Search Results for: The Nation

The Slap That England Deserves

Longreads Pick

Beyond any question of style is the fact of this book’s sheer nastiness. “The Slap”‘s not anti-anything-it’s anti-everything, the work of the moment for a nation that I met more at the pubs and picnic tables of England than in any other book I’ve read. It’s the book of the great muttering resistance of England, a dark-witted, vote-nay group who could rival the American Tea Party for influence if they could only agree on a bar at which to meet.

Source: The Awl
Published: Aug 17, 2010
Length: 4 minutes (1,234 words)

The Point of No Return

Longreads Pick

For The Obama Administration, The Prospect Of A Nuclearized Iran Is Dismal To Contemplate: It Would Create Major New National-Security Challenges And Crush The President’S Dream Of Ending Nuclear Proliferation.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 39 minutes (9,908 words)

Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican

Longreads Pick

In the twelve years since he resigned in defeat and disgrace, he has been carefully plotting his return to power. As 2012 approaches, he has raised as much money as all of his potential rivals combined and sits atop the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. But just who is Newton Leroy Gingrich, really? An epic and bizarre story of American power in an unsettled age.

Source: Esquire
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 34 minutes (8,547 words)

No Secrets

Longreads Pick

WikiLeaks and Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency. “Assange is an international trafficker, of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them on a Web site called WikiLeaks.org. Since it went online, three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive catalogue of secret material, ranging from the Standard Operating Procedures at Camp Delta, in Guantanamo Bay, and the ‘Climategate’ e-mails from the University of East Anglia, in England, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo account. The catalogue is especially remarkable because WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 7, 2010
Length: 39 minutes (9,856 words)

All The Dirt That’s Fit To Print

Longreads Pick

We’re used to National Enquirer stories on “shocking” plastic surgery, but in 2010 the rag almost won a Pulitzer. Alex Pappademas chronicles its evolution from tabloid to breaking-news contender

Source: GQ
Published: Jun 1, 2010
Length: 20 minutes (5,053 words)

The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson

Longreads Pick

In Sweden the books and their author — who died in an untimely fashion that some conspiracy theorists persist in calling an assassination — have lately become the center of another sort of story, the kind of thing August Strindberg might have written, full of intense, opinionated Swedish characters entwined in a saga involving envy, resentment, a contested legacy and a mysterious manuscript. At least one skeptic has even questioned how Larsson, a middle-aged man with no history of writing crime fiction, and seemingly no flair for it, could have written the Millennium books in the first place.

Published: May 20, 2010
Length: 24 minutes (6,063 words)

Gareth Thomas … The Only Openly Gay Male Athlete

Longreads Pick

He’s 6’3″ and 225 pounds of muscle. He’s broken his nose five times, fractured both shoulders and lost eight teeth. He’s drunk his mates under the table and brawled by their side. He’s been named to the Welsh national rugby team more times than any other man. And, among active players in major professional team sports, he’s …”Wot, butt? You come to this tiny village in this tiny country and tell me that I’m the only gay man in a major team sport who’s out of the closet?” … “All the diversity in America, and no one there has done this?”

Author: Gary Smith
Published: May 3, 2010
Length: 21 minutes (5,468 words)

Wayne B. Wheeler: The Man Who Turned Off the Taps

Longreads Pick

Prohibition couldn’t have happened without Wheeler, who foisted temperance on a thirsty nation 90 years ago

Source: Smithsonian
Published: May 1, 2010
Length: 17 minutes (4,285 words)

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Longreads Pick

Six billion dollars later, the Afghan National Police can’t begin to do their jobs right—never mind relieve American forces.

Source: Newsweek
Published: Mar 19, 2010
Length: 13 minutes (3,336 words)

A Drug Trial Cycle: Recovery, Relapse, Reinvention

Longreads Pick

Even if some combination of targeted drugs could put melanoma into a long hibernation — and that was still not clear, he knew — it might take a cocktail of five or more such drugs to treat any given case. And it can take 10 years for even one drug to reach the market.

Author: Amy Harmon
Published: Feb 23, 2010
Length: 10 minutes (2,565 words)