Search Results for: The Nation

Cornering the Market

Longreads Pick

From the 2012 James Beard Award nominations: A profile of Sam Mogannam, who transformed his tiny family grocery store, San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market, into one the most influential stores in the country:

“When Mogannam was 15 years old, the market was owned by his father and uncle. The Mission district hadn’t yet been discovered by a generation of tattooed 25-year-olds happy to stand in line for a $3 latte. Just up the street, Mission Dolores Park was popular with unemployed men who spent their days drinking fortified wine, some of which they bought at Bi-Rite. Though he was not yet old enough to drink, in 1983 Mogannam asked his father if he could remerchandise the wine department. He got rid of the Night Train Express, MD 20/20, and Ripple, and on the advice of the store’s wine reps brought in their strongest sellers—Sebastiani, Robert Mondavi, and Beaulieu Vineyard. The drunks found someplace else to shop, and Bi-Rite’s wine sales soared.”

Published: Oct 20, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,397 words)

In 1908, teams from four countries — the United States, France, Germany, and Italy — raced from New York to Paris by driving across the American west, and the frozen Bering Strait:

The contestants represented an international roster of personalities. G. Bourcier de St. Chaffray, driving the French De Dion, once organized a motorboat race from Marseille to Algiers that resulted in every single boat sinking in the Mediterranean. His captain was Hans Hendrick Hansen, a swashbuckling Norwegian who claimed to have sailed a Viking ship, solo, to the North Pole. He declared that he and his companions would reach Paris or “our bodies will be found inside the car.” Frenchman Charles Godard, driving the Moto-Bloc, participated in the Peking-to-Paris race without having driven a car and set an endurance record by driving singlehandedly for 24 hours nonstop.

“Paris or Bust: The Great New York-to-Paris Auto Race of 1908.” — Karen Abbott, Smithsonian

See more #longreads from Smithsonian magazine

Paris or Bust: The Great New York-to-Paris Auto Race of 1908

Longreads Pick

In 1908, teams from four countries — the United States, France, Germany, and Italy — raced from New York to Paris by driving across the American west, and the frozen Bering Strait:

“The contestants represented an international roster of personalities. G. Bourcier de St. Chaffray, driving the French De Dion, once organized a motorboat race from Marseille to Algiers that resulted in every single boat sinking in the Mediterranean. His captain was Hans Hendrick Hansen, a swashbuckling Norwegian who claimed to have sailed a Viking ship, solo, to the North Pole. He declared that he and his companions would reach Paris or ‘our bodies will be found inside the car.’ Frenchman Charles Godard, driving the Moto-Bloc, participated in the Peking-to-Paris race without having driven a car and set an endurance record by driving singlehandedly for 24 hours nonstop.”

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Mar 7, 2012
Length: 12 minutes (3,025 words)

Which would be worse: Iran developing a nuclear weapon, or waging a war to prevent it? An examination of both scenarios: 

Given the momentousness of such an endeavor and how much prominence the Iranian nuclear issue has been given, one might think that talk about exercising the military option would be backed up by extensive analysis of the threat in question and the different ways of responding to it. But it isn’t. Strip away the bellicosity and political rhetoric, and what one finds is not rigorous analysis but a mixture of fear, fanciful speculation, and crude stereotyping. There are indeed good reasons to oppose Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, and likewise many steps the United States and the international community can and should take to try to avoid that eventuality. But an Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from acquiring one would be less successful, and far more costly, than most people imagine.

“We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran.” — Paul Pillar, Washington Monthly

See also: “The Sabotaging of Iran.” — Financial Times Staff, Financial Times, Feb. 11, 2011

We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran

Longreads Pick

Which would be worse: Iran developing a nuclear weapon, or waging a war to prevent it? An examination of both scenarios:

“Given the momentousness of such an endeavor and how much prominence the Iranian nuclear issue has been given, one might think that talk about exercising the military option would be backed up by extensive analysis of the threat in question and the different ways of responding to it. But it isn’t. Strip away the bellicosity and political rhetoric, and what one finds is not rigorous analysis but a mixture of fear, fanciful speculation, and crude stereotyping. There are indeed good reasons to oppose Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, and likewise many steps the United States and the international community can and should take to try to avoid that eventuality. But an Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from acquiring one would be less successful, and far more costly, than most people imagine.”

