Longreads

I have always been an admirer of Gwyneth Paltrow, I am not afraid to admit it. She was so good in my favorite movie, A Perfect Murder. I also think her secondary career as a lifestyle guru is…

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…

Vickie, Alice, Lisa, Debbie, Barbara, Chris, Clair and Cootz boarded the Los Angeles-bound Sunset Limited in Schriever, La., and immediately took residence in the glass-sheathed Sightseer Lounge car.…

5. Michael Jordan Has Not Left The Building Wright Thompson | ESPN | February 15, 2013 | 31 minutes (7,955 words) The former basketball star, at 50 and not ready to retire:"Once, the whole world…

Yet it’s not entirely fair to complain about the authenticity of Pad Thai. It’s the noodle that’s the most Thai, and at the same time, the least. Before the 1940s, Pad Thai…

In the summer of 1978, a group of geologists traveled into Siberia and discovered a family that had not had outside contact with anyone in four decades:

"In some respects, Peskov makes clear, the taiga did offer some abundance: 'Beside the dwelling ran a clear, cold stream. Stands of larch, spruce, pine and birch yielded all that anyone could take.… Bilberries and raspberries were close to hand, firewood as well, and pine nuts fell right on the roof.'

"Yet the Lykovs lived permanently on the edge of famine. It was not until the late 1950s, when Dmitry reached manhood, that they first trapped animals for their meat and skins. Lacking guns and even bows, they could hunt only by digging traps or pursuing prey across the mountains until the animals collapsed from exhaustion. Dmitry built up astonishing endurance, and could hunt barefoot in winter, sometimes returning to the hut after several days, having slept in the open in 40 degrees of frost, a young elk across his shoulders. More often than not, though, there was no meat, and their diet gradually became more monotonous. Wild animals destroyed their crop of carrots, and Agafia recalled the late 1950s as 'the hungry years.'"

The world got its first inkling of the quick wit that would make Apple’s Siri an icon during a packed press conference held before an auditorium of tech elite. "Who are you?" an Apple executive asked…

When Marina Keegan died, tragically, at the age of twenty-two, in a car accident in May, she had just graduated from Yale University and was about to start a job on the editorial staff of The New…

Ignore the tedious pundits bloviating about shrunken attention spans. There has never been a better time to immerse yourself in long, deep, rich science reporting. Here’s a list of my 12 top…