Category: Member Pick

America binged on expansion, relying on land grabs as an engine of growth and a way to externalize racial hatred. Historian Greg Grandin asks, without a frontier, what can America be?

When you bury a body, it stays in the cemetery. Cremation presents a whole new issue: where to store the deceased.

Sirin Kale illustrates the film’s appeal to a generation of adolescents who were struck by the Spice Girls’ inherent coolness.

In searching for meaning behind a random encounter and his mother’s death, Josh Roiland explores compassion.

On birding as an extreme sport, and how observing birds satisfies a “bone-deep, soul-deep need to classify and organize the world around us.”

On an abandoned mining site in Scotland, an architectural theorist attempts to bring the mysteries of the cosmos to life on Earth.

Thoughts, observations, and reflections from the travel journals of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

The story of a mysterious mound, and what was inside.

An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.

The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan, who changed our relationship with blood.

How America’s first suicide attack changed one man’s fortune forever.

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.

“Mary Mazur, 61, shrank into the blankets, muttering into the leaves, whispering to her only friend.” An Instagram essay by Jeff Sharlet.

Starting with just a mail route, Juan Terry Trippe helped create a uniquely American luxury experience.

Art, commerce, and the battle for the soul of My Little Pony.

“It’s not just about: How can we save the oceans? But we also need to flip our way of thinking and ask: How can the oceans save us?”

The story of Hollywood screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s unlikely collaboration with Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.

Between jail and the hospital, Savannah Shannon’s life is in limbo.

How burdens and values pass from fathers to sons, and the search for that one true thing.

“You have to carry your truth into reality.”

“I never figured out why they did that to me.”

15-year-old Tommy Bogue was sent to a promising new church settlement in Guyana—run by a charismatic leader named Jim Jones.

Sabine Heinlein grew up in a family where everyone was treated as equals. It didn’t work out like they hoped.

Rebecca Solnit | Orion | Summer 2014 | 20 minutes (4,780 words) OrionOur latest Longreads Exclusive comes from Rebecca Solnit and Orion magazine—subscribe to the magazine or donate for more great stories like this. Get a free trial issue Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) [ 1. ] The word “journey” used to mean a […]

The most lucrative of all the forest’s products, and the most dangerous to gather.

He was the heir to the televangelist’s empire, but Richard Roberts soon disappeared from the university that his father founded.

What did the Civil War sound like?

We are very excited to announce that Jessica Wilbanks’ essay “On The Far Side of the Fire” has been named as a finalist for the Pen Center USA 2014 Literary Awards. Wilbanks’ essay was honored in Pen Center USA’s journalism category. The piece was first published in the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of Ninth Letter and later made its […]

If it’s not for sale here, Nicaraguans say, then you can’t buy it anywhere.

Lucinda Williams, with Benjamin Hedin  | Radio Silence | March 2014 | 11 minutes (2,690 words) Radio SilenceFor this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we are thrilled to share a first-time-ever memoir by the great Lucinda Williams from Radio Silence, a San Francisco-based magazine of literature and rock & roll. Subscribe, and download the free iOS […]