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How the manager of a million-dollar horse breeding facility became an informant on one of Mexico’s most feared cartels: Los Zetas. “Key to the operation in the United States was Jose Treviño, a U.S. citizen with a clean record who had never wanted anything to do with his family’s illicit dealings, until Miguel gave him […]

How much of greatness is nature vs. nurture? Sports Illustrated writer David Epstein challenges Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” rule in a new book about the science of training, The Sports Gene. A lot depends on individual biology, and there are cultural factors, too: “Usain Bolt is a great example. He was 6’4” when he was […]

The story of William Mawwin, who was kidnapped in Sudan when he was six years old and sold into slavery. Mawwin eventually escaped, and, at 34, is going to college in the U.S.: “In the morning I cook, bring his tea, black tea with milk, his bread. I cook the bread, too. I fold his […]

A profile of Ken Feinberg, who has assisted in determining how to dole out funds for the victims of 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Newtown shooting, and the BP oil spill. The story raises larger questions about when we give to victims of tragedies, and when we don’t and why: “All of this raises […]

Even in the 1980s, the comics industry was troubled. Here is a 1989 speech by Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, on the comics that inspired him as a child, and the problem with a business that was being dominated by a very small group of syndicates and newspapers that prevented artists from retaining the […]

Four men make an attempt to break a world record by rowing from Senegal to Miami, Fla.: “At the end of January, just 200 kilometres into the journey, the team is rowing in a wild nighttime sea when a rogue wave the size of a small house hoists their boat, tosses it into a valley […]

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick comes from Everett Cook, who wrote this story for the University of Michigan’s The Michigan Daily.

The work and sex lives of book publishers. Gottlieb, the former editor of The New Yorker, writes about Boris Kachka’s history of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Hothouse: “Gossip about Roger Straus’s sexual life (and everyone else’s) is a dominant feature of ‘Hothouse’—yes, FSG was hot in this way, too. Not only was Roger the Emperor […]

This week’s Member Pick is from the new book by Mark Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and a writer who’s been featured on Longreads frequently in the past. This Town, published by Penguin’s Blue Rider Press, is Leibovich’s insider tale of life inside the Beltway bubble of Washington, D.C., and […]

Screenwriter-producer Damon Lindelof reveals the formula—and challenges—facing big Hollywood movies: How do you escalate with any shred of originality? “‘Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world,’ explains Lindelof. ‘And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they […]