’s the secret: I interviewed people — the world’s leading travel writers — who had something to say. I had a similarly delightful...
by Michael Shapiro | Mar 26, 2012 | Blog, Interviews, Stories
These days Lily Tomlin’s character Ernestine, the gossipy telephone operator who used to parody the AT&T monopoly, works for an insurance firm, “denying health care to everybody.” She told me this during a phone interview in March, 2012, for a Press Democrat...
by Michael Shapiro | Mar 3, 2012 | Blog, Books, Stories
Ballistics evidence suggests the bullets that killed NFL-player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman were fired from just 10 yards away. We know it was friendly fire — his mother believes it may not have been an accident. Here’s a review I wrote for the SF Chronicle...
