Let Me Explain

No, these aren't newspaper stories. But I submit the following two passages as standards toward which to strive as we try to explain the world. They both appeared in The New Yorker. The first, from "Struts and Frets" by Burkhard Bilger (May 14, 2007), is about how a guitar works. The second, from "The Bakeoff" by Malcolm Gladwell (September 5, 2005) is about the magic formula of a good cookie. Both seem like simple subjects, but read carefully. There's some real insight here. This sort of reporting is harder than it looks, and it's the kind we should do more often:

1. A guitar isn't an especially hard instrument to build — "Try a harpsichord," Parker said — but it leaves little room for…