A man travels to the Dhamma Giri meditation center in western India to learn the meditation style known as Vipassana—the same meditation used by the Buddha to reach enlightenment 25 centuries ago. Enlightenment doesn’t come easy: There are no further instructions. And I can’t ask anyone what I’m supposed to do. So I sit, striving […]
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The story of an immigrant student, Maria, and how one “failing” San Francisco high school is helping her get ahead: Maria’s middle-school experience all but ensured she’d join the 52 percent of foreign-born Latinos who drop out of high school. She graduated from eighth grade without learning to speak English. She had a hard time […]
[Fiction] A teacher ventures north for a new position: On the bench outside the station, I sat and waited. The station had been open when the train arrived, but now it was locked. Another woman sat at the end of the bench, holding between her knees a string bag full of parcels wrapped in oiled […]
How timing and creativity can reignite interest in a toy: Not long ago, three inventors—toiling at home, unaware of one another’s existence—set out to reimagine the pogo. What was so sacred about that ungainly steel coil? they wondered. Why couldn’t you make a pogo stick brawny enough for a 250-pound adult? And why not vault […]
A look at the power, money and politics behind building the Freedom Tower that has delayed its completion: The PA is run by a board of twelve unpaid commissioners, six appointed by New York’s governor, six by New Jersey’s. Traditionally, the board chair is a New Jersey commissioner, and the executive director — effectively the […]
A son attempts to get an unpublished manuscript of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle for his dying mother, an avid science fiction and fantasy reader: Mom is completely nonplussed. I am a little hurt, but then I realize I haven’t seen Mom once the past several weeks with her hands on a paperback or her Kindle. […]
This fall, Mo Isom is trying out for LSU’s football team as a kicker, and would like to prove that her athletic ability outshines the fact that she is a woman. She has already proven to be resilient after overcoming personal struggles and experiencing tragedy: In Isom’s family, her mom and her sister were ‘brains.’ […]
A Longreads Member Exclusive: The Power of a Crisis Last year we introduced the Longreads Membership as an optional way for you to support our service. And it’s because of our members that we’re still here today. Thank you again for all your support. Today we’re introducing something new for our Longreads Members: Exclusive access to stories that […]
President Obama is less skilled than Presidents Clinton and Bush when it comes to buttering up campaign donors. Is this a good thing? As the Washington fund-raiser sees it, the White House social secretary must spend the first year of an Administration saying, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ Instead, the fund-raiser says, Obama’s first […]
John Fairchild turned his family’s dry fashion trade journal, Women’s Wear Daily into one of today’s most influential fashion publications. The 85-year-old looks back on his controversial career: Unlike in Paris, where couture designers were revered, Seventh Avenue was then dominated by garmentos while the designers toiled in the back rooms as relative unknowns. Fairchild […]
A high school basketball star’s career derailed by drugs and bad decisions. Jonathan Hargett also says he was offered $20,000 to attend West Virginia (a claim university officials deny): Hargett wanted to go to Arizona. The Wildcats won the national title in 1997 and had recently had a string of star guards like Miles Simon, […]
A writer recalls being employed by the Washington State Liquor Control Board as a teenage informant who bought cigarettes and alcohol without an ID: The convenience store was on a suburban street in West Seattle. Kelly parked in the front, in view of the counter, instead of around the corner like she usually did. I […]
Neuropathologist Dr. Ann McKee, a Green Bay Packers fan, on her autopsies of former NFL players and research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy: Over the last four years, McKee has become the most visible member of a cohort of research scientists and family members — wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of the dead, dying, and demented […]
Very few cases of law enforcement officers who are “feloniously killed” in the line of duty go unsolved. The murder of officer Tom Wood in Maywood, Chicago is one of those unsolved cases, and corruption in the Maywood force may have impeded the investigation: The ensuing homicide investigation was equally haphazard. Several witnesses whom Wood […]
On eating squirrels: But somewhere along the way, squirrel declined in popularity as a game animal, replaced by bigger quarry, such as deer and turkey, whose numbers had grown in the countryside as the number of humans dwindled. Mainstream views on squirrel eating began to drift toward disdainful—it became something hillbillies and rednecks did. In […]
[Fiction] Two friends decide to loot houses after a natural disaster strikes: I turned onto the first street, where we entered one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, a pink two story house greeting us in every direction. The houses had fared well, except for their roofs, now without tiles. Every roof looked identical, the neighborhood having […]
Eradicating urban poverty was a priority for Obama when he was running for president in 2008, but it has not become a focus for the president during his first term. A look at what still needs to be addressed, and the neighborhood of Roseland, where Obama got his political start: The reason for this shift […]
A writer discusses the awful living conditions of China’s booming cities after seven years of living in the country for seven years, and visiting 21 of China’s 22 provinces: “A Beijing-based blogger who lived in Harbin in 2003 told me about leaving Blues after several drinks and flagging a taxi driver, whom he recognized. ‘The […]
A writer on his experience spending time in an artist colony—and why they actually work: The poet in the studio next to me, Kathryn Levy, was at the time revising her work by reading it aloud, recording it, and playing it back to herself. The murmur of it was reassuring somehow. Years later, when I […]
A look at the Oglala Lakota people of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and how they’ve preserved their identity and customs after more than a 100 years of a tenuous relationship with the U.S.: Buried deep within the pages of the 2010 Defense appropriations bill, signed by President Barack Obama in December 2009, […]
Faith, technology and Christianity in Silicon Valley: The internet and social media present a conundrum for Chuck DeGroat, the pastor at City Church. With a congregation of hip modern professionals, from architects and financial advisers to programmers and venture capitalists, he can’t afford not to have a Facebook page, Twitter handle, or website. And yet, […]
A writer-comedian reviews his successes and failures, realizing there’s not much difference between the two: You might be thinking to yourself, ‘How do you know the fear never goes away?’ It could just be me. It could just be pessimism, or cynicism. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks a few years back […]
How the 42-year-old Wisconsin representative (and now Mitt Romney VP pick) took a leading role in the Republican Party’s budget battle with President Obama: Three days later, the White House started a livelier debate with Ryan. In a press briefing, Peter Orszag, the budget director at the time, dismantled Ryan’s plan, point by point. Ryan’s […]
An interview with the humorist and essayist about his book, Half Empty, his Academy Award-winning short film, and his recurrence of cancer: GROSS: You were diagnosed with cancer in your 20s. Now you’re in your 40s and have a cancer diagnosis again. Are you dealing with it emotionally differently now in your 40s than you […]
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