Search Results for: Amy Harmon
Longreads Best of 2014: Science Stories

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.
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Virginia Hughes
Science reporter and soon-to-be science editor at BuzzFeed.
The Itch Nobody Can Scratch (Will Storr, Matter)
I’ve thought about this story (an excerpt from Storr’s book, The Unpersuadables) many, many times since reading it. It’s superficially about Morgellons, a disease in which people think that they’re infected with bugs or fibers. But it’s really about the nature of disease and diagnosis, evidence and belief. It’s creepy, fascinating, and profound. The best part about it is the way Storr describes these patients and their delusions. It would be easy to make them seem stupid or crazy or worse. But Storr’s writing creates empathy and understanding. The not-insignificant downside of this piece: it makes you feel itchy. Read more…
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.
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The Atavist: Reading List for Monday's Event
Don’t miss our New America NYC event “From Science to Obsession” on Monday, March 19, featuring Joe Kloc, Jay Kirk, Amy Harmon, and John Rennie.
Here’s a reading list with some great stories by our panelists:
- Joe Kloc, The Case of the Missing Moon Rocks
- Jay Kirk, Burning Man
- Amy Harmon, Navigating Love and Autism
- John Rennie, The Evolutionary Errors of X-Men
Nature's Brendan Maher: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011

Brendan Maher is biology features editor for the news team at Nature, the UK-based science journal.
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My selection of the best science-themed longreads for 2011 suffers from two major limitations: 1.) I couldn’t read everything, so have probably missed some very worthy entries. 2.) I purposely did not include articles from Nature, where I am an editor. For some top stories from our pages see our end-of-year special.
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1. “Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World,” Amy Harmon, New York Times
The science supporting new behavioural approaches to treating autism is slipped in subtly in this wonderful tale about a teenage boy with autism trying to engage with the world of “neurotypicals.” So is practically every other theme about the social and scientific difficulties that autism presents. The multimedia efforts are a treat, but Harmon’s writing is an absolute clinic in pacing.
2. “The Possibilian,” Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker
An obligatory nod to The New Yorker and to the ubiquitous David Eagleman, who has become something akin to the Oliver Sacks of our time (of course our time already has an Oliver Sacks). The details Bilger pulls into this profile are delicious. How could one not love a lab that studies the perception of time in which everyone seems to be wearing a broken wristwatch?
3. “The Behavioral Sink,” Will Wiles, Cabinet Magazine
This was a weird, wild and utterly immersive history of John B. Calhoun’s Universe 25, a mouse utopia of sorts where food was plentiful, but space was not. Once the population reached maximum density, behaviour turned pathological. The results of this experiment fit neatly’with apocalyptic fears prevalent during the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired in part by the book “The Population Bomb”. These themes are fun to reflect on, without alarm, in the year that the 7 billionth human was born
4. “False Positive,” Jon Cohen, Martin Enserink, Science
“Done. Case closed. Finito, lights off, The End,” is the ironic lede to this retelling of the story of Judy Mikovits, a passionate virologist hell-bent on proving that chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by a retrovirus originally referred to as XMRV. The beginning is ironic because unbeknownst to anyone, the story would erupt again and again late in the fall, when Mikovits was sued by her former employer for allegedly stealing lab notebooks and then arrested as a fugitive from justice in a soap-opera-worthy postscript. I’ll note (in the gentle, ribbing way of a friendly competitor) that we called the death of this hypothesis several months prior in our pages, but Science’s take is as detailed as it is riveting.
This is one of the few things that keeps me up at night. We also did some coverage of this next evolution of computer viruses as weapons of war. Wired’s blow-by-blow account was, as you might expect, exceptional.
BONUS
I’m taking an extra turn because this three part series ran in late December after I had submitted my five best last year. Yes, it’s a bit obvious of me to pick a Pulitzer-Prize-winning package, but if you haven’t read this, you really should. The themes and challenges spelled out in this story of a sick child being helped by genomics will become a much larger part of the health-care discussion in the next few years.
