Stephen King’s Family Business

The writer visits Stephen King’s prolific family in Maine. King’s wife Tabitha, his sons Joe and Owen, and his daughter-in-law Kelly Braffet are all published authors. His daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist minister and storyteller:

“Owen can live with selling fewer books than his brother or father, both of whom set unusually high standards for that metric. ‘I think my brother’s and father’s drive for success is greater than mine,’ he said. ‘I just want to sell enough books to be able to justify continuing to write.’ As the youngest of the siblings and the one who stayed home, rather than go to boarding school, he was exposed more often than they were to his father’s growing fame — the snapping cameras everywhere, the strangers forever approaching them. ‘I want to be as successful as I can be while still living a very private life,’ he said, ‘and I think my ambition is probably a little bit limited by that desire.’

“His brother, by contrast, embraces the public’s attention. He recently posed for a series of photos in which he pantomimed being strangled and stabbed by fans, then posted them on Twitter. Owen admired the project but could not relate to the impulse. ‘I don’t want to be choked by a stranger,’ he said. ‘Not even pretend choked.'”

Published: Jul 31, 2013
Length: 25 minutes (6,433 words)

Why Is There Still No Male Pill?

What scientific, cultural and economic factors are still preventing the world from getting male contraception? There are several new approaches being researched, including testosterone injections and procedures that replicate a vasectomy—but companies aren’t yet investing enough money to bring them to market:

“We have reached an impasse. As a society, we recognise the importance of providing options for reproductive control, yet the responsibilities (and side effects) of effective contraception are carried largely by women. Men might never be able to share the physical burden of pregnancy, but they can share the responsibilities of child-rearing and contraception. If the market cannot support this, we need to find an alternative route.”

Source: Aeon
Published: Aug 1, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,000 words)

When Liberian Child Soldiers Grow Up

A generation of children, many of them young girls, fought in Liberia’s civil wars. They’re now grown up and trapped between their past and creating a future for themselves:

“After handing over her AK-47 and her RPG launcher during a disarmament drive, Mary returned to what she had known before the war: life on the streets, drugs, and prostitution.

“When Schaack, a soft-spoken Liberian social worker with the evangelical humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse, approached her in late 2003, just months after the ceasefire, Mary told her: ‘Move from here that shit. The whole day you passing around and lying to people.’ But after a while, Schaack managed to persuade Mary and eight other girls to live for nine months at a Christian mission where they received counseling as well as courses in pastry making and tie dying.”

Source: Newsweek
Published: Jul 31, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,181 words)

Advice from George Saunders

“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”

Published: Jul 31, 2013
Length: 7 minutes (1,846 words)

When the Ruins Were New

In 1862, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII fled a sex scandal and took a trip to the Middle East. At the last minute, he was joined by a photographer named Francis Bedford, who proceeded to capture some of the earliest images of the Egyptian ruins. His work is featured in the new book Cairo to Constantinople:

“The royal journey’s motive, too, may have been more complex than suggested. Ostensibly it was a private, informal expedition. It was urged by Queen Victoria for her son’s education (pretty much a lost cause, according to his guardian) and she ordered that the Prince go incognito, with no ceremonial encounters. But the itinerary seems to have been planned above all by the Prince Consort Albert, as a diplomatic initiation for the young man and to foster goodwill.”

(via @dougcoulson)

Published: Jul 6, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,646 words)

How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview

Today we’re excited to make another recent Longreads Member Pick free for everyone. It’s a full chapter from Among Murderers: Life After Prisonby Sabine Heinlein.

Heinlein is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer who spent more than two years at the Castle, a prominent halfway house in Harlem, where she met convicts who were preparing for the outside world. (She’ll be speaking about the book this Thursday at the Mid-Manhattan Library.)

Published: Jul 31, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,132 words)

The Best Little Checkpoint in Texas

A visit to the Sierra Blanca checkpoint in Texas that has busted Willie Nelson, Snoop Lion, Fiona Apple, Nelly, Armie Hammer and many other travelers passing through with pot in their cars:

“Meanwhile, my fingerprints were recorded on an inkless electronic touch pad such as I’d never seen on a television cop show, and my picture was taken with one of those egg-shaped digital cameras that nobody would use but a government agency with no interest in flattering you. Then I sat there in handcuffs for hours while my prints and mug shot were circulated to cop databases around the nation. This is a worrisome process for anyone. Who among us can ever be sure we haven’t pissed off a government computer somewhere?

“The rationale for all this effort was later explained to me by Carry Huffman, the deputy chief patrol agent of the Big Bend sector. “Every pothead isn’t a bad guy,” he said. “But every bad guy is a pothead.” By detaining people for a couple of joints, the Border Patrol, which since 2003 has been part of the Department of Homeland Security, is able to investigate everything about them, and this can occasionally lead to catching some genuinely bad guys. Car thieves and fugitives and completely clueless big-time smugglers—not to mention terrorists—all can be snared in the follow-up to the canine alarm. Of course, that happens only rarely; nationally, the Border Patrol has caught just one so-called terrorist, a University of Houston student practicing paramilitary operations in the Big Bend. But it’s not backing off.”

Author: Al Reinert
Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Jul 30, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,383 words)

Brian Eno: Taking Manhattan (By Strategy)

“I’ve got this feeling that I really know New York very well and will be at home there.” A look back at the producer’s time in New York from 1978-1984:

“Within a few years of the Disc interview, he was spending extended periods of time in Manhattan. Then he moved wholesale and made New York his base for over half a decade. The ensuing period is without doubt the most fertile and impressive stretch of his life’s work, which included not just music but video art as well. Eno fed off New York’s border-crossing artistic energy, while catalyzing and contributing to it. There were also more playful ‘lifestyle’ reasons why Eno settled in Manhattan. ‘I moved to New York City because there are so many beautiful girls here,” he told Lester Bangs in 1979. “More than anywhere else in the world.'”

Published: Jul 30, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,110 words)

College Longreads Pick: ‘The Media Diet’ by Stephanie Maris, Ryerson University

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick comes from Stephanie Maris, who wrote this story for Ryerson University’s Ryerson Review of Journalism.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 30, 2013

Detachment

The writer accompanies a neuroscientist from Harvard on a trip to a Romanian orphanage. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project—a study of the effects of early institutionalization on brain and behavior development—has become well-respected on the scientific community, but it also raised questions about the ethics of scientific research:

“Two days before our visit to the orphanage, I accompanied Nelson to a homely green building that houses the psychology department of the University of Bucharest, where he holds an honorary doctorate. He had been invited by the Dean to give a talk on the ethics of human research.

“All reputable scientific institutions follow a few ethical principles to guide their human experiments: participants must give informed and unambiguous consent; researchers must thoroughly consider possible risks and benefits; the gains and burdens of research must be equally distributed to participants and society at large. These rules are largely unheard of in Romania, let alone enforced.

“In a packed auditorium, Nelson began his lecture by describing the fundamental moral dilemma facing all clinical studies. ‘The real goal of research is to generate useful knowledge about health and illness, not necessarily to benefit those who participate in the research,’ he said. That means, he added, that participants are at risk of being exploited.”

Source: Aeon
Published: Jul 29, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,500 words)