Longreads

The morning after a big snowstorm swept through the US northeast, I sat in my car, ready to brave hazardous road conditions and drive to the local coffee shop. My home in New Jersey was outside…

1. Routine Care, Unforgettable Bills When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to…

WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities,…

By having the case reargued, Roberts put the liberals in a box and transformed the decision’s impact on political campaigns.

James Sanderson had encountered a rare moment of industrial harmony. It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an…

The decor of Erin and Anthony Rodriguez's guest room could really only happen in the United States. In fact, a European did lay eyes on it one time, and his superior brow furrowed instantly with…

An anxious hush fell over the room as the exams were passed out. Within minutes, however, the silence was breached by a stir of astonishment. “People were looking around at each other with this expression of ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Staples recalls. The questions in front of them had nothing to do with renting furniture, or managing employees, or keeping the books. “My sex life is satisfactory.” “I have diarrhea once a month or more.” “I would like to be a florist.” “Everything tastes the same.” “My mother was a good woman.” “I am a special agent of God.”

“We’re confusing our own needs with our kids’ needs and calling it good parenting,” Blume said, letting out a sigh. I asked him why he sighed. (This is what happens when two therapists have a conversation.) “It’s sad to watch,” he explained. “I can’t tell you how often I have to say to parents that they’re putting too much emphasis on their kids’ feelings because of their own issues. If a therapist is telling you to pay less attention to your kid’s feelings, you know something has gotten way of out of whack.”

On this June morning, with the heat and humidity rising, residents emerge from their homes one by one: mostly women, mostly older, mostly taking care of their mothers and grandkids. They've been calling the city, they say, for years without response and feel as abandoned as the houses that surround them—the foreclosed, devitalized structures that require immediate wrecking. They have questions for Lorenzo. Comprehensive to-do lists for this man who has powerful machines and, so, they figure, actual power. They ask when the dead trees are coming down. They want to know when the drug dealing will stop. Does Lorenzo's boss have a job for their sons, by any chance? Or for their nephews? Or what about for themselves?