The Longreads Blog

Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours

Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours

Barry Hannah in Conversation with Wells Tower

Barry Hannah in Conversation with Wells Tower

'Apple and Google have the most distinct propositions for your exobrain'

‘Apple and Google have the most distinct propositions for your exobrain’

@EugenePhoto: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

@EugenePhoto: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Brendan Maher: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

I’m the biology features editor for the news team at Nature, the UK-based science journal. Longreads kindly asked me to offer up my five favourite couldn’t-put-down features for the year, and I was happy to comply. The focus on biology wasn’t intentional, but I did purposely keep features from Nature out of the running (it’s like choosing which child you love best!).

***

Autism’s First Child (John Donvan & Caren Zucker, The Atlantic, October 2010)

This profile of the first person technically diagnosed with autism is as touching as it is revealing about the troubles faced by doctors, patients and patient advocates when trying to determine a diagnosis.

Paper Trail: Inside the Stem Cell Wars (sub req’d) (Peter Aldhous, New Scientist, June 9, 2010)

Peter Aldhous went to town with a data-mining quest designed to verify a claim that several scientists had been complaining about: namely, that the publication of papers in a specific area of stem cell research was being manipulated by a cadre of influential scientists. It’s not exactly narrative form, but a stellar data visualization effort.

Depression’s Upside (Jonah Lehrer, New York Times, Feb. 28, 2010)

Jonah Lehrer deftly maneuvered this puzzling, but oddly compelling argument that depression has a purpose and benefit for the brain. It doesn’t soft pedal the real and relevant criticisms of evolutionary psychology, but still presents a nice picture of the “tortured genius” paradox (see also David Dobbs’ “Orchid Children” which missed making this list for a temporal technicality).

The Covenant (Peter J. Boyer, The New Yorker, Sept. 6, 2010)

Peter J. Boyer’s masterfully nuanced profile of NIH director Francis Collins was exquisitely written and did a nice job of really digging into someone whose faith–it would seem–has lots of potential to come into conflict with his job. It also happened to be timed quite well with the collapse of funding for stem cell research–something that The New Yorker couldn’t plan for, but obviously accommodated quite deftly.

The Brain that Changed Everything (Luke Dittrich, Esquire, Oct. 25, 2010)

This is just a stirring feature on one of the events of the year for neuroanatomy. It recounts the life and death and dissection of Henry Molaison, who lost the ability to form new memories after an operation to remove his hippocampus. The operation was performed by William Scoville and the piece is written by Scoville’s grandson.

Ben Cohen: These are a few of my favorite things

Ben Cohen: These are a few of my favorite things

Paul Brady: My Top 5 Travel Longreads of 2010

Paul Brady is an editor at Condé Nast Traveler.

***

This isn’t a list of the best travel writing of the year, but if this is what travel writing could be every time, the genre wouldn’t have such a shaky reputation. I didn’t pick anything from Traveler because that would be lame.

Pass the Bucks (Steve Boggan, The Guardian, Dec. 11, 2010)

The story of following the same $10 around the country for 30 days could’ve been hokey, but Steve Boggan set aside his own quest to write about the characters he meets, their lives and the places they live.

All Amanda Can Jet (Tumblr)

This was the second year JetBlue released its All You Can Jet pass, spawning a mountain of mediocre tweets and poorly-managed trip-diary blogs. But Amanda Mae got it absolutely right—and the constantly updated “local beers consumed” metric was a nice touch.

My Country, My Train, My K-Hole (Hugh Ryan, The Morning News, June 30, 2010)

I’m a sucker for stories about trains, but this is on the next level: “The train is a liberating K-hole, a moment of suspended animation where it’s entirely acceptable to not answer phone calls … There are an endless number of things you can not do.”

No Country for Old Men? (Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian, Jan. 25, 2009)

This Ed Vulliamy article is from 2009, but the full-length book that grew out of it, Amexica, came out this year. Driving the entirety of the Mexican-American border, he writes a little bit about everything that makes it one of the most fascinating places on the planet: tattoo parlors, Christianity, narcoterrorism, “right-wing windbag talk radio,” and what sounds like the best La Quinta in Texas.

Boom (Sean Flynn, GQ, July 2010)

Probably the best story I read about the biggest story of the year, the oil spill, and while I probably can’t argue that it’s “travel writing,” it certainly evokes a particular place.

Bonus:

The Whistling Language of La Gomera

I have no idea when this was written, but I found it this year while researching… something. I forget. I like it because while we may spend 18 hours a day on the internet, there are still fascinating things to find out about like this utterly unique whistling language invented in and still used in the Canary Islands.

Grandpa Joe & Secretariat: A Christmas Story

Grandpa Joe & Secretariat: A Christmas Story

Dutch Santa and 'Six to Eight Black Men'

Dutch Santa and ‘Six to Eight Black Men’

Juli Weiner: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Juli Weiner blogs for Vanity Fair.

***

These are the pieces I sent out to friends with the all-caps subject line, “THIS.” These are the pieces I come back to when I’m looking to improve my own writing. These are the pieces I’ll be re-reading well into 2011.

Jon Ronson: And God Created Controversy, The Guardian, October 9, 2010

Hilarious discussion about theology with members of Insane Clown Posse.

Nathan Heller: Trench Coat, Unlit Cigar, Slate, July 13, 2010

The beautifully written deconstruction of the Wise and Cranky Kaplan Twitter feeds.

Nancy Jo Sales: The Suspects Wore Louboutins, Vanity Fair, March 2010

Dishy account of the celebrity-worship and avarice that fueled a spate of burglaries in Los Angeles.

David Grann: The Mark of a Masterpiece, The New Yorker, July 12, 2010

The history of American connoisseurship takes the form of an impossible-to-stop-reading crime drama.

David Segal: A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web, The New York Times, November 26, 2010

A gripping and legitimately terrifying account of an online conman and the insidious side-effects of poor customer reviews.