Reading List: What’s In A Dream? Writers Explore New York

Picks from Emily Perper, a freelance editor and reporter currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

Share your favorite stories in the comments.

Source: Longreads
Published: May 26, 2013

Confessions of a Sociopath

A diagnosed sociopath explains how she thinks and functions. Adapted from a book by M.E. Thomas:

“I loved getting high marks in school; it meant I could get away with things other students couldn’t. When I was young, what thrilled me was the risk of figuring out just how little I could study and still pull off the A. It was the same for being an attorney. During the California bar exam, people were crying from the stress. The convention center where the exam took place looked like a disaster relief center; people made desperate attempts to recall everything they had memorized over the prior eight weeks—weeks that I spent vacationing in Mexico. Despite being woefully ill-prepared by many standards, I was able to maintain calm and focus enough to maximize the knowledge I did have. I passed while others failed.”

Published: May 7, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,422 words)

The Oral History of NY1

How Time Warner Cable’s NY1 became an iconic news channel in New York City:

Roma Torre: I would have been in the office at nine o’ clock because that’s when I arrive. But because it was a primary election day, and I was covering politics at the time, they told me to come in at two o’clock on September 11th. I was at home, and my daughter had just started kindergarten. My husband ran in and said, ‘Turn to CNN!’ I heard the woman who replaced me at the anchor desk speaking on CNN and that’s because CNN’s antenna was knocked out because they were on top of the World Trade Center. NY1’s was on top of the Empire State Building. For a while, we were the only game in town. CNN was putting us on their air because they had no means of transmission. I got dressed so fast and jumped in the car and started driving, which was kind of foolish because I didn’t have a game plan. Of course, from Jersey, all roads were closed getting into the city. I did a u-turn in Route 46 and decided to go North and went to Tarrytown and parked the car because I heard on the radio that Metro North was running. When I got to Grand Central Terminal, I miraculously found a cab and got one block until firefighters stopped the cab to ask if he could please let them in to take reinforcements to the tower. I was like, ‘Of course!’ So I walked to the west side. I really didn’t get into the office until about seven or eight o’ clock that night and I set out from my house at 10 a.m.

Source: Complex
Published: May 23, 2013
Length: 43 minutes (10,896 words)

The Suicide Epidemic

What is it about modern society that is causing suicide rates to rise? An in-depth look at the latest research, and a theory by Dr. Thomas Joiner:

“It’s a ‘clearly delineated danger zone,’ a set of three overlapping conditions that combine to create a dark alley of the soul. The conditions are tightly defined, and they overlap rarely enough to explain the relatively rare act of suicide. But what’s alarming is that each condition itself isn’t extreme or unusual, and the combined suicidal state of mind is not unfathomably psychotic. On the contrary, suicide’s Venn diagram is composed of circles we all routinely step in, or near, never realizing we are in the deadly center until it’s too late. Joiner’s conditions of suicide are the conditions of everyday life.”

Source: Newsweek
Published: May 24, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,696 words)

‘Children Are Dying’

Hospitals nationwide are experiencing drug shortages, including critical nutrients needed to keep premature babies and other patients alive. Are drug manufacturers and the FDA both at fault?

“Some hospitals have resorted to bartering with one another to secure even a small supply of nutrients, and many are rationing.

“At least one NICU in the District is administering some trace elements only three days a week instead of seven. At Atticus’s hospital, no patients heavier than 2½ kilograms (5½ pounds), including NICU babies, are getting intravenous phosphorous. ‘You could have a brand-new, full-term baby and they don’t qualify,’ a staff member says. ‘There are really sick babies and one-, two-, three-year-olds that don’t get anything at all because we’re rationing it for our tiniest preemies.’

“‘It almost makes me cry—our patients are starving because of drug shortages. How can this happen in this country?’ says ASPEN past president Jay Mirtallo, a professor of clinical pharmacy at Ohio State University. ‘In the last three years, there hasn’t been one PN product that hasn’t been in short supply. I’ve traveled all over the world talking about parenteral nutrition, and our colleagues in Europe, South America, and Asia just look astounded and ask how this can be such a significant problem when they have no issue whatsoever in any of their countries.'”

