Barry Yeoman | The New New South, Creatavist | December 2013 | 52 minutes (13,100 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to feature “The Gutbucket King,” a new ebook by journalist Barry Yeoman and The New New South, about the tumultuous life of blues singer Little Freddie King, who survived stabbings, alcoholism and personal tragedy. […]
Category: Nonfiction
The following reading list comes courtesy Michelle Legro, editor at Lapham’s Quarterly. * * * No doubt you are on your way to one right now: an epic party, a night to end all nights. But will your epic party be as legendary as those thrown attended by Truman Capote, Cher Horowitz, Jay Gatsby, Jordan […]
For four years now, the Longreads community has celebrated the best storytelling on the web. Thanks for all of your contributions, and special thanks to Longreads Members for supporting this service. We couldn’t keep going without your funding, so join us today. Earlier this week we posted every No. 1 story from our weekly email […]
Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie Stephen Rodrick | New York Times Magazine | January 2013 | 31 minutes (7,752 words) Stephen Rodrick (@stephenrodrick) is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, contributing editor for Men’s Journal and author of The Magical Stranger.
Ryan Leaf’s Jailhouse Confessions, Written By His Cell Mate John Cagney Nash | Playboy | September 2013 | 19 minutes (4,710 words) Flinder Boyd (@FlinderBoyd) is a journalist for SB Nation, Sports on Earth, and the BBC among others. Athletes and sports writers usually come from two completely different professional worlds and as a […]
Colin Firth goes all the way home to London but as soon as he gets there he realizes he forgot his Portuguese sex slave on the baggage carousel or something. So he abandons Christmas dinner with his loving family and flies back to France. The one expression of genuine love in this movie and Colin […]
The Match Maker Don Van Natta Jr. | ESPN | August 2013 | 34 minutes (8,461 words) Don Van Natta Jr. (@DVNJr) is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. My story, The Match Maker, was online at ESPN.com only a few hours on Aug. 25 when I heard from a California […]
Is John Lindsay Too Tall To Be Mayor? Jimmy Breslin | New York magazine | July 28, 1969 Mark Lotto (@marklotto) is a senior editor at Medium, and a former editor at GQ and The New York Times Op-Ed page. In the month since I happened upon Jimmy Breslin’s story about the 1969 New […]
J.B. MacKinnon | Orion | July 2013 | 12 minutes (2,875 words) Our latest Longreads Member Pick comes from Orion magazine and J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Once and Future World. Thanks to Orion and MacKinnon for sharing it with the Longreads community. They’re also offering a free trial subscription here.
Facebook Feminism: Like It Or Not Susan Faludi | The Baffler | October 2013 | 36 minutes (9,021 words) Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) teaches media studies and writes Scandals of Classic Hollywood for The Hairpin, amongst other things. This essay is incendiary and incisive and just didn’t get the play it deserved: maybe because […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: If only all universities had someone like Jesse Flickinger to explain their research projects to the masses. Flickinger takes his readers on an intellectual adventure that begins in a Kabul café and ends in a library […]
Above: Doris Duke The Poorest Rich Kids in the World Sabrina Rubin Erdely | Rolling Stone | August 2013 | 38 minutes (9,653 words) Sabrina Rubin Erdely (@sabrinarerdely) is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. I often deal with interview subjects who tell variations of the truth. People don’t usually out-and-out lie, although that […]
Aileen Gallagher (@aegallagher) teaches magazine journalism at Syracuse University and is a contributing editor to College @Longreads. “The way it worked was that they joined the Army because they were starry-eyed or heartbroken or maybe just out of work, and then they were assigned to be in the infantry rather than to something with better […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. What does love look like and feel like and sound like to you? What have you read that changed the way you think about love? I’d like to know. Reblog your suggestions or comment […]
Nicole Greenfield is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. I must admit it was the photo of 90-year-old Roman Tritz, clear blue eyes and a blank stare to the camera’s side, that initially drew me into one of my favorite longreads of the week. But the photo didn’t prepare me for the truly […]
In Conversation: Robert Silvers Mark Danner | New York magazine | April 2013 | 28 minutes (7,063 words) Nicholas Jackson is the digital director at Pacific Standard, and a former digital editor at Outside and The Atlantic. These year-end lists tend to be like the Academy Awards in that only work released during the […]
Jahar’s World Janet Reitman | Rolling Stone | July 2013 | 45 minutes (11,415 words) Janet Reitman is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. I was completely unprepared for the response to “Jahar’s World,” which was published in mid-July as a Rolling Stone cover story. The piece tells the story of accused Boston bombing suspect […]
“Still, I decided, age alone was no basis for rejection. That’s exactly the basis on which I have been rejected many times. The bank, given my age, refused my request for a loan when, in my first year of renting, I found a small house I wanted to buy. The loan I could get—based on […]
“Bonanno doesn’t pretend that smiling is a magical elixir or that laughing will cure the hardest-suffering patients. Grief isn’t a single track, he’s found, but a long private journey that splits along three rough paths. Ten percent of us experience ‘chronic’ and relentless grief that demands counseling. Another third or so plunges into deep sadness […]
The Weeklies Monica Potts | The American Prospect | March 2013 | 29 minutes (7,360 words) Monica Potts is a senior writer for The American Prospect. I did the reporting for ‘The Weeklies,’ about homeless families living in a suburban hotel outside of Denver, Colorado, a year ago. I lived with in the Ramada Inn […]
“The idea of poisoning — radioactive or otherwise — is not new to Russian intelligence. According to former Russian intelligence officer Boris Volodarsky, now a historian and one-time associate of Litvinenko, the Russians have a history of substance assassination going back nearly a century. It was Lenin who ordered the establishment of their first laboratory, known simply as the […]
A Pianist’s A-V Alfred Brendel | New York Review of Books | July 2013 | 17 minutes (4,233 words) *** Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser. The best writers about classical music are professional musicians: think of Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Nico Muhly. (The exception that disproves the rule is Alex Ross.) Charles Rosen, […]
“The story begins in the 1930s, with Glenn McCarthy striking oil in Beaumont. McCarthy—who was the inspiration for the Jett Rink character in Edna Ferber’s Giant—used his millions to bankroll the 1949 drama ‘The Green Promise’, starring Natalie Wood and Walter Brennan. The movie was almost immediately forgotten, but McCarthy established a much-repeated role: the […]
Taken Sarah Stillman | The New Yorker | August 2013 | 45 minutes (11,405 words) Raphael Pope-Sussman (@AudacityofPope) is the managing editor of News Genius and a founding co-editor of BKLYNR. Sarah Stillman’s story describes the use of civil forfeiture, a process by which the state can confiscate individuals’ assets with no due process. I […]
Jason Fagone (@jfagone) is the author of Ingenious, a book about modern-day inventors; his stories this year appeared in Wired, Philadelphia, Grantland, Men’s Journal, and NewYorker.com. Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie Stephen Rodrick | The New York Times Magazine | January 2013 | 31 minutes (7,752 words) Steve […]
Ned Stuckey-French | The Normal School | Fall 2012 | 20 minutes (4,999 words) For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share “Don’t Be Cruel: A Brief History of Elvis-Hating in America,” from Ned Stuckey-French and The Normal School. Become a Longreads Member to receive the full story and support our service. You can […]
“Officially the company was Doctoroff’s to run. Mike agreed with a city ethics board that he’d have no involvement in Bloomberg’s day-to-day operations, limiting his input to major decisions that ‘significantly’ affect his ownership stake. ‘I’ve recused myself from anything to do with the company,’ Mike said at a press conference in November. “In truth, […]
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