American Horror, Ivy League Edition

“Perhaps what Will Hunting says to a pompous Harvard scholar is really true: ‘You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda’ picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.’ Except, of course, an Ivy League education has become even more obscenely expensive in the 17 years since Good Will Hunting romanticized Southie autodidactism.” An examination of three books criticizing the Ivy League.

Source: Newsweek
Published: Aug 8, 2014
Length: 14 minutes (3,715 words)

The Spies Next Door

“‘Back when I was at the Agency,’ he said, ‘we once pulled a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.'” Matt Mendelsohn tracks down the story told to him by his neighbor Rod Carlson, a former CIA operative.

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Aug 4, 2014
Length: 21 minutes (5,441 words)

‘The Wonder Years’: An Oral History

“Because you don’t really realize how magical it is until it’s gone, until you’re old enough to appreciate it. So a lot of the wisdom that the narrator looked back with didn’t resonate with me just because I was kind of living those years as opposed to looking back at them and marveling at them.” The cast of The Wonder Years talk about how the show came together.

Source: Paste Magazine
Published: Aug 5, 2014
Length: 30 minutes (7,629 words)

The Founder of Flickr and Slack on the Psychological Torture of Selling Too Early

A snapshot of the current Bay Area tech and media scene, as told through the career of Stewart Butterfield, the founder of Flickr who’s back with a new company, the workplace chat app Slack.

Author: Mat Honan
Source: Wired
Published: Aug 7, 2014
Length: 28 minutes (7,212 words)

The Future of Iced Coffee

Blue Bottle CEO James Freeman wants to mass-produce coffee drinks without degrading its quality like other mega coffee brands, but can small artisan businesses maintain their integrity when they scale up to cater to mainstream consumers?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Aug 1, 2014
Length: 25 minutes (6,256 words)

The Thin Purple Line

After a controversial raid on a West Texas smoke shop, nothing is hazier than the truth. On synthetic drugs, federal muscle and the limits of freedom:

Source: Texas Observer
Published: Jul 28, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,632 words)

A Raised Voice

The story of Nina Simone—her career and her involvement with the civil rights movement—and the furor over a forthcoming movie biopic.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Aug 6, 2014
Length: 25 minutes (6,367 words)

Call It Rape

“What is it about ‘no means no’ that you all don’t understand?” A Longreads Exclusive from Margot Singer and The Normal School.

Published: Aug 6, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,683 words)

Little Man and the Pursuit of Happiness

A terminally ill boy’s bucket list, and the mother who provided him with “quality, not quantity” during his final days.

Published: Aug 2, 2014
Length: 44 minutes (11,069 words)

Is ‘Shareholder Value’ Bad for Business?

What does “shareholder value” really mean, and is it time for us to consider a new measurement for business success?

Source: Boston Globe
Published: Aug 5, 2014
Length: 9 minutes (2,322 words)