Longreads

Add a location to your Tweets When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location…

A pediatrician first recognized my failure to thrive, as he called it, when I was seven months old. An average-sized baby at birth, born by C-section to my petite mother, I had started to gain only ounces between monthly visits. Conspicuous smallness runs in my family. My mother is barely 4'11". My grandfather (5'8") says we are descended from a Russian clan, the Zichs, none of whom were over five feet tall. But I was emerging as a frontrunner in the shortness contest. At three years old I was 23 pounds; four, 26; five, 28. Most toddlers gain about three to five pounds per year and grow two to three inches. I was growing less than two inches and gaining less than two pounds per year. While my classmates’ torsos stretched and their legs thinned, I never made it onto the government growth charts. I was not too much bigger than an average terrier.

The way we tell stories in print has been mostly the same for some time now. Space constraints and graphic layout have made the narrative flow a broken one. With the advent of digital devices and…

Credit: Katie…

Some 25 years have passed since the publication of Paul Fussell’s naughty treat Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, and I think this quarter-century mark merits the raising of either a yachting pennant, an American flag, or a wind sock with the Budweiser logo (corresponding to Fussell’s demarcations of Upper Class, Middle Class, and Prole). For readers who somehow missed this snide, martini-dry American classic, do have your assistant Tessa run out and get it immediately (Upper), or at least be sure to worriedly skim this magazine summary over a low-fat bagel (Middle), because Fussell’s bibelot-rich tropes still resonate.