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From the beginning, their physical relationship was governed by the peculiar ways their respective brains processed sensory messages. Like many people with autism, each had uncomfortable sensitivities to types of touch or texture, and they came in different combinations.
Jack recoiled when Kirsten tried to give him a back massage, pushing deeply with her palms.
“Pet me,” he said, showing her, his fingers grazing her skin. But Kirsten, who had always hated the feeling of light touch, shrank from his caress.
“Only deep pressure,” she showed him, hugging herself.
He tried to kiss her, but it was hard for her to enjoy it, so obvious was his aversion. To him, kissing felt like what it was, he told her: mashing your face against someone else’s. Neither did he like the sweaty feeling of hand-holding, a sensation that seemed to dominate all others whenever they tried it.
“Navigating Love and Autism.” — Amy Harmon, The New York Times
Writer David Dobbs: My Top Longreads of 2011

David Dobbs writes articles on science, sports, music, writing, reading, and other culture at Neuron Culture and for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Atavist, Nature, National Geographic, and other publications. He’s working on a book about the genetics of human strength and frailty. He also twitters and tries to play the violin.
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Truly we live, as Steve Silberman said, in a time of longform renaissance. The reading year was notable not just for the rise of many long reads and Longreads, but for the debut of The Atavist and Byliner, two new venues for publishing pieces too long for magazines but too short for books. Both, like Longreads, brought me lots of good reading. And The Atavist, which was first off the blocks, let me publish a story, My Mother’s Lover, for which I had tried but failed to find the right length and form for almost a decade. Cheers to Longreads for helping spearhead this renaissance—and to you, Constant Reader, for doing the reading that in all but the most immediate sense makes the writing possible.
Here are my top 5 longreads of 2011, plus some extras. My filter: a combination of what I thought best and what continued to resonate with me. Writing is hard. I’m moved by the dedication to craft in these pieces.
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“Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World,” by Amy Harmon, New York Times
Harmon pulls off something extraordinarily difficult here: she draws on little more than straight reportorial observation to show a young autistic man moving out into a world that struggles to accommodate him. Neither is quite ready for the other; yet they engage, as they must. Gorgeously structured and an immense reward. (Bonus: She later tells how she put it together.)
Janet Malcolm’s “Art of Nonfiction” interview in Paris Review
Malcolm has written several of the best books I’ve ever read; The Silent Woman haunts me more on every reading. Here she reveals how she did it: a rigorous method wielded by a powerful mind and rarefied sensibility. Equally moving and informative were the Paris Review interview with John McPhee and a Chris Jones conversation with Gay Talese. I am now in love with Talese, though he never calls.
“Study of a lifetime,” by Helen Pearson, Nature
Pearson, Nature’s features editor, shows how fine science writing is done, following a set of researchers researching a set of people and they’re all trying to figure out the same thing: How to make sense of their lives. Lovely stuff, true to complex, incredibly valuable science about complex, richly textured lives.
“Climbers: A team of young cyclists tries to outrun the past,” by Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker
Young Rwandan cyclists try to ride into the future. Some rough road, some fine riding (and writing).
“California and Bust,” by Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair
California as a formerly developed country. Includes deftly rendered bicycle ride with former governor Schwarzenegger. Lewis is writing some of the best stuff out there right now.
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Okay that was 5 and then some. But these I couldn’t’ leave out:
“The Apostate,” Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker
The Church of Scientology versus Wright and the New Yorker fact-checking department. Former is overmatched.
“The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist,” by Rich Shapiro, Wired
Riveting and bizarre.
“The Promise,” by Joe Posnanski, at Joe Blogs
Promises made, broken, and kept, variously, by Bruce Springsteen, the United States of America, and Posnanski’s dad. 4 stars easy, 5 if you love Bruce. And who doesn’t?
“What Made This University Researcher Snap?” by Amy Wallace, Wired
How and why a scientist went postal. Amy Wallace gets inside a scary head.
too many Daves, by David Quigg
Blatant cheating, as this is a blog, and Quigg almost always writes very short posts But he’s reading long stuff, all good, and responding to it beautifully as writer and reader; almost no one gets so much done in so little space. If you harbor even a spark of literary love, he’ll fan it.
