Essay-Johnson is exploring the environment that helped create the Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Bomber.
Literary Journalism-He recreates his encounters with his interviewees in great detail, along with the setting and scenery, and the activities these people engage in.

His writing is very descriptive and informative, a cross between literary journalism and a short story. In scenes describing the daily life and locations of the people Johnson encountered read like fiction, yet interspersed throughout are short, yet incredibly important and factual paragraphs delineating histories, biographical information, geographical information, statistics, etc.

It is obvious that Johnson went to fairly intense and thorough investigative lengths for this piece in his attempt to investigate and better understand Eric Rudolph, and also to shed light. However, some parts are surely fabricated. Though this is based on true events, he had to improvise. Do you think this piece blurs the lines of fiction and nonfiction, or did Johnson do a good job of writing as real a profile/memoir of Eric Rudolph as possible?

Johnson opens and closes his piece with scientific writing concerning humankind's relationships to caves since prehistoric times. Do you think these pieces take away from the overall story being told, or does this technique tie it all together/does it make the piece more cohesive?

Johnson's portrayal of the people he encountered for this piece is a little skewed; more specifically, they come off as insane right-wing pro-life radicals who, if not in open support of Rudolph's bombings, are not in disagreement with his actions aimed against abortion clinics. Is this piece really a masked critique of the community Johnson spent time in? Do you think his portrayal of these people is fair? Or does he do a good job of writing as objectively as possible?