Few urban legends annoy me as much as "sugar makes kids hyper." It's so widespread that I don't even bother correcting it any more. I just end up sounding like a know-it-all nag, one of the only things in the world more annoying than someone sprouting off urban tale nonsense...

Congrats to Mike Brown for being named the new head coach of the Lakers.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, and I mean that quite sincerely. Brown being in the news has me thinking about the awesome character Darryl Dawkins, the sad tale of Lenny Cooke and the...

Wow. I just heard that Robert "Tractor" Traylor is dead at 34. It is of course sad to lose anyone so young, and this one hits close to home for me.

Tractor was starring for U-M when I lived in Ann Arbor in 96-98, and I wrote a piece...

If you want to get to know your book, read it out loud. This is a simple lesson I learned recording the audio book of Big In China, My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing.

Shortly after...

When my wife and I decided to move our family from Maplewood to Beijing in 2005 we weren't really sure what it would mean for our Jewish life. We were prepared to scale it back for a few years, and to take more responsibility for keeping the Jewish education of...

With almost 100 columns and thousands of blog posts documenting my three and half years in China, I thought turning it all into a book would be straightforward. I was wrong.

I never seriously doubted I would get here, but once I plunged into turning...

I wrote my book Big In China really quickly. I know this is true because everyone says it is so, but the process has felt anything but fast to me. Now, after a lot of hurry up and wait, the real countdown has begun. The book launches on March 1.

I sat at my dining room table in Maplewood, New Jersey with my wife Rebecca and our dear friends Craig Winkelman and Jane Beck. It was July, 2005, and they were there for a goodbye dinner; in a few weeks my family of five would be moving to Beijing.
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