Longreads

The devil was just over Pine Ridge. From the deserted parking lot on the edge of town, the three servants of God looked into darkness. They clicked on their flashlights, pushed through the initial…

It is harder than ever to claim, as the Prime Minister does, that Britain is still a Christian country. It was at the time when Baroness Thatcher stood outside No 10 and recited the prayer of St…

Supporting Obama at a rally in 2008 (from left): Kevin Liles, Mary J Blige, Russell Simmons, Sean "Diddy" Combs and Jay-Z. Photograph: Larry Marano/Getty Images Earlier this year, Killer Mike made…

‘Simultaneously defiant and vulnerable’: Patti Smith in 1977. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis The lasting image is also the first: the photograph of Patti Smith that everyone knows was taken just…

One of the central paradoxes of life in France is that for all the French preen themselves as the most civilised nation on Earth, they are also quickly prone to collapse into self-lacerating fits of…

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The smart money says the U.S. economy will splinter, with some states thriving, some states not, and all eyes are on California as the nightmare scenario. After a hair-raising visit with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who explains why the Golden State has cratered, Michael Lewis goes where the buck literally stops—the local level, where the likes of San Jose mayor Chuck Reed and Vallejo fire chief Paige Meyer are trying to avert even worse catastrophes and rethink what it means to be a society.

Esquire, July 1966"I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said. "They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand." --ERNEST…