What Is It About 20-Somethings?

Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

Published: Aug 18, 2010
Length: 31 minutes (7,781 words)

The Slap That England Deserves

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)

Opium Made Easy

Nowadays what leisure time I do have tends to be spent in the garden, a passion that in recent years has turned into a professional interest—I am, among other things, a garden writer. I mention this to help explain the keen interest I took in Jim Hogshire’s subsequent project: a somewhat unconventional treatise on gardening titled Opium for the Masses, published in 1994 by an outfit in Port Townsend, Washington, called Loompanics Unlimited. The book’s astonishing premise is that anyone can obtain opiates cheaply and safely and maybe even legally—or at least beneath the radar of the authorities, who, if Hogshire was to be believed, were overlooking something rather significant in their pursuit of the war on drugs.

Published: Apr 1, 1997
Length: 71 minutes (17,875 words)

The Last American Man

Eustace Conway is not like any man you know. He’s got perfect vision, perfect balance, perfect reflexes and travels thorugh life with perfect equanimity. He is smart and fearless and believes he can do anything he sets his mind to — like saving America

Source: GQ
Published: Feb 1, 1998
Length: 27 minutes (6,878 words)

Writing Is My Peppermint-Flavored Heroin

Source: The Millions
Published: Mar 12, 2010
Length: 15 minutes (3,978 words)

The Marriage Cure

One July morning last year in Oklahoma City, in a public-housing project named Sooner Haven, twenty-two-year-old Kin Henderson pulled a pair of low-rider jeans over a high-rising gold lamé thong and declared herself ready for church. Her best friend in the project, Corean Brothers, was already in the parking lot, fanning away her hot flashes behind the wheel of a smoke-belching Dodge Shadow. “Car’s raggedy, but it’ll get us from pillar to post,” Corean said when Kim climbed in. At Holy Temple Baptist Church, two miles down the road, the state of Oklahoma was offering the residents of Sooner Haven three days of instruction on how to get and stay married.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 18, 2003
Length: 49 minutes (12,424 words)

Washington, We Have a Problem

How broken is Washington? Beyond repair? A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama’s job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors.

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Sep 1, 2010
Length: 41 minutes (10,466 words)

Dr. Gasol? Pau’s love outside basketball

He focused on his studies, but as the years passed, he grew to 6-feet-nothing and then 6-foot-something. The sport of basketball had always been in the equation, but now that he was pushing 7 feet, now that he towered over most everyone in Barcelona, he would have a decision to make soon. He tried balancing both basketball and medicine at first — and, the truth is, he wasn’t the better for it. By day, he was an 18-year-old, first-year med student at the University of Barcelona; by night, he was a pivot man on the FC Barcelona club team.

Author: Tom Friend
Source: ESPN
Published: Aug 6, 2010
Length: 17 minutes (4,289 words)

Runaway Money

A Children’s Classic, A 9-Year-Old-Boy And a Fateful Bequest – For Albert Clarke, the Rise Of ‘Goodnight Moon’ Is No Storybook Romance – Broken Homes, Broken Noses”

Published: Aug 16, 2010
Length: 16 minutes (4,045 words)

The Comedian’s Comedian’s Comedian

He’s a boxer, a Buddhist, a hoops junkie, and a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1965 (Sandler, Silverman, Apatow, Gervais, Baron Cohen…). A rare sparring session with Garry Shandling, the reclusive master of American comedy

Source: GQ
Published: Aug 1, 2010
Length: 25 minutes (6,469 words)