Longreads

“If you’re going to criticize, you should propose,” Ryan says of his budget plan.

Since her shooting, Gabby Giffords has been an idea as much as a person. What the people around her needed most was precisely what they didnt have, which was her guidance. Giffords had…

This is the essence of the terms being offered by Frey’s company Full Fathom Five: In exchange for delivering a finished book within a set number of months, the writer would receive $250 (some contracts allowed for another $250 upon completion), along with a percentage of all revenue generated by the project, including television, film, and merchandise rights—30 percent if the idea was originally Frey’s, 40 percent if it was originally the writer’s. The writer would be financially responsible for any legal action brought against the book but would not own its copyright.

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