Tell Me A Story: A Reading List

These four fantastic fiction pieces will take you far away from this perpetual winter.

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 2, 2014

Two Perspectives on the Duke University Porn Star: Our College Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 26, 2014

The Business of Being Born: A Reading List

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from MSNBC, The New Republic, The New Statesman, and Slate.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 23, 2014

What We Talked About on Campus This Week: A Reading List

Higher education is a hot topic because it’s so familiar and so easy to criticize. Even if you haven’t gone to college, you get what it’s about. And the complaints – about tuition, about culture, about curriculum – happen on campus, too, and louder. Here are six articles that prompted discussions inside the Ivory Tower this week.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 22, 2014

Taking Care of Business: A Reading List

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from Orange Coast Magazine, The New York Times, Business Insider, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 16, 2014

My Two Emilys

Death, love, chemo and Kierkegaard:

There is, however, some reassuring tonal quality in the voices of the doctors and nurses, something there now that I didn’t hear three-and-a-half years ago. They know Jennifer’s daughter will be okay. They’re telling her this with every sentence they speak and every sentence they leave unsaid. I know this because I have been present in a room very much like this one. I have listened to terminology very like the words being spoken to us now. I have been present when the voices had no comfort to offer, voices desperate to stay as steady as possible, as if one careless syllable might launch an avalanche of uncomprehending anguish.

“Will I lose my hair?” Emily asks her mother from the bed. No one can answer. Only after the surgery will they discover that she will need three rounds of chemo. Though her prognosis is a very good one, much more promising than most of the children she and her mother will meet during their stay at the Ronald McDonald House, they will need to remain in Memphis until midsummer.

Author: Mike Smith
Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 15, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,964 words)

Not Feeling Carolina: Depression on One of the Nation’s Happiest Campuses, Our College Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 13, 2014

How to Write About Tax Havens and the Super-Rich: An Interview with Nicholas Shaxson

Last year Nicholas Shaxson published a Vanity Fair article, “A Tale of Two Londons,” that described the residents of one of London’s most exclusive addresses—One Hyde Park—and the accounting acrobatics they had performed to get there.

Shaxson’s piece was one of the best long-form pieces I read last year (I did in fact believe this before I met him, but you can take that with a grain of salt if you’d like), and last week I asked Shaxson to sit down with me for a proper conversation about how the story came about and whether it achieved what he wanted.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 12, 2014
Length: 7 minutes (1,938 words)

Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from n+1, GQ, and The New York Times.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 9, 2014

How to Do Oral History the Right Way: Remembering the Baltimore Stallions, Our College Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.

Source: Longreads
Published: Feb 5, 2014