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Prince Alwaleed And The Curious Case Of Kingdom Holding Stock

Longreads Pick

Inside a Saudi billionaire’s obsession with his own Forbes wealth ranking—and the magazine’s subsequent investigation into his real worth:

“But for the past few years former Alwaleed executives have been telling me that the prince, while indeed one of the richest men in the world, systematically exaggerates his net worth by several billion dollars. This led FORBES to a deeper examination of his wealth, and a stark conclusion: The value that the prince puts on his holdings at times feels like an alternate reality, including his publicly traded Kingdom Holding, which rises and falls based on factors that, coincidentally, seem more tied to the FORBES billionaires list than fundamentals.

“Alwaleed, 58, wouldn’t speak with FORBES for this article, but his CFO, Shadi Sanbar, was vociferous: ‘I never knew that FORBES was a magazine of sensational dirt-digging and rumor-filled stories.’ Our discrepancy over his net worth says a lot about the prince, and the process of divining someone’s true wealth.”

Source: Forbes
Published: Mar 6, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,737 words)

Longreads Guest Pick: Hilary Armstrong on 'The Horla'

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If you really love a story, we want to hear from you. Share your favorite stories with Longreads—old or new, nonfiction or fiction, book or magazine feature—and then tell us why you love it. If we like it, we’ll feature you and your pick. 

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Today’s guest pick comes from Hilary Armstrong, a literature student at UC Santa Barbara and Longreads intern. She’s chosen “The Horla,” the 1887 short story that you can read for free right here. Hilary writes: 

“There is nothing quite as exquisite as a fashionable French protagonist. The author’s full name sounds like eating a truffle: ‘Henri-René-Albert-Guy de Maupassant.’ I have never been to France, but this piece is, to me, a free trip there. That, mixed with subdued horror and confusion, make for a read that does not show its age.

“‘The Horla’ is Poe mixed with breezy summer days—a pleasant trip to France at its most romantic, slowly descending into Lovecraftian madness. If you are on a train, read to the middle and stop, because the ending will make you feel claustrophobic and anxious. This piece is Fantastic, meaning both the compliment and the genre, and there are few things that make me feel as classy as I do when reading fantastic literature. Enjoy.”

Longreads Guest Pick: Hilary Armstrong on ‘The Horla’

Longreads Pick

If you really love a story, we want to hear from you. Share your favorite stories with Longreads—old or new, nonfiction or fiction, book or magazine feature—and then tell us why you love it. If we like it, we’ll feature you and your pick. 

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 4, 2013

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Magazine, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Bloomberg Businessweek, fiction from Electric Literature, plus a guest pick from Moses Hawk.

Miami Heist: The Brink’s Money Plane Job’s Messy Aftermath

Longreads Pick

How a group of thieves stole $7.4 million from Brink’s guards in a warehouse at Miami International Airport, and were caught by FBI investigators:

“Monzon’s plan, naturally, was to lie low. The crew sealed the money in vacuum packs and split up. Monzon stashed some of his money in PVC pipes and buried them under his family’s house in Homestead, a rural area halfway between Miami and the Florida Keys. Some went into the attic. He didn’t hide it all, though: He bought a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle worth about $14,000. But the everyday dramas of ordinary life continued. Monzon kept his job at the rental company. Cinnamon kept working as well, as a receptionist at Vista magazine. ‘I get up every day at six in the morning to come work like a slave,’ she complained months later in a phone conversation tapped by the FBI.”

“Boatwright took a different approach. He bought a Rolex and a set of gold caps for his teeth and began days-long drug binges at strip clubs. He dropped thousands of dollars partying with friends. Rumors spread to Monzon that he was doing drugs right out in the street.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Feb 22, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,185 words)

Longreads Member Exclusive: Contest of Words, by Ben Lerner

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This week’s Longreads Member pick is “Contest of Words,” Ben Lerner‘s October 2012 essay from Harper’s Magazine. Lerner is author of the award-winning 2011 novel Leaving the Atocha Station and three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw and Mean Free Path.

The story comes recommended by Matt O’Rourke, a longtime Longreads community member and creative director for Wieden and Kennedy in Portland (he also runs the Twitter account @fuckyesreading). Matt writes:

Ben Lerner has such an easy way with words that you almost lose sight of the fact that the guy is clearly a genius. He takes incredibly complex observations, and delivers them in a way that makes you feel like he’s hardly working at it at all.

‘Contest of Words,’ which I discovered in Harper’s last year, is about Lerner’s experience with language as a member of his high school debate team. It’s a piece of writing I re-read every few weeks, as a reminder that the smartest person in the room is only relevant if they can get everyone else to listen. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I have.

Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.

Longreads Member Exclusive: Contest of Words, by Ben Lerner

Longreads Pick

This week's Longreads Member pick is "Contest of Words," Ben Lerner's October 2012 essay from Harper's Magazine. Lerner is author of the award-winning 2011 novel Leaving the Atocha Station and three books of poetry: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw and Mean Free Path.

The story comes recommended by Matt O'Rourke, a longtime Longreads community member and creative director for Wieden and Kennedy in Portland (he also runs the Twitter account @fuckyesreading).

Support Longreads—and get more stories like this—by becoming a member for just $3 per month.

Author: Ben Lerner
Published: Feb 21, 2013
Length: 20 minutes (5,243 words)

Resurfaced: Peter Perl's 'The Spy Who's Been Left in the Cold' (1998)

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We’re excited to introduce a recurring series in which we work with publishers to dig up notable stories from their archives that were previously unpublished on the web. And we’re especially excited to kick this off with The Washington Post

Today’s piece is “The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold,” a 1998 Washington Post Magazine story by Peter Perl, who just announced he’s retiring from the paper after 32 years. Here’s more from the Post’s Marc Fisher:

“In the Washington Post newsroom in recent years, Peter Perl has been the official mensch, the go-to guy both for reporters trying to figure out their career paths and for editors struggling with how to keep aggressive and smart journalism at the fore even in an ever-tougher economic environment. But beyond his avuncular manner and wise counsel, what made Perl one of the newsroom’s most respected figures was what he’d done for the first quarter century of his time at the paper: Perl, who is retiring from The Post shortly, was a master storyteller, a specialist in the art of profiling people who didn’t want to be profiled and public figures who were assumed by journalists and readers alike to be overexposed. Perl drilled down to the psychological roots of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry’s struggle between the morality of fighting for the poor and the amorality of doing whatever it took to get his way. He discovered and sensitively revealed the hurt child beneath D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’ oddly distant public persona. And in this finely-etched, subtly-shaded profile of a man he didn’t even get to meet, Perl shows us the many facets of Jonathan Pollard, the American intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel and is serving a life sentence in a federal prison. It is a story of deceit and betrayal, but also of devotion and righteousness. It is a typical Peter Perl tale, ignoring the easy conclusions and trusting that readers will come with him on a journey into the grey zone where all the most fascinating stories live.”

Read the story here. 

Resurfaced: Peter Perl’s ‘The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold’ (1998)

Longreads Pick

We’re excited to introduce this new recurring series, in which we work with publishers to dig up notable stories from their archives that were previously unpublished on the web. We’re especially excited to kick this off with The Washington Post

Today’s piece is “The Spy Who’s Been Left in the Cold,” a 1998 Washington Post Magazine story by Peter Perl, who just announced he’s retiring from the paper after 32 years.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 19, 2013

Our Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring The New Yorker, Esquire, Miami New Times, Columbia Magazine, New York magazine, and a guest pick by Greg Spielberg.