The NYPD Division of Un-American Activities

An excerpt from Enemies Within, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on the NYPD’s secret spying unit:

“Police collected the phone numbers and e-mail addresses from the website. One was for Agnes Johnson, a longtime activist based in the Bronx. ‘We were women and mothers who said, “We’re going to hold our money in our pocketbooks,” ’ Johnson recalled years later. ‘That’s all we called for.’

“Confirmation that the activities of the Demographics Unit went far beyond what federal agencies were permitted to do was provided by the FBI itself. Once, Sanchez tried to peddle the Demographics reports to the FBI. But when Bureau lawyers in New York learned about the reports, they refused. The Demographics detectives, the FBI concluded, were effectively acting as undercover officers, targeting businesses without cause and collecting information related to politics and religion. Accepting the NYPD’s reports would violate FBI rules.”

Published: Aug 25, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,701 words)

Sleeping Together

A visit to “Tokyo’s first co-sleeping café” where clients pay to sleep next to women or pay for “options” like being patted on the head:

“Did he get any of the options?’

“‘He wanted five-second hug option.’

“‘How much does that cost?’

“‘Sen yen.’ A thousand yen.

“‘What was it like?’

“She mimed wrapping her arms around a thorn tree. She wincingly patted the thorny emptiness.”

Published: Aug 26, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,769 words)

Reading List: Examining Technology

New reading list from Emily Perper featuring picks from The New Yorker, Aeon Magazine, and the New Inquiry.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 25, 2013

The List

A former USAID employee starts a list and a campaign to help resettle hundreds of Iraqis whose lives were threatened for working with the U.S. coalition. An excerpt from Kirk Johnson’s book To Be a Friend Is Fatal:

“I returned to Boston to find a dozen voicemails from journalists and Capitol Hill staffers whose names I had never heard before. I had no idea how everyone was getting my number. When I logged into my email account, I thought at first that my address had been sucked into some Middle Eastern spammer’s list: three out of every four emails were in Arabic.

“I saw a familiar name and opened the message. Ziad had always stood out in the USAID mission as someone with great ambition and an acidic sense of humor. His ambition had bested him, though: he was fired for trying to organize an informal union of the Iraqi employees to fight for better treatment and more protection. One day we noticed he was gone, and that was the end of Ziad, as far as we knew. He wrote to inform me that he was scheduled to flee within a couple days by way of a smuggler’s network and might need my help.”

Published: Aug 15, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,956 words)

The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography

An exhaustive, 22,000-word account of Marissa Mayer’s rise from a focused student in Wausau, Wis. to Yahoo! CEO. Carlson goes back to her childhood to explore the traits that made her so successful at Stanford and Google, and he goes behind the scenes on the Yahoo! board’s decision to choose her over interim CEO Ross Levinsohn:

“Over the weekend, Levinsohn played a guessing game with venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Square CEO Jack Dorsey, and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. With each of them, Levinsohn and the other Silicon Valley bigwigs ran through a long list of names, trying to figure out who might be getting the job Levinsohn had so hoped for. For each name they came up with, they came up with a persuasive reason why that person could not be it.

“Whom had Wolf and Loeb so clearly already decided on?

“Finally, late Sunday night, Levinsohn got a call from a friend of his at Google.

“This person asked: Had Levinsohn heard that Marissa Mayer had interviewed for the Yahoo job the Wednesday prior?

“Levinsohn realized everything all at once.

“Levinsohn now knew who Yahoo’s next CEO would be.

“Soon, so would everyone else.”

Published: Aug 24, 2013
Length: 88 minutes (22,073 words)

About a Boy

On being young and transgender:

“At thirteen, Skylar was browsing at Barnes & Noble and came across the young-adult novel ‘Parrotfish,’ by Ellen Wittlinger, which, along with books like ‘Luna’ and ‘I Am J,’ is a touchstone for trans kids. ‘Parrotfish’ is the story of Grady—born Angela—who realizes by page 9 that ‘inside the body of this strange, never-quite-right girl hid the soul of a typical, average ordinary boy.’ Skylar had a flash of recognition; a few months later, after a bout of Internet research, he told Melissa and Chip that he was trans.

