Fortune writer Beth Kowitt reports on the packaged-food industry’s response to an existential crisis: Shoppers are seeking alternatives they deem healthier and more authentic than legacy brands. In addition to selling fruit and veggie drinks, Bolthouse grows and packages fresh carrots—an old-fashioned, weather-sensitive farming business that Morrison suspected would be a turnoff for any packaged-goods […]
Category: Uncategorized
The Protestant work ethic here was very familiar to me. Johannes hadn’t had it, and probably not Magnus either; they had been cheerful men with more dreams than they had will to realize them, at least my grandfather. My mother’s mother had the work ethic, and she had passed it on to my mother, who […]
There’s that urge in adolescence when you feel like you discovered something, maybe a song, a book, or a painting, that resonates so deeply within you, to protect it, and keep it secret and close, so that you feel like you have claim of something wondrous and all your own. And if you share the […]
As for the awe he inspires himself, Christgau’s devotees are smaller in number these days than in his Voice years, but they’re still extraordinarily dedicated, particularly among a small community who came together in the comments section of Expert Witness, the MSN blog he started after leaving the Voice. (He’s since moved on to the Medium site Cuepoint.) “The Witnesses are the greatest experience of my professional life,” Christgau says. “Most of them are very married kind of guys, but I’m so very married that it makes sense.”
Hawks aren’t social animals like dogs or horses; they understand neither coercion nor punishment. The only way to tame them is through positive reinforcement with gifts of food. You want the hawk to eat the food you hold – it’s the first step in reclaiming her that will end with you being hunting partners. But […]
Jewish mothers sacrificed for their children, but they expected something in return. One of their requests was that their sons sei Yidden (be Jews) and maintain a connection with the Jewish community. At least during their mothers’ lifetime, a goodly number of these tough Jewish mobsters obeyed. Detroit mobster Harry Kasser told me in a 1986 conversation that he attended synagogue on the High Holidays solely to please his mother.
As much as [Hervé] This has spent his career chiselling deductions down to the molecular bone of physical chemistry, he is still entranced by the art involved in making something delicious. He talked volumes, veering between the intricacies of the chemistry of emulsions and the delights of a meal prepared with care and served with […]
In February, Mary Beard, a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture at the British Museum titled “Oh Do Shut Up Dear!” With amiable indignation, she explored the many ways that men have silenced outspoken women since the days of the ancients. Her speech, which was filmed by the BBC, was learned […]
Robert Smigel, writer: It wasn’t until my last season that the network refused to air a “TV Funhouse.” It was a live-action one that was meant to be about racism and profiling, an airline-safety video with multilingual narration, and whenever you heard a different language, they would cut to people of that nationality. First, typical […]
Then he had things to tell her about himself. The fact that he had produced a condom did not mean that he was a regular seducer. In fact, she was only the second person he had gone to bed with, the first being his wife. He had been brought up in a fiercely religious household […]
GROSS: What are some of the most painful things that have happened to you that you’ve ended up making jokes about on stage? Ms. RIVERS: Oh, where do you start? My husband’s suicide. GROSS: Right. Ms. RIVERS: Some man, 60 years old, that couldn’t take the business and went and killed himself. How do you […]
Strange but true: Groucho Marx and T.S. Eliot were pen-pals. Their correspondence began in 1961, when T.S. Eliot sent Groucho Marx a fan letter. It continued for several years, with them finally meeting for dinner in 1964. From a recent post on Daybook: The much-postponed event took place just seven months before Eliot’s death at […]
As poetry readings go, the setting was unique. The Al Raha Beach Theatre in Abu Dhabi boasted light-up floors, backdrop projections and a light show of a kind that would be familiar to fans of Pop Idol, X Factor or America’s Got Talent. Since February, global audiences of up to 70 million have tuned in […]
Potomac Video, the last remaining video rental store in Washington D.C., will be shutting its doors after 33 years in business. Though there are surely plenty of good stories to be found in the some 60,000 DVDs now on sale at Potomac, perhaps the most interesting story is the role the Washington institution played in consumer privacy […]
Last year the Milwaukee Bucks were purchased by two hedge-fund billionaires for $550 million. In a piece for Grantland, Bill Simmons tried to nail down what exactly drives the super rich to acquire NBA teams, a purchase that—at least by the numbers—is often a pretty lousy investment. Simmons concluded that for many owners, exclusivity and prestige outweigh straight number crunching: “You can’t […]
The web of lies that various parts of the United Nations has woven about Darfur is vast. Orwellian doublespeak deliberately disguises reality and distorts words. U.N. reports on the region, for instance, typically and euphemistically use “air strikes” for indiscriminate bombing of civilians, “sporadic clashes” for continuous war, and “sexual and gender-based violence” for systematic […]
Yiren Lu, a recent Harvard grad who now studies computer science at Columbia, takes a step back from the startup world to wonder what it means for our tech infrastructure when all the bright young things want to make apps but aren’t skilled in networks and hardware — the stuff that makes the Internet go. […]
The following is an excerpt from Open Road Media’s Challenger: An American Tragedy, the new book by Hugh Harris, NASA’s “voice of launch control,” who recounts the shuttle tragedy that occurred nearly 30 years ago. Buy the book now. *** Chapter One: A Look Back Twenty-Eight Years Challenger was a spacecraft designed to transport, protect, and nurture […]
Elizabeth Royte | Modern Farmer, FERN | December 2013 | 7 minutes (1,700 words) For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share early access to “The Post-GMO Economy,” a new story by Elizabeth Royte that will be published next week by Modern Farmer, in partnership with the Food and Environment Reporting Network. Become a Longreads Member to receive […]
Mark Oppenheimer | The Atlantic Books | November 2013 | 88 minutes (22,700 words) Longreads Members not only support this service, but they receive exclusive ebooks from the best writers and publishers in the world. Our latest Member Pick, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side, is a new story by Mark Oppenheimer and The Atlantic […]
“The central pillar of Moon’s theology held that Eve had a dalliance with Satan in the Garden of Eden and then slept with Adam, which is how human beings were burdened with original sin. Moon also believed that people, movements, and even entire countries embodied these biblical figures. He himself was the ‘perfect Adam,’ and […]
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: College athletes who don’t go on to play professionally sometimes continue their career in Europe. And that’s usually the last we hear of them. But the University of Pittsburgh’s Jasper Wilson made good use of a […]
“Rembert and Stuckert decided they would take Peace Corps assignments later that year and help with the unfolding hometown crisis in the meantime. ‘When we started Energize Clinton County, we thought, “Oh, we’ll do this for a few months and then head to the Peace Corps,”’ says Rembert. ‘Then it became six months and then […]
“The goal is to turn questioners into the equivalent of human lie detectors who can read behavioral tics to determine guilt. It begins with the isolation of the suspect. Kassin explained that a Reid-trained officer will typically go through nine steps, offering the suspect both positive and negative incentives. The goal of the interrogation, according […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.