While envisioning the darkest of futures and grappling with mortality, the English writer retreated to an idyllic Scottish isle to write Nineteen Eighty-Four.
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Funk Lessons in Sonic Solitude
“Joi’s recorded performances embodied all the funkiness my little soul had been waiting for.”
Yes, We Could, But Can We Now? Reflections on Obama’s Speeches
Presidential speeches can motivate a people and set the national tenor. Oh, how we will miss them.
Longreads Best of 2019: Essays
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in essays.
Whiteness on the Couch
Clinical psychologist Natasha Stovall looks at the vast spectrum of white people problems, and why we never talk about them in therapy.
The Queering of the Baby Bells
Highly public pressure campaigns against telephone companies were the crux of early LGBTQ activism.
Fire Sale: Finance and Fascism in the Amazon Rainforest
From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Angella d’Avignon, Katie Englehart, Caitlin Dewey, Eric Benson, Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Exilium Vita Est: The Island Home of Victor Hugo
Emma Jacobs takes us on an illustrated journey of Hugo’s writing life in exile on Guernsey, where he completed Les Misérables.
An Ocean Away From the Sanctuary of Manhattan, Signs of Peaceful Coexistence
As a Jewish New Yorker, Candy Schulman is surprised to find a small town in Andalusia celebrating the coexistence of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures, despite the area’s dark racist history.

