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Author and collaborator Charles Wohlforth

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Charles Wohlforth

Why English is losing power

September 15, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

A friend was shocked when young associates didn’t know the meaning of ‘teetotaler,’ a once-common word that has largely disappeared from the language (replaced by ‘nondrinker’). There are many others like it, and not only slang. Shall, bestow, sublimity—all nearly gone. Some words have not been replaced, and their meanings are harder to express now, …

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Who is the invisible person next to you?

September 9, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

There are tricks to explaining complex ideas in prose, but the most important skill is holistic: adopting a mindset for evaluating the cognitive load of your sentences and the mental capacity of your audience. Good writers get out of their own heads and think about how their words land. You need a mental model of …

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More than half of adult Americans cannot read this

August 27, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

America’s Founders recognized a problem for representative democracy: average voters might not understand the skills needed for administration and leadership. A person good at winning popular votes might not be good at governing. Today, we live the nightmare of the demagogic politics the Founders feared. For political copy writers and comms consultants, figuring out how …

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The editor who forced me to spell correctly

August 19, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

Marc Salgado was tough. As a soccer referee, he once threw a red card, ejecting a player from a game, when the player used vulgar language about him—in the parking lot before the game had even started. Salgado was also one of my first editors as a newspaper reporter, and he taught me to spell. …

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Creation and the erotic spirit

August 5, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

The extraordinary poet Stanley Kunitz wrote that the essence of creativity is the erotic spirit, a point he made at age 100. The life force powered by lust—or sorrow at its loss—alone vivifies great work, he said. Lest anyone take this as a metaphor, he added that poets with low libidos produce second-class verse. I’ve …

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Hungry polar bears and a 50-year story

July 29, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

Polar bears came into George Divoky’s camp on a barren Arctic Island last summer and devoured a colony of black guillemots he had studied there for 50 years. He didn’t try to deter them. The bears were hungry. He had watched their world melting. I had known Divoky for half his career he spent on …

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Here are writers I have worked with, and why

July 15, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

All the cliched images of writers have something in common—the tough guy with a manual typewriter and a glass of whiskey, the willowy girl perched at a window with a notebook, the misunderstood genius in a garret—they’re always alone. But writing a book is a team effort. Every writer needs an editor, and other help. …

Read moreHere are writers I have worked with, and why

How a brilliant writer can break the rules and get away with it

July 8, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

I saved Werner Herzog’s memoir for a year, until I would have time on vacation to thoroughly enjoy the madness, humor, weird asides, extraordinary feats, the complete, willful lack of self-examination, and, ultimately, the graceful intensity of the writing. Herzog broke one of my cardinal rules of memoir writing. Lying on the beach, I had …

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The political gamble behind Lisa Murkowski’s book

June 23, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

Now we find out if the gamble paid off. When I began working with Senator Lisa Murkowski on her new book, Far From Home, I told her I would be her writer and literary advisor—not her political advisor. I knew the authentic story of her fears and struggles would make a great book, but I …

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Why Lisa Murkowski’s book took 5 years to write

June 16, 2025 by Charles Wohlforth

My collaboration with Senator Lisa Murkowski began in her office in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 31, 2019. In the coming week, the book we wrote will be released to the world. I’m proud of the book and how it captures her voice and her perspective. But the greater accomplishment, for both of …

Read moreWhy Lisa Murkowski’s book took 5 years to write
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