Editors’ Picks
Reading Lists Page 20
Beyond the tired binaries of midwife vs. doctor and home birth vs. hospital birth. 1. “How We Made Our Miracle.” (Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC, Feb. 2014) After political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry shared pictures of her newborn daughter on Valentine’s Day, she wrote about her past health problems, her history with childbirth, and making the decision to […]
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 […]
Hackers! Gen Y CEOs! Multibillion dollar success stories! International expansion! Top-secret projects! Cute clothes! Hamburgers! Capitalism is so exciting, and so are these longreads about popular U.S. companies. 1. “In-N-Out’s Burger Queen.” (Patrick J. Kiger, Orange Coast, Jan. 2014) 31-year-old Lynsi Snyder presides over In-N-Out’s $1.1 billion industry, founded by her grandparents in the 1940s. […]
Unfinished hotel rooms, terrorist threats, egregious human rights violations and thrilling athletic feats: Sochi’s got it all. But Russia’s dangerous, government-sanctioned homophobia precedes and extends far beyond this year’s Olympic games. 1. “Closed, Destroyed, Deleted Forever.” (Dmitry Pashinsky, n+1, February 2014) Incredible interview with Lena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a social networking resource for […]
OK, “hate” is too strong a word. But I fundamentally do not get sports. Playing them, yes, fine. But knowing players’ names, arguing that this one guy is better than that other guy, keeping a little Excel sheet of strikes and yards and rebounds in my head? Baffling. But that doesn’t mean, as it turns […]
I watched “The X-Files” in a Baltimore house I shared with eight people, at the end of days spent navigating the city’s shaky public transit system, alternating between feeling perfectly in place and wildly lost. That’s how I felt when I watch “The X-Files,” too: One moment I was perfectly attuned to Agents Mulder & […]
Washington Post Investigation of Janet Cooke’s Fabrications Bill Green | Washington Post Ombudsman | April 19, 1981 In 1980, Janet Cooke made up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, won the Pulitzer Prize for it, then, two days later, gave it back. Here’s the internal investigation of how the Post leaned on her to […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. New York, London, Detroit, Indianapolis: What does it look like to make a home? To build a home? To live in an office building, with a Craiglist roommate, with your best friend, in a […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. I spent this morning exploring The Museum of Unnatural History in Washington D.C. Fueled by the likes of Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman and Paul Simon, the museum is the storefront for 826DC, which holds workshops and […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. Last Thursday, the NBC series “Community” returned with its creator and original showrunner, Dan Harmon, at the helm. I like “Community.” I do. It’s warm and dark and funny and self-referential. In spite of its absurdity—perhaps […]
The following reading list comes courtesy Michelle Legro, editor at Lapham’s Quarterly. * * * No doubt you are on your way to one right now: an epic party, a night to end all nights. But will your epic party be as legendary as those thrown attended by Truman Capote, Cher Horowitz, Jay Gatsby, Jordan […]
I wish Christmas lasted forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but at least a week. I try to make this a reality by visiting different family members and friends and exchanging gifts during the week between Christmas & New Year’s, “forgetting” these gifts and having to revisit aforementioned friends, listening to Christmas music longer than conventionally appropriate, and […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. One of my favorite things about the Longreads community is the dialogue among readers. I know each of the readers below personally. They are all exquisitely well-read. They all have different interests; they all read different […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. What does love look like and feel like and sound like to you? What have you read that changed the way you think about love? I’d like to know. Reblog your suggestions or comment […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. Everyone is writing about leaving New York, it seems. But Isaac Fitzgerald just arrived in NYC, and some of the writers in the delightful anthology Goodbye To All That have returned. Of course, there […]
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. Each of these stories this week is about a facet of religion gone extreme, and each is an example of why these pieces of longform journalism are important. There is detailed, professional storytelling, gripping […]
Below, six syllabi from journalism professors on what you should be reading. * * * 1. Journalism 494: Pollner Seminar In Narrative Non-Fiction With Esquire’s Chris Jones (University of Montana) “The purpose of this course is to teach students how to write publishable magazine-length narrative non-fiction: In other words, my aim is to help you […]
“It isn’t beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It’s just ‘It’.” —Rudyard Kipling 1. “Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Clara Bow, ‘It’ Girl,” (Anne Helen Petersen, The Hairpin, May 2011) Clara Bow was the original It girl, so much so that her 1927 film, titled—what else?—“It,” more or less defined the phenomenon. This piece, from Petersen’s […]