There is a moment when we are all touched by the humanity in these creatures that are supposedly inhuman, when the character, Spock, the Frankenstein monster, or Quasimodo, says, “I, too, need love.” Millions respond and love pours out because we all need it and we all understand. When one is touched, by a flower […]
Books
Posted inBooks, Quotes
How ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ Got Its Name
John Steinbeck—born 113 years ago Thursday—wrote more than thirty books, and The Grapes of Wrath, which you were most likely assigned to read in high school, is widely considered to be his best work. The novel was published in 1939 to great acclaim, both critically and commercially; it “was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national talk radio; but above all, it was read.” It was also the New York Times’ bestselling book of 1939, and won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
The Holy Junk Heap
Some 300,000 Jewish documents were hidden in a closet in Cairo for hundreds of years. They were discovered by the lady adventurer twins Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson and the legendary Rabbinical scholar Solomon Schechter. Here is their story.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Holy Junk Heap
Some 300,000 Jewish documents were hidden in a closet in Cairo for hundreds of years. They were discovered by the lady adventurer twins Agnes Lewis and Margaret Gibson and the legendary Rabbinical scholar Solomon Schechter. Here is their story.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Think of This as a Window: Remembering the Life and Work of Maggie Estep
“I moved to Lower Manhattan when I was seventeen. The only things I cared about were books and music.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Think of This as a Window: Remembering the Life and Work of Maggie Estep
“I moved to Lower Manhattan when I was seventeen. The only things I cared about were books and music.”
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
Laura van den Berg’s First Novel Explores Illness, Immunity, and Isolation
Three things brought me to the hospital. In my first month, in the library, I wrote it all out on sheets of paper and pretended I was telling someone a story. Number one: the sickness itself. The first case was reported in June, in Bakersfield, California, when a fifty-year-old woman named Clara Sue Borden stumbled […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
The House Made of Sugar
A Longreads Exclusive: The newly translated short story from Silvina Ocampo’s collection, Thus Were Their Faces.
Posted inBooks, Editor's Pick, Fiction
The House Made of Sugar
A Longreads Exclusive: The newly translated short story from Silvina Ocampo’s collection, Thus Were Their Faces.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
How a Great American Theatrical Family Produced the 19th Century’s Most Notorious Assassin
The celebrated tragedians of the Booth family let Shakespeare’s themes seep into their own relationships. Hubris, glory, the legacy of a dead father, brotherly rivalry, and a powerful delusion led the family—and the nation—to catastrophe.