Rose George | Metropolitan Books | August 2013 | 17 minutes (4,213 words) The following is the opening chapter of Rose George’s new book, Ninety Percent of Everything. Our thanks to the author for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Friday. No sensible sailor goes to sea on the day of the Crucifixion or the […]
Nonfiction
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
A Brief History of ‘It’ Girls
“It isn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just ‘It’.” —Rudyard Kipling 1. “Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Clara Bow, ‘It’ Girl,” (Anne Helen Petersen, The Hairpin, May 2011) Clara Bow was the original It girl, so much so that her 1927 film, titled—what else?—“It,” more or less defined the phenomenon. This piece, from Petersen’s […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Making of Citizen Kane
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.” -From the 1991 documentary “The Complete Citizen Kane,” on the Orson Welles masterpiece. The film features interviews with Welles from 1960 and 1982, as well as an interview with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
5 Great Stories on the Lives of Poets
“If I knew where poems came from, I’d go there.”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Wisdom of Mr. Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers taught us about ourselves and fought for PBS.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Wisdom of Mr. Rogers
Fred McFeely Rogers taught us about ourselves and fought for PBS.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
‘My Body Stopped Speaking to Me’: The First-Person Account of a Near-Death Experience
Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here. “My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
18 Deep Interviews with Great Writers
Kevin Smokler shares some of his favorite interviews.