Longreads

If you've never seen the hammer throw up close, especially during a New England winter, the most arresting part of every heave is the conclusion: how hardened earth erupts when the metal comet splits…

The must-have app on the iPhone is not iMessage. It's not iTunes or Safari or even Find My iPhone. It's Instagram, the photo-sharing app that once described itself as "quirky." Cultish would be more appropriate these days. Those who use and love Instagram are locked to their iPhones in far tighter fashion than any contract could ever manage. Just ask someone whose Instagrams show up regularly in your Facebook or Twitter feed; they'll tell you they're incapable of using a phone that doesn't have the service.

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I…