Emily Perper is word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. The student journalist, the Afghani mother, the elderly custodian, the Chinese orphan boy: each of these pieces forces the reader to stop and consider the extraordinary stories of seemingly ordinary people. 1. “At 99, A St. Petersburg Man Finds Meaning […]
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Valerie Vande Panne is an independent journalist covering life and human interests. This week, she chose a series of articles to help give readers a better understanding of Detroit. “As a journalist, I am often asked, ‘How do you cut through the noise?’ In other words, how do I sift through the thousands upon thousands of […]
‘Let’s enlist universities directly in the war effort.’ Our video pick of the day is this 2008 talk (1 hr.) by entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank about how the defense industry first shaped Silicon Valley—starting with Stanford, which after World War II “became a full partner in the military-industrial complex.” For a connection between […]
“When I lost my eyesight I thought my painting days were over.” Our video pick of the day is this 8-minute documentary on Hal Lasko, a 97-year-old man whose family introduced him to Microsoft Paint 15 years ago and “he took off with it.” Lasko, who suffers from macular degeneration, works in a style that’s a […]
For this week’s Member Pick, we’re excited to share “The Prophet,” the much-talked-about new story from Luke Dittrich and Esquire magazine investigating the claims made by Dr. Eben Alexander in the best-selling book Proof of Heaven, about Alexander’s own near-death experience. Dittrich, a contributing editor at Esquire since 2008, has been featured on Longreads many times in the past and his work has […]
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. What do Scientology, child abuse, financial exploitation, and millionaire parents have in common? They’ve all got a niche in the education system. 1. “Surviving a For-Profit School.” (Stephen S. Mills, The Rumpus, July 2013) A […]
Matthew is a business reporter at BuzzFeed. My longread of the week is ‘At Sears, Eddie Lampert’s Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles,’ by Mina Kimes in Bloomberg Businessweek. This is not a profile of Eddie Lampert, the hedge fund manager who masterminded Kmart’s acquisition of Sears and is now running the struggling retailer. […]
If you’ve been following Longreads for a while, you may have seen this excellent Rolling Stone story from last year by Josh Eells, “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel”, about Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s transition. This MTV House of Style short reveals more about her life, and the small things she’s […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Rape on college campuses draws outrage, but rarely enough media coverage. Tyler Jett’s story about a serial offender in Gainesville is told with a balance of sensitivity and skill. Jett interviewed survivors, advocates, and police officials […]
The city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy, but there’s some good news from residents like Andy Didorosi, who responded to the death of the city’s light-rail plans by building his own private bus service, The Detroit Bus Company. Dark Rye, which devoted its June issue to Detroit, took a closer look inside Didorosi’s company […]
This week’s Member Pick comes from The Big Roundtable, a new site for narrative journalism founded by Columbia University professor Michael Shapiro. And they’re giving Longreads Members early access to a brand new story, which won’t go live on their site until next week. “Something More Wrong,” by Katy B. Olson, is an in-depth look inside the […]
Random Tape is a podcast by David Weinberg, and it’s exactly what its name implies—it’s audio from a random tape. The most recent episode (discovered via @samlistens) is “Dec. 31, 1995,” and it records a troubling argument between what appears to be an older couple, Kenneth and Miriam. We asked Weinberg for some context: “The Kenneth […]
“How foolish they are to try to make something.” Here’s the classic 1981 BBC interview highlighting the work of theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” You can also read Feynman’s book of the same name. For further reading and viewing on Feynman: 1. The ‘Dramatic Picture’ of Richard Feynman (Freeman […]
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. 1. “I Was A Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” (Laurie Penny, New Statesmen, June 2013) The difference between playing a leading role in your own life and playing a supporting role in everyone else’s. 2. “Promises […]
Shannon Proudfoot is a staff writer at Sportsnet magazine. Previously, she was a national writer with Postmedia News. “It might not constitute a genre, exactly, but my favorite sort of journalism dives into obscure subcultures with their own rules, etiquette, heroes and hacks. This story is one of my all-time favorites of that type. The […]
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life. She’s a frequent longreader and also a big podcast fan, so we asked her for some recommendations. For a while now we’ve been hearing about the rise of television, how shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones have surpassed the film industry when […]
For this week’s Longreads Member Pick (sign up here to receive it), we’re excited to share an excerpt from The Faithful Executioner, a book by Joel F. Harrington, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, published this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Harrington explains: “My book is based on the personal journal that German executioner […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: For readers, summer travel offers a chance to discover a new bookstore or read a magazine you’ve never encountered before. This week’s College Longreads selection takes us to City Newsstand in Chicago, a magazine store that carries […]
Mark Armstrong is the founder of Longreads and editorial director for Pocket. Last week we lost a pioneer of early computing, Doug Engelbart, and Tom Foremski has an excellent short backstory about the inventor of the mouse. It was Engelbart’s 1968 demo of computer graphical user interfaces that inspired everything we now use today—yet despite his […]
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. A few weeks ago, I was reading my weekly horoscope, courtesy of The Rumblr’s Madame Clairvoyant. The last three words of Leo’s outlook caught in my mind: “Don’t even worry.” “Don’t even worry,” I whispered […]
Rustin Dodd is a sports reporter at The Kansas City Star. For the most part, he spends his time covering Kansas basketball and football, but he has also covered the Kansas City Royals for the last five years. He’s covered two Final Fours, two Major-League All-Star Games and The Masters. He resides in Lawrence, Kan., […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher is helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: Last February, a Washington Redskins executives said on a team talk show that 70 different high schools across the country share the NFL franchise’s controversial name. University of Maryland journalism graduate student Kelyn Soong did […]
Kristen Majewski is the social media editor of Prevention.com. My pick for this week is ‘How Meditation Works,’ by Liz Kulze, in The Atlantic. Meditation is often dismissed as New Age and hokey, but Kulze does a wonderful job of making mindful meditation an accessible notion and perhaps even a necessary one. She is absolutely […]
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Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher is helping Longreads highlight the best of college journalism: This week’s pick is by Meghan Walsh, a recent graduate of UC Berkeley’s journalism program. Though there are plenty of outraged-laced stories about exploitation in college athletics, Walsh’s tale of Stanley Doughty—a former defensive tackle for the University of […]
Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. Salinger’s life is being made into a movie. Someone said writers work best with only one kid. Print journalism is, apparently, still the domain of white men. It’s been an unfortunate week. Here are four […]
Sarah Bruning is the associate features editor at Time Out New York and has contributed to Cosmopolitan, InStyle and CNTraveler.com, among other publications. In recent months, both before and after Sheryl Sandberg released ‘Lean In,’ the media has scrutinized the issue of gender equality in the workplace across myriad industries. This week and last, a […]
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