The Blip: Was America’s Economic Prosperity Just a Historical Accident?

We’ve witnessed more than two centuries of unprecedented economic growth, powered by two industrial revolutions from the 1700s to today. Robert Gordon, a 72-year-old economist at Northwestern, argues that this incredible period of growth was all a fluke—and we are entering a new era where there’s no guarantee our children will be any better off than we are:

“There are many ways in which you can interpret this economic model, but the most lasting—the reason, perhaps, for the public notoriety it has brought its author—has little to do with economics at all. It is the suggestion that we have not understood how lucky we have been. The whole of American cultural memory, the period since World War II, has taken place within the greatest expansion of opportunity in the history of human civilization. Perhaps it isn’t that our success is a product of the way we structured our society. The shape of our society may be far more conditional, a consequence of our success. Embedded in Gordon’s data is an inquiry into entitlement: How much do we owe, culturally and politically, to this singular experience of economic growth, and what will happen if it goes away?”

Published: Jul 22, 2013
Length: 18 minutes (4,644 words)

Video Pick: BBC Documentary on the Early Days of Queen and Freddie Mercury

Our video pick of the day, from 2011.

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 22, 2013

The Last Days of Big Law: You Can’t Imagine the Terror When the Money Dries Up

The story that will make you reconsider law school. Scheiber goes deep inside a big Chicago law firm, Mayer Brown, to examine the problems plaguing the legal profession—including consolidation, cost-cutting, layoffs, infighting, and further degradation of quality of life:

“Bob Helman realized the firm would go under if his partners sat around waiting for business to walk in the door. Hereafter, he decreed, each partner’s compensation would depend heavily on the amount of business he or she drummed up.

“Helman’s plan may have worked too well. Ever since it went into effect, partners have competed aggressively not just against lawyers at other firms, but against one another. Chicago partners would fly into New York to poach clients from their Manhattanite counterparts, holding clandestine meetings in which they would pitch themselves as less expensive and a mere two-hour plane ride away.7 When the New Yorkers invariably caught wind of these plots, they would remind clients that they were far more efficient than their Midwestern cousins. ‘What we would end up saying is … “Chicago will staff you with four partners on something we’d staff with one or two,”‘ recalls a former partner. ‘It’s crazy that I have to go in and have a conversation about it. Denigrating.'”

Books by Scheiber on Amazon

Published: Jul 22, 2013
Length: 28 minutes (7,164 words)

Growing up Muslim in America

What it’s like to grow up as a Muslim in America today. Although Muslims embrace their faith while facing discrimination, they also suffer from anxiety as a result from racial profiling:

“For me, this issue is personal. My son was born in America but has an Arabic surname and is growing up bilingual, although we are not religious in any direction. He has my lighter hair but his father’s colouring. Once, in an airport, a woman asked me what he was ‘mixed with’. A look that fell just short of horror passed over her face when I replied, ‘Iraqi.’ I shudder to think of my son being on the receiving end of that look, just because of his name or the way his skin tans at the merest hint of summer.

“I am one of many parents who worry. Arwa Aziz, a 41-year-old mother of two boys, moved her youngest son Adam, now 13, from public school to a private Muslim school in Brooklyn because she was concerned about him being bullied. ‘He got so shy as he was growing up, so I just thought he would be better off there,’ Aziz told me while we talked at the Arab American Association, showing each other photos of our boys. ‘I tell my kids that they’re second-generation Americans, I won’t let them make us feel weak.'”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Jul 19, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,850 words)

The Golden Bough

The story of a beautiful rare tree—and the man who took a chainsaw to it. This 2002 New Yorker story by John Vaillant was later expanded into a book, The Golden Spruce:

“There was only one giant golden spruce in the world, and, until a man named Grant Hadwin took a chainsaw to it, in 1997, it had stood for more than three hundred years in a steadily shrinking patch of old-growth forest in Port Clements, on the banks of the Yakoun River, in the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Queen Charlottes, a blade-shaped archipelago that lies sixty miles off the northern coast of British Columbia and thirty miles south of the Alaskan coast, are one of a decreasing number of places in the Pacific Northwest where large stands of virgin coastal forest can still be found. Ecotourism is a growth industry here, and the golden spruce was a popular stop on visitors’ itineraries. The tree was also sacred to the Haida Indians, two thousand of whom still live on the islands.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Nov 4, 2002
Length: 22 minutes (5,623 words)

Reading List: A Bizarre Institution

Picks from Emily Perper, a freelance editor and reporter currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. This week’s picks include stories from the The Rumpus, Tampa Bay Times, Benjamin Carlson, and The New York Times.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 21, 2013

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

How banks influence the commodities markets and make money while raising the prices of consumer goods:

“The maneuvering in markets for oil, wheat, cotton, coffee and more have brought billions in profits to investment banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, while forcing consumers to pay more every time they fill up a gas tank, flick on a light switch, open a beer or buy a cellphone. In the last year, federal authorities have accused three banks, including JPMorgan, of rigging electricity prices, and last week JPMorgan was trying to reach a settlement that could cost it $500 million.”

Published: Jul 20, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,854 words)

Lap Dogs of the Press

A 2006 essay by White House reporter Helen Thomas, who died Saturday at 92, on how the press failed to do its job in the run-up to the Iraq war. She recalls one exchange with former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan:

“‘Did we invade those countries?’

“At that point McClellan called on another reporter.

“Those were the days when I longed for ABC-TV’s great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore.”

Source: The Nation
Published: Mar 27, 2006
Length: 6 minutes (1,515 words)

Video Pick: The Journey of Transgender Rocker Laura Jane Grace

If you’ve been following Longreads for a while, you may have seen this excellent Rolling Stone story from last year by Josh Eells, “The Secret Life of Transgender Rocker Tom Gabel”, about Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s transition.

This MTV House of Style short reveals more about her life, and the small things she’s discovered with regard to clothing, makeup and style. And as Grace notes at the end of the clip, “A lot of tips I picked up were from other trans women on the Internet… When I was 14 years old if I was watching House of Style watching a transsexual being interviewed and talking about that, it would have completely changed my life. I would have felt saved.”

Author: Editors
Source: Longreads
Published: Jul 20, 2013

Have You Heard the One About President Joe Biden?

An in-depth look into the life of the Vice President—and the question of 2016:

“‘He wants to be the best vice president ever,’ staffers told me, months ago, when I first started spending time with Joe Biden. That was all the talk last winter. Hillary would almost certainly be the nominee, not Biden, they said, whenever the 2016 issue came up, which wasn’t often. But then, abruptly, Biden’s stock started steeply rising, at least in the eyes of the public. Washington had been hyperventilating about the fiscal cliff, and Obama sent Biden in to broker a deal. Then came the killings in Newtown, Connecticut, and Obama sent Biden out to rally the public, Biden in to reason with Congress, Biden over to talk to the NRA. In 2013, Biden has emerged increasingly more visibly potent than his boss. THE MOST INFLUENTIAL VICE PRESIDENT IN HISTORY? one headline proffered.

“‘Well, he would be crazy not to keep his options open,’ staffers started saying then, whenever the 2016 issue came up. Which still wasn’t often. The parlor game was not my reason for being there. I wanted to get to know Biden. I wanted to understand why ‘President Joe Biden’ has such a preposterous ring to it, and I wanted to know if he knew it did.”

Source: GQ
Published: Jul 20, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,089 words)