“It’s probably worth saying that there are editors at all sorts of magazines (myself included) who know they should never assign a story on a certain kind of subject—a Phish tour, say, or Mitt Romney, or what’s up with Cuba?—and yet they do so despite their better judgment. A writer tells you he or she […]
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Protected: Longreads Member Pick: November 27, 2013
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When the State Separates a Mother From Her Child
“Sacha Coupet, a professor of law at Loyola University Chicago, who used to work as a guardian ad litem and as a psychologist, worries that the Adoption and Safe Families Act, by promoting ‘adoption as the normative ideal,’ has made it easier to avoid ‘dealing with the enormously complex root causes of child neglect and […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How a Bubble Sheet Killed Learning
“‘There was this transformation of the whole culture—and curriculum,’ Andrea says. ‘I could see it mostly through the homework. It really looked like test prep. There were even bubble sheets.’ Oscar had more than a year before the third-grade test, when students start taking the New York State English Language Arts (ELA) and math tests—but […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Happens When Your Business Partner Becomes Your Rival
“The Dodge brothers already made two fortunes from their relationship with Ford, by 1913 they were not thrilled about continuing to make parts for the Model T. Ironically, by the time the T started selling in really huge numbers in the nineteen teens it was obsolete and being technologically surpassed by by more modern cars. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Secret Message in Chipotle's Advertisements
“Chipotle’s animated short film — accompanied by a smartphone game — depicts a haunting parody of corporate agribusiness: cartoon chickens inflated by robotic antibiotic arms, scarecrow workers displaced by ruthless automata. Chipotle’s logo appears only at the very end of the three-minute trailer; it is otherwise branding-free. The motivation for this big-budget exposé? ‘We’re trying […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Truth About Domestic Abuse Involving Police Officers
“Domestic abuse is believed to be the most frequently unreported crime, and it is particularly corrosive when it involves the police. Taught to wield authority through control, threats or actual force, officers carry their training, their job stress and their guns home with them, amplifying the potential for abuse. “Yet nationwide, interviews and documents show, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Watching Movies in Iran
“Our conversation turns to the movie Shrek. Nahal loves Shrek so much that she’s seen the first installment of the DreamWorks trilogy ‘at least thirty-six or thirty-seven times.’ Her obsession is, apparently, shared by many Iranians. The image of Shrek appears everywhere throughout Tehran: painted on the walls of DVD and electronics shops, featured in […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Does Journalism Still Work?
“The Unwinding is a powerful and important work, but even so, I can’t help but think that it has arrived very late in the day. Ask yourself: how many books have been published describing the destruction of the postwar middle-class economic order and the advent of the shiny, plutocratized new one? Well, since I myself […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Colson Whitehead on Gen X, Friendship and The Best Skill a Writer Can Have
“It was 1991. We’d just been diagnosed as Generation X, and certainly we had all the symptons, our designs and life plans as scrawny and undeveloped as our bodies. Sure, we had dreams. Dan had escaped college with a degree in visual arts, was a cartoonist en route to becoming an animator. Darren was an […]