Longreads

Will Americans re-evaluate cultural assumptions that equate ever-larger houses with success and stability?

The product may not look like much — a little foil packet filled with a soft, sticky substance — but its advocates are prone to use the language of magic and wonders. What is Plumpy’nut? Sound it out, and you get the idea: it’s an edible paste made of peanuts, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to renourish starving children. Since its widespread introduction five years ago, it has been credited with significantly lowering mortality rates during famines in Africa.

Are Barnes & Noble founder Len Riggio and his nemesis Ron Burkle the only people in America who still want to own a mega-bookstore?

This isn’t a lament about declining standards of quality or the rude incursions of amateur bloggers. In fact, thanks to the Internet, people probably read more good journalism than ever. That’s precisely the problem: the sheer volume of words has overwhelmed a business model that was once based on scarcity and limited choice.

What happens when you discover uranium in your backyard.

The American scientist was catching a glimpse of an emerging test of the world’s food resources, one that has begun to take shape over the last year, largely outside the bounds of international scrutiny. A variety of factors — some transitory, like the spike in food prices, and others intractable, like global population growth and water scarcity — have created a market for farmland, as rich but resource-deprived nations in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere seek to outsource their food production to places where fields are cheap and abundant.

The Gowanus Canal runs one and a half miles through brownstone Brooklyn, cutting a disreputable gash between two of the most desirable residential neighborhoods in New York City. Sunken below street level, no more than 100 feet across at most points, the canal does not really flow — it skulks.

A professor, a genocide, and NBC's quest for a prime-time hit.

Decades of decay, corruption, and failed get-rich-quick schemes have made the city one of the most intractable disasters in the U.S. "Among the many proposals for a replacement revenue generator, put forward by various fly-by-night impresarios or Niagara Falls Redevelopment itself, are a dinosaur park, a boxing Hall of Fame, a Chinese-themed attraction called Dragon City, and an underground aquarium featuring 5,000 creatures of the deep. 'I have a file full of the craziest ideas,' Bergamo said, 'but no one comes here with any money.'"