After taking over from George Plimpton, Brigid Hughes was pushed out as the editor of The Paris Review and omitted from the magazine’s history.
2017
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Renee Montagne and Nina Martin, Michael Hobbes, Rebecca Traister, Naima Coster, and Kristen Roupenian.
Server, Busser, Manager, Spy: Inside the High-Stakes World of Restaurant Oppo Research
When a famous critic enters a restaurant, they become the most scrutinized item on the menu.
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.
Generation Screwed
Take an epic journey through the broken safety net, compounded student debt, contracted jobs, zoning, the end of homeownership, and the hollowing out of retirement, all of which have crashed together to create an untenable present and an uncertain future for the millennial generation, which is faced with a crisis of daily living not seen since the Great Depression.
Portugal’s Radical Drugs Policy Is Working. Why Hasn’t the World Copied It?
Portugal’s drug epidemic started in the 1980s, and HIV and overdoses skyrocketed. After decriminalizing all substances in 2001, the country started focusing on harm-reduction instead of punishment, but it was cultural shifts that truly improved the country’s situation. Is Portugal’s success too culturally bound to work elsewhere?
The Human Cost of the Ghost Economy
A reported personal essay in which Melissa Chadburn writes about her work, under cover, as a temp, and considers the effects of temporary employment on those who have limited power and little choice but to work for low wages with no job security. With support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Spies, Dossiers, and the Insane Lengths Restaurants Go to Track and Influence Food Critics
When a glowing review can catapult a restaurant into stardom and a bad one can spell its doom, owners increasingly resort to a mainstay of political campaigns: opposition research.
This Moment Isn’t (Just) About Sex. It’s Really About Work.
Rebecca Traister looks below the surface of this moment in which so much sexual misconduct has been coming to light, and finds at the root of it troubling, longstanding, gender-based workplace power dynamics.
My Editor Was Black
“Debut author Naima Coster on working with Morgan Parker, the whiteness of publishing, and literary self-determination.”
