Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams

A new Longreads Exclusive from songwriter Lucinda Williams and Radio Silence.

Source: Radio Silence
Published: Aug 20, 2014
Length: 10 minutes (2,690 words)

How New Orleans Became Ground Zero for HIV

Science writer Jessica Wapner on the “second hurricane” battering New Orleans, where HIV infections are reaching epidemic proportions, propelled by prejudice and poverty.

Source: Aeon
Published: Aug 15, 2014
Length: 13 minutes (3,402 words)

Awakening

The advent of anesthesia fundamentally altered modern medicine, and its technology is often seen as infallible. However tens of thousands of patients each year in the United States alone wake up at some point during surgery. In working to eradicate this phenomenon, doctors have been forced to confront how little we know about anesthesia’s effects on the brain. But their studies have also led to a question just as pertinent to philosophers: What does it mean to be conscious?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jan 3, 2013
Length: 31 minutes (7,995 words)

The New Racism: This Is How the Civil Rights Movement Ends

Zengerle explores the plight of black politicians in the South, and how a Republican majority is undoing their progress.

Published: Aug 19, 2014
Length: 30 minutes (7,654 words)

Tony Judt’s Life with ALS: A Reading List

The Ice Bucket challenge has raised millions for ALS research, not to mention awareness about the disease: the motor neuron disorder, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, affects thousands of Americans. It’s also served as a reminder about the work that Tony Judt did to convey what it was like to live with ALS, in his diary entries for the New York Review of Books.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 19, 2014

The Soft-Kill Solution

Ando Arike’s 2010 history of nonlethal weapons in crowd control: “‘Non-lethal’ is the Pentagon’s approved term for these weapons, but their manufacturers also use the terms ‘soft kill,’ ‘less-lethal,’ ‘limited effects,’ ‘low collateral damage,’ and ‘compliance.’ The weapons are intended primarily for use against unarmed or primitively armed civilians; they are designed to control crowds, clear buildings and streets, subdue and restrain individuals, and secure borders. The result is what appears to be the first arms race in which the opponent is the general population.”

Author: Ando Arike
Published: Aug 18, 2014
Length: 30 minutes (7,541 words)

The Adjunct Crisis: A Reading List

“When Mary Margaret Vojtko died last September—penniless and virtually homeless and eighty-three years old, having been referred to Adult Protective Services because the effects of living in poverty made it seem to some that she was incapable of caring for herself—it made the news because she was a professor.” So begins the dark tale of what it means to be an adjunct professor in the United States today, further explored in these essays and articles.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 17, 2014

Paper Boys

Inside the dark, labyrinth, and extremely lucrative world of consumer debt collection.

Published: Aug 14, 2014
Length: 31 minutes (7,839 words)

Loneliness and Solitude: A Reading List

This brief list takes a dive into the discussion about loneliness and solitude in our contemporary lives—what it is, how we cope, and how it affects our bodies.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 16, 2014

Let’s Be Real

Wesley Morris examines the depiction of race and police officers in movies, and juxtaposes it against the shooting in Ferguson.

Source: Grantland
Published: Aug 15, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,846 words)