The Father I Did Not Know

Interspersed with memories of his childhood in Africa, Bart Moore-Gilbert searches for information about his deceased father’s secretive past as a police officer in colonial India. This essay is excerpted from The Setting Sun: A Memoir of Empire and Family Secrets.

Source: Berfrois
Published: Sep 29, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,460 words)

Why the Press Is Wrong About Bernie Sanders

Steve Hendricks looks at why the press loves to hate underdogs, and how their treatment of Bernie Sanders belies the fact that he just might have a shot.

Published: May 21, 2015
Length: 9 minutes (2,487 words)

Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade?

A controversial experiment at Fieldston Lower School to open up a discussion about race by sorting students into racial groups has divided a group of liberal parents.

Published: May 19, 2015
Length: 27 minutes (6,849 words)

By Reason of Insanity

The high-profile murder trial that led to America’s first successful insanity plea: It involved a congressman who shot a man he believed was having an affair with his wife.

Source: Hazlitt
Published: May 22, 2015
Length: 7 minutes (1,850 words)

Diane Arbus, Uncropped: A Reading List

Diane Arbus was renowned for photographing people on the margins, such as the mentally challenged, dwarves, giants, sideshow performers, crossdressers, and transsexuals. Was she merely a privileged voyeur of the vulnerable or an unsung champion of sexual and societal minorities? Here are five stories that will help you cut through the controversy.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 21, 2015

How Indie Rock Changed the World

The story of indie rock music and its influence on culture.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jun 1, 2015
Length: 19 minutes (4,850 words)

O. Henry Prize Winners: The Best Short Stories of 2015

A new collection of stories awarded the 2015 O. Henry Prize.

Author: Editors
Source: Literary Hub
Published: May 21, 2015

Unclimbable

Eva Holland explores what it means to comprehend and embrace your limits —to know yet avoid the precipice between courage and humility—on a climbing expedition to the Yukon Territories’ famed Cirque of the Unclimbables.

Source: SB Nation
Published: May 21, 2015
Length: 31 minutes (7,907 words)

Tuesdays with Zinsser

Mark Singer remembers his former teacher, On Writing Well author William Zinsser, who died May 12.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: May 20, 2015
Length: 7 minutes (1,814 words)

Memories of a Singular San Francisco Girlhood

Alysia Abbott recalls being raised by her poet father—a single, openly gay man—in the San Francisco of the nineteen-seventies and eighties in this excerpt from Fairyland, a Memoir of My Father.

Published: Jun 1, 2014
Length: 16 minutes (4,188 words)