Disclosures: The Atavist and Nature published stories of mine this year, and Wired.com (actually a separate outfit from Wired the magazine) hosts my blog.
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Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
New York Times Magazine Staff: Our Top Longreads of 2011

These were the results of a poll of all New York Times Magazine staff—edit, art, photo & production. We decided to do two lists: ‘Them’ and ‘Us,’ and hopefully that doesn’t get us in trouble with the Longreads governing body.
THEM
These were the consensus picks of the staff, with only a little executive tampering. Such as: We decided at the last moment to semi-cheat and put Amy Harmon on the list. Though she is an “us” and not a “them,” we didn’t know a thing about her story until we read it in the newspaper, just like everybody else, and it was too good to leave off a year-end list. You will notice that Paul Ford’s essay fills the “our list is not the same as every other list” slot, but that is not, we swear, the reason it made the cut. It probably provoked as much conversation in our office as any single story this year. It is pure pleasure to read. By the way, we loved a lot from The New Yorker, and we could have justifiably filled all 5 slots with their stories. Though, of course, we would never do that. Also, there will be one staff member made very upset by the exclusion of “Travis the Menace,” by Dan P. Lee in New York magazine. Sorry, pal.
• “A Murder Foretold,” by David Grann, The New Yorker
• “Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World,” by Amy Harmon, New York Times
• “The Glory of Oprah,” By Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic
• “The Man Who Sailed His House,” By Michael Paterniti, GQ
• “The Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” by Paul Ford, The Morning News
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US
This is also the result of a poll of all magazine staff:
• “Qaddafi’s Never-Never Land,” by Robert Worth
• “You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!” by John Jeremiah Sullivan
• “Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?” by Susan Dominus
• “Murder of an Innocent Man,” by Barry Bearak
• “What Happened to Air France Flight 447?” by Wil S. Hylton
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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >
Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
Longreads Best of 2011 e-book
Announcing: Our first-ever e-book!
Longreads: Best of 2011 includes seven of our favorite stories from the past year.
The e-book is a unique partnership with the writers and publishers—we want to help celebrate outstanding storytelling, and this is just another way for us to do it. Additionally, money from the ebook sales will be shared with the creators, and we’re excited to have them participating.
Longreads: Best of 2011 is available now and includes:
• “Travis the Menace,” by Dan P. Lee (New York magazine)
• “Vanishing Act,” by Paul Collins (Lapham’s Quarterly)
• “In Which We Teach You How to Be a Woman in Any Boy’s Club,” by Molly Lambert (This Recording)
• “What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447,” by Jeff Wise (Popular Mechanics)
• “Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World,” by Amy Harmon (New York Times)
• “The Girl from Trails End,” by Kathy Dobie (GQ)
• “Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library,” by Maria Bustillos (The Awl)
The Top 10 Longreads of 2011
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I should preface this by saying I didn’t plan to do a list, because all of your Top 5 Longreads of 2011 really represent what the Longreads community is all about. But, in true WWIC form, I couldn’t resist. Thank you for an incredible year. Special thanks to the entire Longreads team: Joyce King Thomas, Kjell Reigstad, Hakan Bakkalbasi and Mike Dang. -Mark Armstrong, founder, Longreads Support Longreads by supporting our partners: Read It Later: Save your favorite stories for reading on the iPhone/iPad, Android or Kindle Fire. You can also support Longreads by becoming an Official Member for just $3 per month, or $30 per year. 1. Travis the MenaceDan P. Lee | New York Magazine | Jan. 24, 2011 | 24 minutes (6,096 words) The heartbreaking, horrifying story of a chimp named Travis and the Connecticut couple that raised him like a son. Lee followed Travis’s path from local celebrity to fully grown (and violent) adult:
“Travis” was the first in a “tabloid-with-empathy” trilogy from Lee: He also brought humanity to the story of Anna Nicole Smith (“Paw Paw & Lady Love”) and wrote about Harold Camping, the elderly doomsayer who never quite got his apocalypse calendar right (“After the Rapture”). More Lee: “Body Snatchers” (Philadelphia Magazine, 2008)
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2. Vanishing ActPaul Collins | Lapham’s Quarterly | Dec. 17, 2010 | 15 minutes (3,837 words) A child-prodigy author mysteriously disappears. Barbara Follett was 13 when her first novel, The House Without Windows, was published in 1927:
This was from December 2010, but it came out after last year’s best-of list was published. It’s also on The Awl editors’ best-of-2011 list. I still think about this story constantly. More Collins: “The Molecatcher’s Daughter” (The Believer, 2006)
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3. In Which We Teach You How to Be a Woman in Any Boy’s ClubMolly Lambert | This Recording | Feb. 22, 2011 | 11 minutes (2,825 words) A manifesto for the modern woman:
I can think of at least ten other personal essays that blew me away this year, but Lambert’s seemed to completely take over our conversations, online and off. More from This Recording in 2011: “Where We All Will Be Received” (Nell Boeschenstein)
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4. A Murder ForetoldDavid Grann | The New Yorker | March 28, 2011 | 57 minutes (14,318 words) A political conspiracy in Guatemala and the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, who created a video predicting his own killing in 2009:
Obviously, with David Grann, it’s never so straightforward.
