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After her soldier-husband commits suicide, a woman finds a way to move on and help other people who have gone through similar experiences: “The Unfortunate Friends: That’s what they call themselves. Suzanne Baty is in her 50s, with the enviable skin and perfectly placed highlights of a Mary Kay saleswoman, which she happens to be. […]

How the United States came to outsource its intelligence operations: “Yet conversations with current and former employees of Booz Allen and U.S. intelligence officials suggest that these contractors aren’t going anywhere soon. Even if Snowden ends up costing his former employer business, the work will probably just go to its rivals. Although Booz Allen and […]

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher and Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick is “The Shady Lady,” by Danny Valdes, and it comes from Dartmouth College, where professor and bestselling author Jeff Sharlet worked with his class to create 40 Towns, a new literary journalism project.

An excerpt from Brett Martin’s book Difficult Men. Sopranos creator and show runner David Chase and actor James Gandolfini were talented, complicated, and, at times, difficult men who created an iconic TV show: “The massive job was made possible at least in part by creating a world in which other people managed the rest of […]

The writer on his debt troubles and his experience with a debt consolidation program: “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When the sheriff showed up at my front door and completely upended my sense of security I was only five years removed from receiving a six-figure advance for writing a memoir for Scribner at […]

Mass shootings tied to domestic violence aren’t as uncommon as we may believe them to be: “A woman being killed by her boyfriend is a horrifying crime, but it’s not unusual. Domestic-violence deaths, especially with a gun, are relatively common occurrences—two-thirds of women killed with a firearm in the United States are killed by an […]

The editor of BuzzFeed remembers a friend, colleague and fearless journalist. Hastings died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles, at age 33: “Michael Hastings was really only interested in writing stories someone didn’t want him to write — often his subjects; occasionally his editor. While there is no template for a great reporter, […]

The writer reflects on what her mom did to help others: “As a child, I didn’t understand most of the midnight phone calls to my mom, or the times women would come over with children in tow, sometimes even in pajamas, and I would be told to go entertain them while Mama ensconced herself in […]

Novelist Robert Boswell tells the story of how he met his wife, the author Antonya Nelson, and uses the story to explore how fiction is crafted: “Why are we drawn to stories about people falling in love? There are likely a host of reasons, but here’s a good one: marriage, when observed from a place […]

Are women’s magazines avoiding “serious journalism”? Guess it all depends on who’s deciding what’s serious. The New Republic asks that question in a new article, and our biggest problem with this debate (and, to be honest, the term “longform journalism”) is that it can often run everything through a male-skewed filter of what counts as […]