“A swamp-rat slaughter on the bayou.”
Search results
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Ivy Knight; David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg; Eva Holland; John DeVore; and Nathaniel Rich.
Posted inUncategorized
A New Series, An Unknown History, and the Week’s top 5
“Minstrelsy shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing—the thing you can see most vividly—while something else works behind the scenes. That something is something only those who are tapped into a specific kind of pain, a specific kind of quest for freedom that has failed before but is not worth abandoning, might understand.” […]
Posted inFeature
Best of 2025: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story we selected for the number five slot in our weekly newsletter, in a handy digest.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending excellent stories by Clint Rainey, Blythe Roberson, Mya Frazier, Katy Kelleher, and Jasper Nathaniel.
Posted inUncategorized
10 Short Stories, The Power of Music, and Our Top 5
“I always admired how my father could play so delicately with such brutal hands. They were rough, mired with patches of psoriasis, calloused from playing the charango and the guitar, and scarred, scarred all over.” I have fond memories of playing the violin when I was a child, and over the years I’ve considered returning […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2019: Investigative Reporting
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in investigative reporting.
Posted inStory
Still Waters
The muted response to Todd Haynes’s “Dark Waters” is depressingly similar to our culture’s muted response to climate change
Posted inNonfiction, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Nathaniel Rich, Ronan Farrow, Jeff Maysh, Helen Rosner, and Nick Greene.
Posted inCurrent Events, Highlight, History, Quotes, Science & Nature
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Scientists knew how serious climate change is. Politicians knew. Energy companies knew. The U.S. was ready to act, and then we… didn’t.
