Editor’s Pick

A brief history of the rock legend’s style and fashions: “Bowie’s image was as carefully contrived for album covers as for the actual musical performances: Sukita Masayoshi’s black-and-white photograph of Bowie posing like a mannequin doll on the cover of ‘Heroes’ (1977), or Bowie stretched out on a blue velvet sofa like a Pre-Raphaelite pinup […]

For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” a personal story from GQ writer and National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello about a near-death experience. The piece was first published in GQ in 1995.

[Fiction, sci-fi] Death walks the streets of New York and ponders the Big Questions: “Death liked to walk across bridges. For this reason he had claimed a home for himself relatively far from the center of town. This was in a big ugly gray stone of a building that had once been a factory, and […]

What happened when the village of Sodeto won the largest lottery in the history of Spain: “Ana, the Romanian, picks up the ringing phone. ‘Mommy,’ says her daughter, ‘apparently the Gordo was won in Grañén,’ and Ana says, ‘Is this a joke?’ She looks out the window and sees her friend Lolita in her pajamas, […]

Inside the debate over what the U.S. should do about Syria: “He walked back to his desk and sat down. ‘The Syria I have just drawn for you—I call it the Sinkhole,’ he said. ‘I think there is an appreciation, even at the highest levels, of how this is getting steadily worse. This is the […]

Today’s guest pick comes from frequent Longreads contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj, who recommends Alice Munro’s short story, published in The New Yorker in 1999.

[Fiction, National Magazine Awards finalist] A lapsed Christian Scientist meets a woman escaping her past: “Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market […]

The Supreme Court is considering whether or not it is unconstitutional for police to gather DNA from from individuals who are arrested—even if the DNA evidence results in crime-solving: “Once the government has someone’s DNA, Shanmugam argues in his briefs, Big Brother has possession of that person’s genetic blueprint. Allowing the government to collect and […]

Longreads’ Mark Armstrong on Steven Soderbergh’s “State of the Cinema” and four other recommended stories about the movie, music and publishing industries.

A man struggles to accept his father’s criminal past: “The more I pushed, the more Horst insisted on varnished truth. Wächter was a father. He saved Jews. He had responsibilities to others. He followed orders and an oath (to Hitler). He had to provide for the family. He was an idealist. He was honourable. He […]