“Wallace was a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants sort. A 54-year-old Massachusetts lawyer and real estate developer, he couldn’t afford to fly conservatively. Gas ballooning, similar to jockeyship, favored lightweight pilots, who could stock their baskets with more sand. Compared with his slighter opponents, Wallace’s six-foot-five, 240-pound frame meant that the equivalent of three additional 30-pound bags of sand […]
Longreads
Posted inNonfiction
The Race That Turned to Ruin
“Fifteen teams lifted off from Switzerland in gas ballooning’s most audacious race. Three days later, two of them drifted into Belarusian airspace—but only one would survive.”
Posted inUncategorized
The Meaning of Tattoos and Our Top 5 of the Week
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are featuring stories from Piper French, Jordan Blumetti, Zing Tsjeng, Ryan Cantú, and Luke Winkie.
Posted inNewsletter
The Wonder of Walking and the Week’s Top 5
“I’ve always been intrigued by how environments influence the way we move, feel, and experience—and how our movements, in turn, change those environments.” Once a day, we suit up the dog and take a family walk to a park overlooking the Salish Sea. There’s something about watching dogs at play that fills us up. The […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Erika Hayasaki; A.C. Thompson, James Bandler, and Lukáš Diko; Lauren Smiley; Amanda Petrusich; and Liza Weisstuch.
Posted inUncategorized
An English Murder Mystery, an Antarctic Romance, and Our Top 5
“I know this land is far from sinister, I know it is appreciated by those who live here, but I also see that the life of a dairy farmer is often a hard, unforgiving existence. And no family saw that solitude and struggle more than the Luxtons.” In the late summer of 1975, deep in […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending notable stories by Adlai Coleman, Dan McQuade, Ronald W. Dworkin, Rebecca Burns, and Devon O’Neil.
Posted inFeature
The Romance History Forgot
Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole captivated the world. But hidden within the legend was a story that has never been told—a love affair between two of the crew who survived.
Posted inUncategorized
What Neko Case taught me about curation and the week’s Top 5
“When the media covered women in the grunge and alternative scene, it treated them like a genre unto itself. This genre, though, received almost no in-depth profiles or features.” Books are one of the great joys in my life. The other is music. I’ve been following singer songwriter Neko Case since 1997, after picking up […]