Published: Mar 2, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,084 words)

A 2010 profile on the big media dreams of Andrew Breitbart, who died early Thursday morning at age 43:

Breitbart, who is Jewish, grew up in Brentwood, an affluent part of Los Angeles. He seems a familiar bicoastal type until he starts explaining his conviction that President Barack Obama’s election was the culmination of a plot, set in place in the nineteen-thirties by émigré members of the Frankfurt School, to take over Hollywood, the media, the academy, and the government, with the aim of imposing socialism. “He’s a Marxist,” Breitbart says of Obama. “His life work, his life experience, his life writings, and now his legislative legacy speak to his ideological point of view.”

“The Rage Machine.” — Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, May 24, 2010

The Rage Machine

Longreads Pick

A 2010 profile on the big media dreams of Andrew Breitbart, who died early Thursday morning at age 43:

“Breitbart, who is Jewish, grew up in Brentwood, an affluent part of Los Angeles. He seems a familiar bicoastal type until he starts explaining his conviction that President Barack Obama’s election was the culmination of a plot, set in place in the nineteen-thirties by émigré members of the Frankfurt School, to take over Hollywood, the media, the academy, and the government, with the aim of imposing socialism. ‘He’s a Marxist,’ Breitbart says of Obama. ‘His life work, his life experience, his life writings, and now his legislative legacy speak to his ideological point of view.'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Mar 1, 2012
Length: 27 minutes (6,908 words)

Africa is changing—but when it comes to conflict, the battles are smaller, messier and not necessarily driven by a specific purpose:

This is the story of conflict in Africa these days. What we are seeing is the decline of the classic wars by freedom fighters and the proliferation of something else—something wilder, messier, more predatory, and harder to define. The style of warfare has shifted dramatically since the liberation wars of the 1960s and 1970s (Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau), the cold-war wars of the 1980s (Angola, Mozambique), and the large-scale killings of the 1990s (Somalia, Congo, Rwanda, Liberia). Today the continent is plagued by countless nasty little wars, which in many ways aren’t really wars at all. There are no front lines, no battlefields, no clear conflict zones, and no distinctions between combatants and civilians, which is why the kind of massacre that happened near Niangara is sadly common.

“Africa’s Dirty Wars.” — Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Review of Books

See also: “Anatomy of an Afghan War Tragedy.” — David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2011

Jeremy Lin’s sudden stardom has also put the spotlight on how Asian Americans are viewed in the U.S.:

Not since Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has there been so much national discussion about the appropriateness of discussing race. The 2008 election set the groundwork for an aggressive sort of colorblindness — as long as you voted for Barack and/or can celebrate, say, Jackie Robinson, you now have the right to flag down anything that might shake us from our post-racial dream. Statements like “I see everybody equally, therefore everyone should just talk about him as a basketball player” and accusations of “playing the race card” have become even more ubiquitous. And although the former signals a nice sentiment, it also provides convenient cover for those of us who benefit most from the status quo, regardless of race. Yes, Jeremy Lin became Linsanity because he has been playing at a level that has recalibrated expectations of any obscure player. And yes, there’s nothing more tiresome than a long-winded meditation on a basketball player, especially if he’s clearly been hijacked to promote some other agenda. But to strip Jeremy Lin of his status as the Great Yellow Hope not only seems dishonest and lazy, it also deprives the community he represents — willfully or not — of the unabashed joy of seeing one of its own succeed in the most improbable arena.

“A Question of Identity.” — Jay Caspian Kang, Grantland

More #longreads from Jay Caspian Kang

A Question of Identity

Longreads Pick

Jeremy Lin’s sudden stardom has also put the spotlight on how Asian Americans are viewed in the U.S.:

“Not since Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has there been so much national discussion about the appropriateness of discussing race. The 2008 election set the groundwork for an aggressive sort of colorblindness — as long as you voted for Barack and/or can celebrate, say, Jackie Robinson, you now have the right to flag down anything that might shake us from our post-racial dream. Statements like ‘I see everybody equally, therefore everyone should just talk about him as a basketball player’ and accusations of ‘playing the race card’ have become even more ubiquitous. And although the former signals a nice sentiment, it also provides convenient cover for those of us who benefit most from the status quo, regardless of race. Yes, Jeremy Lin became Linsanity because he has been playing at a level that has recalibrated expectations of any obscure player. And yes, there’s nothing more tiresome than a long-winded meditation on a basketball player, especially if he’s clearly been hijacked to promote some other agenda. But to strip Jeremy Lin of his status as the Great Yellow Hope not only seems dishonest and lazy, it also deprives the community he represents — willfully or not — of the unabashed joy of seeing one of its own succeed in the most improbable arena.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Feb 22, 2012
Length: 8 minutes (2,188 words)