Trump’s Generals Can Save the World from War—And Stop the Crazy

“The president has no prior experience in politics or national security. Combine that with the widespread respect all three generals bring with them, not to mention their reputations for seriousness and intelligence, and it means they possess something that Donald Trump the dealmaker understands well: leverage—leverage over him.”

Source: Newsweek
Published: Aug 12, 2017
Length: 13 minutes (3,408 words)

You Are a Jigsaw Puzzle with Missing Food-Shaped Pieces

A personal essay in which Lindsay Hunter, author of the novel Eat Only When You’re Hungry, unpacks the factors and childhood experiences informing her complicated relationship to food, eating, and body image.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 15, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,035 words)

Beat the Clock

“Halls of fame and records and medals and posters belong to fans. Athletes do not mythologize the body in this way. What they do is navigate decay.”

Source: n+1
Published: Jul 25, 2017
Length: 12 minutes (3,217 words)

What My Father’s Death Taught Me about Poetry

Matthew Zapruder examines his relationship with poetry and with his father. Despite being two men with great facility for precise language, they were unable to use it to bridge the distance between them. In likening poems to people, Zapruder posits that the most beautiful thing about the poems most important to him is that their gravity and meaning cannot fully be articulated.

Source: The Walrus
Published: Jul 25, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,879 words)

Why We Fell for Clean Eating

On the rise of orthorexia — “an obsession with consuming only foods that are pure and perfect” — and the burgeoning industry that feeds it.

Author: Bee Wilson
Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 11, 2017
Length: 23 minutes (5,947 words)

Forever Yesterday: Peering Inside My Mom’s Fading Mind

A personal essay in which writer Kevin Sampsell struggles to understand and accept the ravages of Alzheimer’s on his elderly mother’s memory — and quality of life.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 11, 2017
Length: 15 minutes (3,752 words)

The Forgotten Song That Made The Beach Boys Cool Again

After The Beach Boys’ domestic album sales started suffering in the late 1960s and their squeaky clean surfer image fell out of favor, they co-wrote a song that helped them connect with America’s shaggy, drug-taking counterculture and regain their popularity. This is the story of that song, and the story of American pop music after the Summer of Love.

Source: Medium
Published: Jun 12, 2017
Length: 14 minutes (3,520 words)

What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity

Jay Caspian Kang reports on the death of Michael Deng, a college freshman who died while rushing an Asian-American fraternity, and examines the history of oppression against Asians in the U.S. and how it has shaped a marginalized identity.

Published: Aug 9, 2017
Length: 29 minutes (7,433 words)

Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence

When she was 30, left the U.S. for Istanbul — and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Aug 8, 2017
Length: 20 minutes (5,124 words)

Free at Last

You’ve heard of Miles Davis. You’ve heard of Billie Holiday. It’s time more people knew about pensive, voluminous jazz pianist Mal Waldron. He was Billie Holiday’s pianist up until her death, and contrary to Davis’ belief that expatriate jazz musicians lost “an energy, an edge,” Waldron wrote some of his most innovative music after he left the segregated United States. Waldron believed that if Holiday had moved to Europe like he had, she could have lived a longer life, too.

Author: Adam Shatz
Source: The Nation
Published: Jul 26, 2017
Length: 18 minutes (4,692 words)