The Longreads Blog

“Film Studies.” — David Thomson, Narrative Magazine (Free/Login required)

“My Son Is Schizophrenic. The ‘Reforms’ That I Worked for Have Worsened His Life.” — Paul Gionfriddo, The Washington Post

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An adaptation of Mark Bowden’s new book on the hunt for Osama bin Laden:

Everyone else favored sending in the SEALs. Clinton, who had faulted Obama during the primary campaign for asserting that he would send forces to Pakistan unilaterally if there was a good chance of getting bin Laden, now said that she favored the raid. She delivered this opinion after a typically lengthy review of the pros and cons. She noted that the raid would pose a diplomatic nightmare for the State Department. But because the U.S.-Pakistani relationship was built more on mutual dependence than friendship and trust, it would likely survive the crisis. Admiral Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, gave a detailed PowerPoint presentation before delivering his endorsement. Mullen had witnessed McRaven’s rehearsals at Fort Bragg and in Nevada. He had high confidence in the SEAL team.

Brennan, Donilon, Clapper, Panetta, and Morell all agreed. The C.I.A. director felt strongly about it, which was not surprising. This had been his project all along, and the analysts who worked for him would have felt betrayed if their boss had changed his mind. Panetta told Obama that he ought to ask himself this question: ‘What would the average American say if he knew we had the best chance of getting bin Laden since Tora Bora and we didn’t take a shot?’

“The Hunt For ‘Geronimo’.” — Mark Bowden, Vanity Fair

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“Bill & Hillary Forever.” — John Heilemann, New York magazine

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“Boss Rail.” — Evan Osnos, The New Yorker

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Yesterday My Daughter Emigrated

A father in Spain laments the lack of a future for his daughter in their home country:

Like many young people her age, my daughter was caught by surprise upon completion of her professional training. In the spring she returned to Spain with the intention of looking for a job here — it didn’t really matter what, as long as she could ‘do her thing.’ She got a few interviews, but the conditions that were offered to her always seemed to be abusive: a mere salary, 400 € a month, for a person with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, who speaks four languages, and who has worked abroad. Such salaries aren’t enough to eat or rent a room in the cities where they’re offered. She would have needed help from her parents — something we were willing to do. But our daughter didn’t want to keep being dependent on us — as this support would in fact subsidize the same employers that are taking advantage of our young people.

This summer, many of her friends stopped by the house to say goodbye. Their conversations always came down to the same thing: the depression of the crisis, layoffs or fear of layoffs, companies that take advantage of the crisis to impose unfair conditions, laying off a good part of the workers so that ‘supervisors’ end up doing everyone’s part of the job, intimidated by the threat of being let go. It seems to me that they feel guilty, and maybe they are somewhat responsible — as we all are — but not for the excessive burden we’ve unloaded onto them.

“Yesterday My Daughter Emigrated.” — Carlos M. Duarte, Huffington Post

More from The Huffington Post

An Iraq war veteran becomes blind during combat, and learns how to live on:

When the doctors told him the blindness was irreversible, he felt a rage and despair that made him feel like his head would explode.

Castro began therapy a week after waking up, and he only halfheartedly endured the rehab sessions with a 6-foot-tall girl he called ‘Katie the Physical Terrorist.’ The first time she asked him to stand, he couldn’t. He could barely lift a one-pound dumbbell.

Evelyn tried to focus him on the positives. Obliterated as his body was, his brain was OK — remarkable considering that traumatic brain injury, or TBI, has become the trademark of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and that thousands of soldiers sent to Walter Reed had to battle it. But in a way Castro wished he’d not been spared, because an intact brain meant the other thing he could actually see was exactly how much his life had been ruined. He’d ask, ‘What kind of man can I even be?’

“Blind Ambition.” — Brandon Sneed, ESPN The Magazine

A Yale law professor argues that we’re not doing enough to empower the minority voices in America—and change should start at the local level:

The ideas Gerken is known for first took shape, appropriately enough, as a disagreement. Several years ago, not long after she’d been hired as a young professor at Harvard, she sat in on a pair of lectures by Cass Sunstein, the influential law scholar who was then a professor at the University of Chicago. What she heard Sunstein say, in brief, was that societies in which dissenting voices are encouraged tend to be more prosperous than ones where they are not. Gerken sat in the back of the hall with a notepad and listened, writing furiously. “If you had looked back,” Gerken says, “you would have wondered, why is that junior professor sitting there scribbling like a crazy person? Is she transcribing this speech? But it was just the opposite.”

In fact, Gerken was writing down all the ways in which she thought Sunstein was wrong. What Sunstein didn’t seem to realize, she wrote, was that in order for minority groups to have real influence in politics—in order for them to make meaningful contributions to the way society works—they had to have more than the right to make their voices heard. They had to have the power to actually do things their way.

“How to Fix America from Below.” — Leon Neyfakh, Boston

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A look at a struggling diner in northeastern Ohio. This is the first of five columns by Dan Barry about Elyria, Ohio, a town which is “the kind of place where Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each hope that his promise of a restored American dream will resonate”:

‘Is she O.K.?’ a customer asks one difficult day.

‘My mom?’ asks Kristy, the waitress.

‘Yes,’ the customer replies.

‘No.’

Sometimes you can see why, as Donna hunches into the desk space she has carved from the back-room clutter and works through the mound of mail. ‘I’m looking for shut-off notices,’ she says, half-joking.

“At the Corner of Hope and Worry.” — Dan Barry, New York Times

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“An Intimate Portrait Of Innovation, Risk, And Failure Through Hipstamatic’s Lens.” — Austin Carr, Fast Company

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