Posted inTop 5

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. *** 1. Is There Hope for the Survivors of the Drug Wars? Monica Potts | American Prospect | March 24, 2014 | 32 minutes […]

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Posted inEditor's Pick

Shades of Green

Excerpts from emails written home from a Marine in Afghanistan: “The most dangerous times of any deployment are the first and last thirty days. In the first thirty days, you don’t have the experience to keep you from making stupid mistakes. Add to that the swagger that any young person might have when heading off […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

The Call of Battle

After serving two tours in Iraq and returning to civilian life in 2006, the writer decides to embed as a journalist in Afghanistan seven years later: “We humped the three kilometers back to the school. It was early afternoon and there was plenty of light left, so we loaded our packs into two ANA trucks […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

The Old Man and the Tee

A 29-year-old combat veteran returns home, then decides to try to walk on as a kicker for Wyoming: “Noble took a job for his uncle’s hay-brokerage company, throwing bales from trucks into the barn lofts of thoroughbred horse farms, sometimes 720 of them a day. He told the stories of walking dusty streets and climbing […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

The Scariest Little Corner of the World

A look at the city of Zaranj, near the Iran-Afghanistan border, where Afghan migrant workers are smuggled into and deported from Iran: “A few years ago, Iran designated the province that borders Nimruz a ‘no go’ area for foreign residents and shortly thereafter began erecting a 15-foot-high concrete wall that now runs more than half […]

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