Longreads

Nearly six months after the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, the family of one of the victims, 7-year-old Daniel Barden, grapples with what's next:

"Daniel Barden. Seven. Dylan Hockley. Six. Ana Marquez-Greene. Six. Six. Six. Six. Seven. Six. How long could one minute last? Mark looked at the lawmakers and tried to pick out the three who already had refused to meet with the Newtown parents. Could he barge into their offices? Wait at their cars? Jackie counted the seconds in her head — 'breathe, breathe,' she told herself — believing she was holding it together until a lawmaker handed her a box of tissues. Hockley saw the tissues and thought about how she rarely cried anymore except for alone at night, unconscious in her sleep, awakening to a damp pillow."

Members of the Pilanesberg National Park Anti-Poaching Unit (APU) stand guard as conservationists and police investigate the scene of a rhino poaching incident April 19, 2012. (Mike…

3. Why Is Science Behind a Paywall? Alex Mayyasi | Priceonomics | May 10, 2013 | 12 minutes (3,246 words) Why is scientific research still stuck in a model that requires that work be published in a…

Hissing and spitting like an animal, high tide surged across the sands of Virginia Key. Dark waves broke over the jagged shore and scattered flotsam on the stones like tea leaves at the bottom of a…

1. Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. Mac McClelland | Mother Jones | April 29, 2013 | 33 minutes (8,317 words) Deinstitutionalization moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals and into…

4. When War Came A.J. Sherman | New England Review | April 8, 2013 | 20 minutes (4,955 words) The author recalls a childhood summer in New Jersey's countryside in 1939 before World War II:"Toward…

On their last day they visited a town where they had heard there’d been a number of civilian casualties. They were spending the afternoon with a family—cousins of one of the…