A percussionist’s nerve-wracking audition for the Boston Symphony Orchestra: The classical audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Each applicant has 10 minutes at most to play in a way so memorable that he stands out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. Tetreault has prestigious degrees from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School […]
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[Fiction] A young girl encounters an older group of students: The morning of the abduction, Mrs. Allsop—dishevelled in a limp linen shirtdress—was wielding her secateurs up a ladder, pruning the climbing roses. She was immensely capable; tall and big-boned with a pink, pleasant face and dry yellow hair chopped sensibly short. Jane admired her mother […]
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A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder: Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for […]
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Inside 19th Century London’s sewers with “toshers,” who made a living by scouring for trash and waste to be resold: They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, […]
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Top 5 Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Stanford Magazine, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, fiction from The Atlantic, plus a guest pick from Damien Joyce.
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Now that LeBron James has his first championship ring, his narrative is complete. A brief history: Finally, after several drama-clogged months, LeBron James announced his intentions. He called a public meeting in the Roman Forum, at the very spot from which Marc Antony had addressed his countrymen after the death of Julius Caesar. (Some found […]
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How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education: ‘It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,’ Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said. ‘It’s about a third US, a third from ten other countries you might expect—western […]
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A look at anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, and on how it is possible for people to experience the voice of a higher being: In the name of research, Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members […]
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[Not single-page] A visit to one of Philly’s most iconic summer camps: White’s runner arrived at the stage first, and Tyler, a Villanova bunk member who’d been watching older campers do this for years, thrust his face into the dessert topping. A chant rose: ‘Eat that pie! Eat that pie!’ About five minutes into the […]
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On what drives the MSNBC star, and how she’s attempted to move her show beyond partisan shouting: Back in 2008, shortly after Phil Griffin called Maddow and told her he was giving her a prime-time television show of her own, she inherited the staff of Verdict With Dan Abrams, a show that embodied the gimmicky […]