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5. A Brevard Woman Disappeared, but Never Left HomeMichael Kruse | St. Petersburg Times | July 22, 2011 | 10 minutes (2,735 words) A reporter retraces the last years of a woman who slipped away from society:
Once you finish this piece, read the annotated version of this story, in which Kruse breaks down exactly how he reported each fact from Kathryn Norris’s life. Incredible.
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6. What Really Happened Aboard Air France Flight 447Jeff Wise | Popular Mechanics | Dec. 6, 2011 | 17 minutes (4,253 words) A fatal human error, repeated over and over again, as the reader observes helplessly. Writer Jeff Wise uses pilot transcripts to deconstruct, conversation by conversation, wrong move by wrong move, how bad weather and miscommunication between the pilots in the cockpit doomed this Airbus 330, which plunged into the Atlantic in 2009, killing 228 people:
This, along with “Travis the Menace” and Wired’s “The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist,” was one of the most heart-stopping of the year. See also: “The Unlikely Event” (Avi Steinberg, Paris Review)
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7. Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult WorldAmy Harmon | The New York Times | Sept. 18, 2011 | 30 minutes (7,524 words) A year in the life of an autistic teen moving into adulthood—a time when support systems can begin to fall away:
Harmon’s was one of several outstanding pieces this year on the subject of autism. Also see Steve Silberman on John Elder Robison, an author with Asperger syndrome. More from Amy Harmon: “A Son of the Bayou, Torn Over Shrimping Life”
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8. The Girl from Trails EndKathy Dobie | GQ Magazine | Sept. 6, 2011 | 26 minutes (6,657 words) Revisiting the Texas gang-rape story, and a reminder about protecting our youngest victims. Dobie spends time with the girl’s family and attempts to understand how some members of the community could jump to the defense of the 19 men and boys accused:
Just one of many outstanding pieces from GQ this year, including “The Movie Set that Ate Itself,” essays from John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Blindsided: The Jerry Joseph High School Basketball Scandal,” and a fun collection of oral histories. More Dobie: “The Long Shadow of War” (Dec. 2007)
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9. A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve JobsMona Simpson | The New York Times | Oct. 30, 2011 | 9 minutes (2,383 words) The final moments, and unforgettable last words, of a technology visionary’s life:
Steve Jobs tributes poured in during October and November, including a touching tribute from veteran tech journalist Steven Levy. Some of the best reading came from Steve himself, with his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech. See also: The Steve Jobs archive on Longreads
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10. Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help LibraryMaria Bustillos | The Awl | April 5, 2011 | 38 minutes (9,439 words) The ultimate DFW fan goes on a road trip to see what was on his bookshelves and pore over the marginalia for clues about his life:
After this was published, Bustillos kept going. In 2011 she also dissected the work of the late Christopher Hitchens, as well as Wikipedia and Aaron Swartz, among other topics. |
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