Longreads

After going to collegeon the East Coast and spending a few years bouncing around, Jacob moved back to his native Oregon, settling in Portland. Almost immediately, he was surprised by the difficulty…

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,…

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.

As a young gay man, Michael Glatze seemed very happy with who he was. Then he changed his mind.

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?

The lone memento of Luke Hill's unhappy existence hangs like a specter in his former bedroom, piercing blue eyes haunting from a 12-year-old portrait. It's Luke at age 4, in a blue silk kimono, a glossy studio snapshot from when the family lived in Japan, during Dad's service in the U.S. Marine Corps. This is Katie's room now, and the picture of Luke hanging on her wall is the only one she'll allow her mother to display in the house.