Automattic

What happened when the village of Sodeto won the largest lottery in the history of Spain: “Ana, the Romanian, picks up the ringing phone. ‘Mommy,’ says her daughter, ‘apparently the Gordo was won in Grañén,’ and Ana says, ‘Is this a joke?’ She looks out the window and sees her friend Lolita in her pajamas, […]

Inside the debate over what the U.S. should do about Syria: “He walked back to his desk and sat down. ‘The Syria I have just drawn for you—I call it the Sinkhole,’ he said. ‘I think there is an appreciation, even at the highest levels, of how this is getting steadily worse. This is the […]

Today’s guest pick comes from frequent Longreads contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj, who recommends Alice Munro’s short story, published in The New Yorker in 1999.

[Fiction, National Magazine Awards finalist] A lapsed Christian Scientist meets a woman escaping her past: “Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market […]

The Supreme Court is considering whether or not it is unconstitutional for police to gather DNA from from individuals who are arrested—even if the DNA evidence results in crime-solving: “Once the government has someone’s DNA, Shanmugam argues in his briefs, Big Brother has possession of that person’s genetic blueprint. Allowing the government to collect and […]

Longreads’ Mark Armstrong on Steven Soderbergh’s “State of the Cinema” and four other recommended stories about the movie, music and publishing industries.

A man struggles to accept his father’s criminal past: “The more I pushed, the more Horst insisted on varnished truth. Wächter was a father. He saved Jews. He had responsibilities to others. He followed orders and an oath (to Hitler). He had to provide for the family. He was an idealist. He was honourable. He […]

Phil Busse stole McCain lawn signs in Minnesota during the 2008 presidential campaign. The prank made him infamous: “Within hours, I received several hundred angry emails and phone calls, including three death threats. A man in Michigan yelled at me over the phone, calling me ‘sick’ and ‘demented,’ and informing me that he was going […]

The story of Sadakichi Hartmann, a Japan-born poet who had befriended everyone from Walt Whitman to Ezra Pound and John Barrymore—and who once attempted to stage the first-ever “perfume concert” in New York: “But no one had ever heard of a perfume concert. It was an invention so faddish the newspapers had inked themselves in […]

One of our favorite parts about running Longreads is getting to know all the excellent magazine, book and online publishers out there producing great storytelling. We thought it would be fun to profile them—starting today with Modern Farmer. We spoke with deputy editor Reyhan Harmanci about their inaugural issue, out now.