Source: Washingtonian
Published: May 22, 2013
Length: 30 minutes (7,538 words)

The Girl Who Turned to Bone

Investigating a rare genetic disorder that causes those who suffer from it to grow a second skeleton:

“Within a few years, she would begin to grow new bones that would stretch across her body, some fusing to her original skeleton. Bone by bone, the disease would lock her into stillness. The Mayo doctors didn’t tell Peeper’s parents that. All they did say was that Peeper would not live long.

“‘Basically, my parents were told there was nothing that could be done,’ Peeper told me in October. ‘They should just take me home and enjoy their time with me, because I would probably not live to be a teenager.’

Source: The Atlantic
Published: May 23, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,663 words)

Everything in This City Must

Before returning to the U.S., the author is asked what he’ll miss about living in Leipzig, Germany and discovers that the answer is complicated:

“Why do I live there, I then ask myself. The recent revelation that the TSA may record every phone call, and hopes to record social media interactions as well, suggests we’re now a nation of suspects—America has become one big terrorist watch list. Everyone is on it. As I think about expatriating, if only to object to a life inside that complex, I know, if they’re monitoring me, it won’t matter if I expatriate. It would only continue, perhaps even increase, the move confirming whatever theory had put them onto me, should that even be the case. It would be enough that I would find it objectionable, and it shouldn’t be.

“I think of the Chinese dissident who, when he learned he was being spied on by the state, said, ‘I’ve been trying to get them to listen to me for years.’ If they were spying on me, I would want to take the TSA on a tour through the Stasi museum.

“See all they did to try to control their citizens, I would say.

“See how it failed them.”

Published: May 14, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,641 words)

Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Robert Redford, Golden Boy

A look back the actor’s career—and his shirtless ping-pong photos:

“Redford comes into the shop where homely Streisand works, and she’s all, ‘Look who’s here, America the Beautiful,’ and you’re all, YES, TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SAID. But then you get suckerpunched by how effectively this movie convinces you that Redford would fall for Streisand, with all her spunk and unruliness and radicalism. The essential message of this movie is that Hot Guys Like Brains and Sass. The secondary message is that Your Romance Will Then Be Plundered By Asshole Red Mongerers.”

Source: The Hairpin
Published: May 22, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,971 words)

Saint of the Hood

A profile of Father Gregory Boyle, who launched Homeboy Industries 25 years ago to help formerly gang-involved men and women by providing them with job training, therapy and a strong, positive community:

“‘The beauty of Father Greg’s approach is eternal, unrelenting hopefulness for those young people,’ says Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment. ‘The curse is that it’s terrible for the balance sheet of a nonprofit, and it really can wreak havoc. Most nonprofits function with a very clear sense that resources and dollars are a constraint. They turn people away, put them on waiting lists, and send them to other programs. The money dries up and so do the services—end of story.'”

Published: May 21, 2013
Length: 29 minutes (7,426 words)

Caterpillar’s Doug Oberhelman: Manufacturing’s Mouthpiece

Portrait of an American company with billions in profits, and questions about how much it should be sharing that wealth with its own workforce:

“Oberhelman’s activism has also made him a target of criticism from those who say Caterpillar is thriving at its workers’ expense. Last year, as the company racked up a record $66 billion in sales, generating $5.7 billion in profits, it repeatedly landed in the news for clashing with production employees. In January 2012, Caterpillar locked out union workers at a locomotive factory in Ontario after they rejected a pay cut of about 50 percent; the company shuttered the plant and moved production to Muncie, Ind., where workers accepted lower wages. Last May, Caterpillar took a hard line during negotiations with employees at its Joliet (Ill.) hydraulic-parts factory, insisting on cuts to health care and other benefits. After striking for three months, employees caved at the end of the summer. Senior workers’ wages were frozen for six years. Caterpillar is currently battling union workers at its Milwaukee plant.”

Author: Mina Kimes
Source: Businessweek
Published: May 21, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,909 words)