Top 5 Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, The Classical, National Geographic, Chicago Reader, The Morning News, fiction, plus a guest pick from Kriston Capps.
Longreads
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Neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee, a Green Bay Packers fan, on her autopsies of former NFL players and research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy: Over the last four years, McKee has become the most visible member of a cohort of research scientists and family members — wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of the dead, dying, and demented […]
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A look at tour bus drivers, who hold the lives of musical acts in their hands on a daily basis, and what it’s like to drive around music’s biggest stars: Providing a band with a smooth ride, free of sharp turns and unexpected pit stops, isn’t just a matter of comfort. Good drivers get work […]
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Very few cases of law enforcement officers who are “feloniously killed” in the line of duty go unsolved. The murder of officer Tom Wood in Maywood, Chicago is one of those unsolved cases, and corruption in the Maywood force may have impeded the investigation: The ensuing homicide investigation was equally haphazard. Several witnesses whom Wood […]
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On eating squirrels: But somewhere along the way, squirrel declined in popularity as a game animal, replaced by bigger quarry, such as deer and turkey, whose numbers had grown in the countryside as the number of humans dwindled. Mainstream views on squirrel eating began to drift toward disdainful—it became something hillbillies and rednecks did. In […]
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[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes: I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having […]
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Eradicating urban poverty was a priority for Obama when he was running for president in 2008, but it has not become a focus for the president during his first term. A look at what still needs to be addressed, and the neighborhood of Roseland, where Obama got his political start: The reason for this shift […]
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The founding editor of Sassy and Jane brings a new cast of characters to her site xoJane: Jane Pratt has been 15 for an awfully long time now. She calls that her ‘emotional age,’ and she thinks we all have one: It’s the time in our past that we can’t entirely let go, because of […]
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A writer discusses the awful living conditions of China’s booming cities after seven years of living in the country for seven years, and visiting 21 of China’s 22 provinces: “A Beijing-based blogger who lived in Harbin in 2003 told me about leaving Blues after several drinks and flagging a taxi driver, whom he recognized. ‘The […]
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A writer on his experience spending time in an artist colony—and why they actually work: The poet in the studio next to me, Kathryn Levy, was at the time revising her work by reading it aloud, recording it, and playing it back to herself. The murmur of it was reassuring somehow. Years later, when I […]