What this book does is showcase many fine examples of good writing, good organization and smart thinking.

We are treated to a look at people, places, trends and ideas, all featured stories from the Journal, most of them dating from the 1970s up to as recently the fall of 2001, though at least a couple reache back to the 1960s (feuds at a nudist colony. Hey, it was 1968).

Part of the charm of the "a-hed" stories, of course, is finding them smack in the middle of the otherwise staid financial columns. But the pieces are fun, great reads at any time, any place, undiminished by the passage of time.

The feature showcases writing, allowing its reporters to stretch their writing and reporting boundaries. The stories make for some pretty amusing headlines, too, some of which show up or are at least reflected in the chapter titles. (Your Orthodontist and Ewe, The Offal Truth, Men Are From Hardware Stores, Women Are From…, and Play It Again, Ma’am.)

The book opens with a piece that makes me cringe, in this day of instant messaging, cell phones and other electronic aids to communication, mixed with human error. How many of us have accidentally messaged the wrong person, perhaps even the person we were writing about? Come on, admit it. This Phone Hex piece relates several stories of people who have accidentally called ex-lovers or others and unknowingly left their cell phones on, so that the recipient of the call can hear everything that the unknowing caller is doing. The most amazing element of this story, I thought, was the willingness of people to first admit to making the mistake and then to discuss it with the Journal reporter.

Other stories examine toad smoking (to get high); one-pulse words (an entire piece written with one-syllable words, with a clever nod to Bill Safire); a Canadian scientist who fires dead chickens at targets to test aircraft vulnerability in collisions with birds; the many people who pretend they were members of the Surfaris, the band responsible for "Wipe Out"; an Englishman who has built, and regularly uses, a medieval siege engine; the problems Japanese golfers face when they hit a hole-in-one; battles over translating the Bible into Klingon; UPS deliverymen as cultural sex objects; digital memories at cemeteries; vegetarian pets; contests for bad writing and so on. All in all, there are 67 stories, organized into nine chapters.

No book coming out of New York these days would be complete without some reference to the World Trade Center attacks, and here there are two: one on the effects on one postal worker whose route took her all over one of the Towers. She was lucky, still at the Post Office station when the buildings were attacked, but feels the loss of the many people she knew, and has to deal with the thousands of pieces of mail still coming in, addressed to nonexistent offices and people, not to mention the items sent to aid rescue workers and dogs. (The story was written in November). Equally lucky are those featured in another piece, which examines the sheer happenstance that tied people up in traffic, made them miss their trains, decided to go to work late so they could take their children to work, or to vote, or been laid off the day before the attacks and thus lived, even as their colleagues died.

This book is worth reading for the good writing and clever ideas. Anyone looking to brighten up news pages would benefit from reading through these pages and borrowing some ideas. I’m sure the Journal folks wouldn’t mind.
  
Pam Robinson is a news editor with the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service and a co-founder of ACES.