“No one, not even the supposed beneficiaries, is protected.”
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this week’s Top 5 we have lessons from apartheid, clever Claude, feeling bodies anew, the power of wax, and free mining.
Look, Love, Laugh, and Our Top 5 of the Week
Whether or not this Valentine’s weekend brings you mangoes, you’ll have plenty of excellent reading to warm your heart.
Promised Land: How South Africa’s Black Farmers Were Set Up to Fail
Eve Fairbanks deftly explores the harsh reality of farms being returned to Black people in post-Apartheid South Africa — finding they are set up to fail. As segregation deepened throughout the 20th century, much of the fertile, rain-washed land had been given to white people, while the barren peaks and hot, dry, malaria-ridden lowlands were […]
Will We Ever Grasp the Enormity of the Pandemic?
“As long as we focus on deaths and statistics, the bigger story of Covid-19 will go untold.”
Longreads Best of 2020: Writing on COVID-19
Our top story picks in COVID-19 reporting this year.
Drought In Post-Apartheid Cape Town: An Interview with Eve Fairbanks
United in a common struggle, the drought has leveled the racially divided city’s physical and social barriers in profound ways.
Anyone’s Son
Cody Dalton Eyre, a 20-year-old Alaskan Native, was having a mental health crisis on Christmas Eve, 2017 when his mother called 911 for help. So why did police officers end up shooting and killing him?
Could South Africa’s Drought Help Deconstruct the Divisions of Apartheid?
Cape Town’s drought has turned the once green city brown, but can it help unite the rich and poor and black and white?
We’ll Be Paying For Mark Halperin’s Sins For Years To Come
Eve Fairbanks, arguably one of the most talented living political writers, spells out exactly how Mark Halperin damaged our political discourse, and political journalism in general — and draws a compelling through-line to the election of Donald Trump.


