The Longreads Blog

Before Wonder Woman there was Miss Fury, the first female superhero, introduced in 1941:

Miss Fury was created, written, and drawn by a woman, June Tarpé Mills, who published under the more sexually ambiguous Tarpé Mills. Had Miss Fury entered an enduring canon like DC’s, it’s possible that the template for female superheroes, as well as for superhero comic readership, would have depended more on the influence and perspective of actual women.

“Heroine Chic.” — Evie Nagy, Los Angeles Review of Books

See also: “Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe in Yourself.” — Dan Kois, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27, 2011

A Dallas murder suspect is also a paranoid schizophrenic, and his changing mental state raises questions about whether he can stand trial:

With medication he becomes someone else entirely, capable even of calm rationality. He would have to be induced into a state of synthetic sanity before he could stand trial for a crime that he allegedly committed while unmedicated.

For now, though, he was just another uncooperative suspect.

“We need your help. Are you going to help us?” Thompson’s index finger jackhammered the photo. “Look at him!” With his slight build and his short, blond hair, Winder looked hunted, like a boy among men. He looked up at the detectives and murmured, “I don’t remember.”

“Can an Accused Killer Stay Sane Long Enough to Stand Trial?” — Brantley Hargrove, Dallas Observer

See also: “The Lost Boys.” — Skip Hollandsworth, Texas Monthly, March 24, 2011

Featured Longreader: Lexi Mainland, social media editor for The New York Times. See her story picks from Vanity Fair, New Yorker, The Atlantic and more on her #longreads page.

The early origins of separation of church and state in America. Williams was a Puritan minister, banished from Massachusetts, before creating the settlement Providence: 

He bought the land from the Narragansett Indians and wrote that “having, of a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, [I] called the place PROVIDENCE, I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience.”

By “conscience” he meant religion. His family and a dozen or so men with their families, many of them followers from Salem, joined him. Few as they were, Williams soon recognized the need for some form of government. The Narragansetts had sold the land solely to him, and in all English and colonial precedent those proprietary rights gave him political control over the settlement. Yet he drafted a political compact for Providence, and in it he demonstrated that his thinking had taken him into a new world indeed.

“God, Government and Roger Williams’ Big Idea.” — John M. Barry, Smithsonian magazine

See more #longreads from Smithsonian magazine

The search for Clifton (Pop) Herring, Jordan’s high school coach, and the truth about the NBA legend’s early days:

And so, over the next four years, as Michael Jordan became an Olympic gold medalist, a rookie NBA All-Star and the scorer of 37 points per game, Pop Herring went from suspended to unemployed to unemployable. As Jordan’s fame spread around the world, his old coach became a stranger in their hometown. Pop took to running, as if trying to shake out the sickness. His slender frame was seen on highways and bridges, north toward the tobacco fields and east to the ocean. Sometimes he’d come upon old friends and hug them, and other times they would call his name and he would keep running, looking straight ahead, as if they didn’t exist.

“Did This Man Really Cut Michael Jordan?” — Thomas Lake, Sports Illustrated

See more #longreads about basketball

[Fiction] A young boy plays with the truth as he skips school one day:

Your stepfather walks toward you. He takes your chin in his thumb and forefinger, and turns your face back and forth, as though it were a piece of merchandise he was thinking about buying.

“You must have fallen pretty easy,” he says. “When you faint, you go down hard. You don’t have any cuts.”

“Leopard.” — Wells Tower, New Yorker (2008)

See more #fiction #longreads

Featured Longreader: Washington Post reporter Josh du Lac. See his story picks from the Post, Sports Illustrated, and more on his longreads page.

Three siblings—the two brothers, carpenters, and the sister, a stripper—rob a bank and lead police on a 15-state chase. But what motivated them to do it?

PASCO SIBLINGS SOUGHT IN SHOOTING ALSO WANTED IN GEORGIA BANK HEIST. By the evening of August 4, the FBI had issued a press release stating that the three Georgia bank robbers and the three Zephyrhills shooters were one and the same. The image of a gun-toting, bank-robbing trio of siblings hit reporters like a shot of Jack Daniel’s; it was exhilarating; it was old-school. DOUGHERTY GANG ON THE LAM! Lee-Grace made the biggest splash. ‘A gun-toting stripper—what’s not to like?’ asked one commenter. A series of X-rated photographs she had taken for some guys who ran an illegitimate poker club where she gave lap dances later found their way into the public domain, most likely with a price tag.

“The Whole True Story of the Dougherty Gang.” — Kathy Dobie, GQ

See also: ”The Perfect Mark.” — Mitchell Zuckoff, New Yorker, May 15, 2006

On modern manufacturing in the U.S. and the unskilled-skilled labor gap—with 92-year-old Standard Motor Products serving as a case study: 

Across America, many factory floors look radically different than they did 20 years ago: far fewer people, far more high-tech machines, and entirely different demands on the workers who remain. The still-unfolding story of manufacturing’s transformation is, in many respects, that of our economic age. It’s a story with much good news for the nation as a whole. But it’s also one that is decidedly less inclusive than the story of the 20th century, with a less certain role for people like Maddie Parlier, who struggle or are unlucky early in life.

“Making It in America.” — Adam Davidson, The Atlantic

See also: “The White House Looks for Work.” — Peter Baker, New York Times, Jan. 19, 2011

A man, brought to the U.S. as a toddler, is suddenly deported to Mexico. He’s now trying to get back:

The train had covered 10 miles through the high desert when it stopped at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint. An inspector and his canine walked by on the gravel path. Luna stifled his breath and prayed. Then he felt a sharp tug and a dog’s hot breath.

A German shepherd sank its teeth through Luna’s two shirts, locked onto his ribs and dragged him out from under the train. He clutched his side.

“Without a Country: Immigrant Tries to Get Back to the Life He Knew.” — Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times

See also: “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant.” — Jose Antonio Vargas, New York Times, June 22, 2011