Longreads

Linda Campbell was not quite 4 years old when her appendix burst, spilling its bacteria-rich contents throughout her abdomen. She was in severe pain, had a high fever, and wouldn’t stop…

In the 1960s and '70s, towns across the South created inexpensive private schools to keep white students from having to mix with black. Many remain open, the communities around them as divided as…

Tech. Sgt. Erwynn Umali (right) and Will Behrens (left) at the McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst chapel, where their civil union was held on June 23, 2012.Photo by Jeff Sheng It’s almost Christmas, and I’m…

Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.—more than were in Stalin’s gulags. Photograph by Steve Liss.

Carrie Bradshaw, Hugh Hefner, and Barbie have each contributed to this generation's ideal woman, who is athletic, alluring, and waxed Meet Sophia Pinto: the 21st century's standard-issue,…

Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy's brain still nice and fresh, he had no memory of it as "Young Rabbit," or even "Rabbit"; so old that Old Rabbit was barely a rabbit at all but rather a greasy hunk of skin without eyes and ears, with a single red stitch where its tongue used to be. The little boy didn't know why he loved Old Rabbit; he just did, and the night he threw it out the car window was the night he learned how to pray.