Search Results for: Jason Fagone

Building a Car from Scratch

“Kevin turned serious for a moment and admitted that, yes, he was ‘paranoid’ about something breaking. It wasn’t just the welds. Much of the car was made from used parts that Kevin and his friends had scavenged from local junkyards. The rear suspension came from a Dodge Neon. The struts were a combination of Nissan, Miata, and Neon struts. ‘The steering is Honda,’ Kevin told me, then frowned, racking his memory for more examples.”

A couple spends all of their income to build a car from scratch and compete for the X Prize Foundation’s $10 million competition for vehicles that can travel 100 miles on a single gallon of gas. Read more from Jason Fagone.

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Photo via Illuminati Motor Works

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Ingenious

Jason Fagone | Ingenious, Crown Publishing Group | November 2013 | 20 minutes (4,972 words)

 

Below is the first chapter from Jason Fagone’s book, Ingenious, about the X Prize Foundation’s $10 million competition to build a car that can travel 100 miles on a single gallon of gas. Thanks to Fagone and Crown Publishing for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book here. Read more…

How to Spend Your Income Building a Car that Must Travel 100 Miles on a Single Gallon of Gas

Longreads Pick

The first chapter from Jason Fagone‘s new book, Ingenious, about the X Prize Foundation’s $10 million competition to build a car that can travel 100 miles on a single gallon of gas. Thanks to Fagone and Crown Publishing for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book here.

Source: Crown
Published: Nov 5, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,972 words)

Longreads Best of 2012: Justin Heckert

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Justin Heckert is a writer living in Indianapolis. His work has recently been anthologized in the book Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists

  

Best Essay: Lisa Taddeo, “Why We Cheat,” Esquire

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

Longreads Best of 2012: Esquire's Chris Jones

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Chris Jones is a writer for Esquire and ESPN and the winner of two National Magazine Awards.

Favorite new writer discovery of 2012

I’m always scared of making lists like this, because a year is a long time, and I read a lot, and invariably I’ll forget writers and pieces that I liked very much. But this category is easy for me: Michael J. Mooney. He wrote back-to-back stories for D Magazine this summer that are so different but the same in that they both knocked me on my ass. First he wrote about a brutal rape in “When Lois Pearson Started Fighting Back.” (It is a difficult read, but the ending is more than worth it.) And then he wrote the most amazing bowling story ever in “The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever.” Plus, he’s a straight-up good dude. Love this guy so much.

Best election story

I’m going to seem like a homer here, but I don’t care: Charlie Pierce did journalism on Esquire.com during this entire election cycle that bordered on heroic—and I don’t use that word lightly. In its ideas, in its language, in its sheer volume, his account of this election, taken as a whole, is humbling and inspiring at the same time. Start with the end, “The Greatness of Barack Obama is Our Great Project” and go back from there.

Best personal blog post/essay

I’m going to pick two stories here, both sports stories. Writers hate hearing athletes say, “You never played the game,” but it’s hard to deny that former athletes understand the games they played better than most of us do. Just the other day, The Classical posted a meditation by former basketball player Flinder Boyd about Ricky Rubio, “The Ricky Rubio Experience.” I’m not sure I can say why, exactly, but I was really moved by this story. Some of The Classical guys can be snide little shits, far too Internet cool, but Boyd wrote with real heart here. I love this story.

The second is by one of my most favorite friends, Kevin Van Valkenburg of ESPN. He wrote about the death of a semi-pro football player in a story called “Games of chance.” Kevin played college football at the University of Montana, and he writes beautifully about the pull of the game as well as the charge that comes from hitting and with being hit. Sometimes the first person interrupts; here it informs.

Best crime story

I see the great David Grann has already picked this one, but I’ll echo his pick, because it was that good: Pamela Colloff’s “The Innocent Man” for Texas Monthly is an epic, immersive, amazing story. And full credit to the gang down in Austin for committing so completely to longform journalism. That this story even exists makes me hopeful about so many things.

The story that made me feel the most awesome about just about everything

I’ve always been an optimist about writing, or at least I’ve always tried to be an optimist about writing, and 2012, for me, has been filled with reasons for optimism (like Pamela Colloff’s story above, which is really a multi-layered testament to the power of belief). Yes, this business remains in flux, and yes, many good writers continue to put more love into their writing than their writing returns to them. But I still feel like we live in a golden age, filled with possibility. One of the stories that most made me feel that way—both because of the story itself, and because of its subject—was “How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big-Budget Flick” by Jason Fagone in Wired. The title describes the tale exactly, and it’s just as improbable and fun and crazy as it sounds. I feel like this story sums up the modern writing business as well as any: There’s still plenty of lightning out there, and there are still lots of bottles, and every now and then, someone still catches one with the other.

Read more guest picks from Longreads Best of 2012.

James Erwin, a writer for software manuals in Des Moines, Iowa, responded to a Reddit thread wondering what would happen if the U.S. Marines battled the Roman Empire. His comments lit up the Internet: 

The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes.

The section of Bagram where the 35th was gathered suddenly reappears in a field outside Rome, on the west bank of the Tiber River. Without substantially prepared ground under it, the concrete begins sinking into the marshy ground and cracking. Colonel Miles Nelson orders his men to regroup near the vehicle depot—nearly all of the MEU’s vehicles are still stripped for air transport. He orders all helicopters airborne, believing the MEU is trapped in an earthquake.

“How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick.” — Jason Fagone, Wired

See also: “Flick Chicks.” Mindy Kaling, New Yorker, Oct. 3, 2011

Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics

Teen Mathletes Do Battle at Algorithm Olympics