[Fiction] A couple prepares for another predictable evening with old friends: Later, he came out of the bathroom just as the toilet was completing its roar. She was no longer in the kitchen. He took another cheese and cracker. He walked past the dressed table to the living room. She sat on the sofa reading […]
Longreads
Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, #fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Amy Whipple.
A look back at James Watson’s book The Double Helix and the controversy it stirred in the science community. In telling the story, he produced a great work of literary nonfiction. Watson expanded the boundaries of science writing to include not only the formal, public face of Nobel-winning discoveries but also the day-to-day life of […]
A writer adopts the Choose Your Own Adventure book format to write a story about a disastrous love affair: “The answer, of course, is that you should dump Anne before it’s too late. But the absurd options the book gives ‘you’— later ‘choices’ include dueling with an Ant-Warrior, or attacking the Evil Power Master—simply highlight […]
The political battle over the disappearance of the menhaden, a silvery, six-inch fish that’s food for larger fish and farmed for omega-3 oils and fertilizer: Harvested by the billions and then processed into various industrial products, menhaden are extruded into feed pellets that make up the staple food product for a booming global aquaculture market, […]
The candidate’s former prep school classmates recall a bullying incident that still troubles them to this day: A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed […]
With Qaddafi’s former guards now in prison, one man leads the interrogation of his brother’s killer: Nasser called Marwan’s father and invited him to come see his son. For the last six months, the family stayed away out of fear that the thuwar would take revenge on them all. On the following Friday, eight of […]
Profile of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the promise and missed opportunities that have come with his leadership: At the time, negotiations had been frozen for more than a year. Yet Fayyad boldly predicted that his program would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state by August 2011. ‘By then, if in fact […]
Inside the boardroom battles that led to the hiring (and firing) of CEO Léo Apotheker, formerly of SAP. Meg Whitman is now in charge of finding ways to fix the legendary tech company: A few months after she took over as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard last September, Meg Whitman held one in a series of […]
A woman watched her husband’s behavior change dramatically—so much so she even considered divorce. He was eventually diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a rare and frequently misdiagnosed brain disease that affects personality and language skills: Looking back, Mrs. French, who is 66 and lives in Manhattan, recalled episodes of odd behavior over the years and realized […]
