Longreads

Produced in partnership with Tumblr Storyboard. Illustrations by Tully Mills. In February 1970, at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a pregnant woman named Colette MacDonald and her two…

I. In June of 1889, Andrew Carnegie published his essay "Wealth" in the North American Review: a famous document, as remarkable for the author’s delusional self-regard as it is for the case he…

It's eight years ago, and I am sitting in the student housing office located in the administration building of my college campus. I'm meeting with Emily, my supervisor, to ask her if I can still have my job after I return from studying abroad in England for the summer. I love my job. I work as one of those people who sits at an information desk and answers random questions from students and visitors. Once, an old lady called the desk to ask me if she could donate her husband's body to the university for scientific research, and in the background, I could hear a man shouting, "I'm not dead yet!" I also get to walk backwards and give tours of the freshmen dorms to prospective students and their parents.

The Awl’s Choire Sicha, Carrie Frye, Alex Balk: Our Top Longreads of 2011 (Left to right: Choire, Carrie, Alex) Because there are three of us, we trilaterally decided to go for 15. But…

The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts…

Profanity is alive and well on Twitter, except in Utah, apparently. You'd expect heathen citydwellers to swear, and we do not disappoint, but the Bible belt is pretty foul-mouthed too (no word…

Last year, an anonymous writer took over the advice column Dear Sugar at The Rumpus. Soon, she'll go public with her identity. Like many others, I've become obsessed with her advice. Her column…

As anyone sold by the Sea-Monkey ads could tell you, it was hard to say exactly where von Braunhut was walking on the terrain between truth, embellishment and con. That was his gift. He convinced us to look at the jazz hands and lose sight of the footwork. Von Braunhut’s inventions were not quite what they seemed to be. Neither was he.

Our first Longreads Member perk: A digital subscription to the New York Review of Books …