More than a decade ago, Alex French profiled William Wesley — aka Worldwide Wes — a Robert Moses-like power broker within the game of basketball (Bill Simmons once referred to Wesley as “a cross between Confucius, a benevolent uncle, and The Wolf from ‘Pulp Fiction’). According to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowski, the New […]
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Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2020: Arts and Culture
Our top editors’ picks in arts and culture writing this year.
Posted inNonfiction
The Enduring Myth of a Lost Live Iggy and the Stooges Album
In 1973, Columbia Records professionally recorded the infamous band for a planned concert record. Columbia never released it. Maybe they never recorded it.
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2017: Investigative Reporting on Sexual Misconduct
Investigations into sexual misconduct perpetrated by powerful men across several industries had the biggest impact in 2017.
Posted inDiscussions, Story
‘No One Should be Doomed to Just One Story’: An ‘S-Town’ Roundtable
How we feel about a person’s privacy seems to correlate with how much control they have in the decision to open up.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Dr. V’ Writer Caleb Hannan Speaks for the First Time About What Went Wrong
“It didn’t need to exist. And that was not something that occurred to me in the process of reporting.” Out of everyone who read an early draft of “Dr. V’s Magical Putter,” only Caleb Hannan’s wife asked him the most critical question of all: Did this story even need to exist? Hannan spoke publicly for […]
Posted inUncategorized
Why Owning an NBA Team is Like Having a House on the Best Beach in the World
Last year the Milwaukee Bucks were purchased by two hedge-fund billionaires for $550 million. In a piece for Grantland, Bill Simmons tried to nail down what exactly drives the super rich to acquire NBA teams, a purchase that—at least by the numbers—is often a pretty lousy investment. Simmons concluded that for many owners, exclusivity and prestige outweigh straight number crunching: “You can’t […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Sports for People Who Hate Sports
OK, “hate” is too strong a word. But I fundamentally do not get sports. Playing them, yes, fine. But knowing players’ names, arguing that this one guy is better than that other guy, keeping a little Excel sheet of strikes and yards and rebounds in my head? Baffling. But that doesn’t mean, as it turns […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Sports for People Who Hate Sports
OK, “hate” is too strong a word. But I fundamentally do not get sports. Playing them, yes, fine. But knowing players’ names, arguing that this one guy is better than that other guy, keeping a little Excel sheet of strikes and yards and rebounds in my head? Baffling. But that doesn’t mean, as it turns […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Can Bill Simmons Win the Big One?
Simmons is the most prominent sportswriter in America. He’s also a Boston fan. During his early years as a columnist in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was sustained by the angst of backing losers, above all, the Red Sox. More recently, with Boston’s various sports franchises prospering, he has sought poetic inspiration in […]
