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Longreads features

Failure To Lawn

On what a dying patch of turfgrass can teach us about water scarcity, ecological repair, and the lies we tell ourselves about success.

The Secret Door

“When we read, we make believe. We aren’t duped or ensorcelled. Deep down we decide. We make ourselves believe.”

Was It Worth It?

“I didn’t think about those nachos even once. I had never experienced anything like it. Is this, I asked my friends, how it feels to be normal?”

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Recent editors’ picks

Losing Paradise

Carlyle Calhoun and James Collier | Southlands and RE:PUBLIC | May 12, 2026 | 4,209 words

“As rising seas swallow Louisiana’s marshes, oil companies are pretending nothing has changed — and that now floatable, fishable waters remain their private property.”

The Paperboy’s Secret

Peter Hessler | The New Yorker | May 31, 2026 | 10,531 words

“In boyhood, guilt was a constant companion. I stopped mentioning the quarters that Mr. Wood put into my pocket.”

Are Memories Transferable — or Edible?

Claire L. Evans | Quanta Magazine | June 5, 2026 | 3,103 words

“In the 1960s, worm-training experiments and their strange implications captivated the nation.”

The Inside Story of the Athens Music Scene

Tommy Tomlinson | Garden & Gun | June 1, 2026 | 5,453 words

“How did the college football town spawn the B-52s, R.E.M., and Widespread Panic, to name just a few? The maestros and misfits who led Athens’s rise to one of the…

Art for Our Sakes

Zadie Smith | The New York Review of Books | May 21, 2026 | 2,358 words

“Why should we go on making things?”

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Weekly Top 5

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Stories from Mina Tavakoli, Lindsey Adler, Joshua Jackson, Ben Tarnoff, Paloma Karr, and Jon Greenaway.

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Introducing the Longreads Story Recommender.

The Longreads questionnaire

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Excerpts from The Atavist Magazine, our sister publication

The Fugitive Childhood of a Cocaine Smuggler’s Daughters

“When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime.”

Open Season

Colorado’s San Luis Valley was a wildlife poacher’s paradise. Then an undercover federal agent arrived.

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Longreads reading lists

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