Longreads

The silence of night never lasts long. It ends somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour with the purring of the heater and distant strains of Sam Cooke.Edwin Shneidman looks at the clock -- an hour and a half…

PLUS: The Petition to Save the Post Office Now AND: The American Post Office's Painted History Published in the February 2013 issue The letter is mailed from Gold Hill, Oregon. The eleven hundred…

CriticismWhen does bar-room debate count as criticism? David Shrigley Untitled (Which Record is the Best?), 1999 You know how it begins. You’re out to dinner, or on the subway. Maybe…

ONLINE JUNE 6, 2012 The President, Drones, and Just War Theory David Luban President Barack Obama with National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon / Peter Souza This week, U.S. officials announced that…

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"Dock," she said. "You're supposed to pitch today." Ellis focused his mind. No. Friday. He wasn't pitching until Friday. He was sure. "Baby," she replied. "It is Friday. You slept through Thursday." Ellis remained calm. The game would start late. Ample time for the acid to wear off. Then it struck him: doubleheader. The Pirates had a doubleheader. And he was pitching the first game. He had four hours to get to San Diego, warm up and pitch.

Phillip Herr finds the USPS fascinating: ubiquitous, relied on, and headed off a cliff. Its trucks are everywhere; few give it a second thought. "It's one of those things that the public just takes for granted," he says. "The mailman shows up, drops off the mail, and that's it." He is struck by how many USPS executives started out as letter carriers or clerks. He finds them so consumed with delivering mail that they have been slow to grasp how swiftly the service's financial condition is deteriorating. "We said, 'What's your 10-year plan?' " Herr recalls. "They didn't have one."

After a couple years at Facebook, Jeff Hammerbacher grew restless. He figured that much of the groundbreaking computer science had been done. Something else gnawed at him. Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google, and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. "That sucks."