“Skylar wanted to take testosterone right away—he wanted facial hair and a deeper voice and a more masculine frame. Melissa and Chip were receptive, but needed time to consider the ramifications. Melissa said, ‘To his credit, Skylar’s been amazingly patient with allowing Chip and me to internalize this and to get up to speed on it. You know, the whole idea of testosterone—there are permanent physiological changes that occur. So you want to be sure. And, while Skylar himself was sure, he was, after all, fourteen.'”

Source: New Yorker
Published: Mar 18, 2013
Length: 36 minutes (9,014 words)

Rah, Rah, Cheers, Queers

“I feel dizzy, exalted: recognized.” Terry Castle begins to make peace with her mother and finds joy in the experience of being married in a country where it is finally legal:

“But I’m nearly sixty and there’s something to be said for advancing senescence. Maybe things don’t hurt quite as much? (Blakey just came in the room and asked: How’s your piece going about being married to your mother? You know: gay marriage. One musters a feeble and aggrieved look.)

“Still, the fact remains – the US Supreme Court ruling has simply underscored it for me – that many things once burning-pincer-like in their effects seem of late to have lost their capacity to wound. They only sting for a second or two – if that.”

Published: Aug 23, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,517 words)

Murder and Mayhem in Miniature: The Lurid Side of Staffordshire Figurines

The dark history of ceramic figurines. The Staffordshire pottery created more than 200 years ago included graphic and risqué images and scenes from the time:

“After 1840, a growing number of middle- and lower-class homes wanted these figures, so they had to be made more cheaply. And with the Industrial Revolution, this was now possible. Increasingly, figures were made out of very few molded parts. The era of the ‘flat-back’ was born, those simple Staffordshire figures with one piece in front and another less-detailed piece behind, slapped together. Paint the front, don’t bother with the back. Somebody’s going to stick it on the shelf against the wall, and you’re not going to see it anyway.

“The years from 1780 to 1840 also coincided with a sort of visual revolution. In 1780, there were no reproduced images. If you read the autobiography of Thomas Bewick, who was one of the great illustrators of this time, there’s a great quote about how he only saw three images during his whole childhood. Newspapers weren’t even illustrated.”

Published: Aug 23, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,519 words)

The God of ‘SNL’ Will See You Now

Current and former cast members of Saturday Night Live—and one who didn’t make it—reflect on what it’s like to audition for Lorne Michaels:

"Marc Maron: I think I was a little high on pot. There were some pictures facing [Mr. Michaels], and in front of the pictures was a bowl of candy. It was all very loaded. And then he just starts looking at me, to a point where Steve Higgins [then an ‘SNL’ producer] goes, ‘Lorne?’ And Lorne goes, ‘You can tell a lot by looking into someone’s eyes.’ And then I took a candy. Lorne looked at Steve, and the meeting was over. I thought I failed the candy test.

“If it panned out, my life would have been dramatically different. I wouldn’t be mildly obsessed with Lorne Michaels. I talk to people about Lorne because I’m hung up on it. I feel like I need to talk to him again to get some closure. [Laughs.]”

Published: Aug 22, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,674 words)

Our Longreads Member Pick: ‘For the Public Good,’ by Belle Boggs

This week’s Member Pick is from a brand new publication, The New New South, which has just published a new ebook by Belle Boggs, who’s been featured on Longreads in the past for pieces including 2012’s “The Art of Waiting.” Her latest, “For the Public Good,” looks at forced sterilizations that occurred in the United States and the story of victims in North Carolina.

Read an excerpt here.

Become a Longreads Member to receive the full ebook.

Published: Aug 22, 2013
Length: 61 minutes (15,377 words)