Dickens, Tocqueville, and the U.N. all agree about this American invention: It’s torture.
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
A Fish So Coveted People Have Smuggled, Kidnapped, and Killed For It
The Asian arowana or “dragon fish” is protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to own in the U.S. But the tropical fish’s status symbol among wealthy buyers has made it the object of a thriving black market.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Gaijin Who Makes Great Ramen
As a ramen maniakku or enthusiast myself, I reread Lucky Peach‘s debut Ramen Issue once a year. The issue has an essay by chef Ivan Orkin, where he tells what it was like operating a ramen restaurant in Japan, as a gaijin, or outsider. Lucky Peach is a food quarterly started by chef David Chang and writer Peter Meehan in 2011. The […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
How the Brontës Came Out As Women
When Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell burst onto the literary scene, everyone wondered who these mysterious men could be—and if they could even really be men.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Art of Authenticity: A Conversation with PostSecret’s Frank Warren
For the past ten years Frank Warren has been collecting and publishing other people’s anonymous secrets, sent via postcard, on his blog, PostSecret. The stories behind the postcards span the entire spectrum of human drama, from tales of petty revenge to accounts of abuse and severe depression.
Posted inNonfiction
A Dead Superhero Is a Marvelous Corpse
A theory of superhero suffering and death.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
A Brief History of Solitary Confinement
Dickens, Tocqueville, and the U.N. all agree about this American invention: It’s torture.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Astronauts and the ‘Nutella Incident’
Their persistently cheery e-mail updates [from the crew in the Hawaii-based simulation] raise a question: Does a happy crew tell NASA anything useful? Binsted argues that upbeat blog posts don’t always tell the whole story. Small gripes often emerge in the post-study interviews, when subjects know that their replies will be kept anonymous. It was […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meet the Dogged Researchers Who Try to Unmask Haters Online
Adrian Chen talks to journalists and researchers in Sweden who are trying to unmask anonymous commenters who leave hateful messages online. Questions about privacy arise.
