LISTMAKING REVIEW: HARPER'S Magazine

One of my most favorite purveyors of astounding lists is HARPER'S Magazine. Both, the celebrated and piercing "HARPERS INDEX", as well as the often ‘out there’ compilation on the last page, called "Findings", fill their lines with the stories of scientific facts and numbers, compassion, intellect, poetry and metaphysics.

What I like most about "Findings" is its dialectical format. Unlike the easy access info offered in snappy bullet-point one-line zingers in the Index, Findings is shaped like prose. At first this can be misleading because there appears to be no real rhyme or reason as to the construction of paragraphs, or even having more than 2 related sentences in a row. In fact the name is the best clue as to how to proceed when approaching this list...the links between all the bits of info form in the mind of the reader instead of being spelled out on the page. For a similar experience see "Fast, Cheap, And Out Of Control" by Errol Morris.

Pick it up and put it all together for yourself. Ah yeah.