Get to Know the National Book Award Finalists for Nonfiction

Several of this year’s nominees have been featured on Longreads before (see: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Adam Johnson, Noelle Stevenson), and this reading list features the five nonfiction nominees. The winner will be announced on November 18, 2015.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 18, 2015

I Would Rather Be Herod’s Pig: The History of a Taboo

The story of how pigs became the world’s most divisive meal. An excerpt from Mark Essig’s book, Lesser Beasts.

Author: Mark Essig
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 14, 2015
Length: 21 minutes (5,293 words)

In Search of a Separate Peace: Five Stories About Communes

What is the purpose, the lure, of communal living? Why have the residents of different communes in United States chosen isolation over convenience? In these five stories, you’ll meet men and women—many, members in the LGBTQIA+ community—who have chosen, with mixed results, to dedicate themselves to their chosen families.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 11, 2015

The Teachings of Don Carlos

Pulling back the curtain on Carlos Castaneda, one of America’s most secretive and popular authors.

Author: Mike Sager
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 8, 2015
Length: 84 minutes (21,125 words)

The Politics of Poetry

The New York Times’s poetry columnist on the intersection between poetry and politics.

Author: David Orr
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 7, 2015
Length: 18 minutes (4,527 words)

Relearning How to Talk in the Age of Smartphone Addiction

Sherry Turkle studies how we relate to our devices, and thinks it’s high time we start talking to each other again.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 6, 2015
Length: 17 minutes (4,263 words)

Appropriate for a Seven-Year-Old Child

Marlo Mack’s podcast How To Be a Girl is a sensitive and honest exploration of the joys, fears, and struggles of raising of a transgender child.

Author: Marlo Mack
Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 5, 2015
Length: 7 minutes (1,880 words)

The Crossroads of Secular and Spiritual: A Reading List

The following four essays take on saints, proselytization, prayer and coincidence: abstractions that may have great impact on our everyday lives, regardless of faith tradition.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 4, 2015

My Unsentimental Education

Sex, longing, and coming of age in 1970’s Wisconsin.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 1, 2015
Length: 13 minutes (3,487 words)

Atomic Summer: An Essay by Joni Tevis

On Buddy Holly, John Wayne, and a time when Americans planned their vacations around A-bomb testing.

Author: Joni Tevis
Source: Longreads
Published: Sep 29, 2015
Length: 29 minutes (7,494 words)