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Longreads Best of 2014: Business Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in business writing.

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Max Chafkin
Writer focusing on business and technology.

Schooled (Dale Russakoff, New Yorker)

This piece explores the failed attempt by Mark Zuckerberg and Corey Booker, among others, to fix Newark’s schools—and in doing so makes clear just how hard education reform is. Most shockingly, it exposes the huge sums of money spent by the city and its supporters on education consultants who managed to extract huge fees without, apparently, doing a whole lot. It’s pretty hard to make a dense story about education reform read well, but Russakoff amazingly manages it, while managing to be fair and incisive. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2014: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year

All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2014. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.

If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free weekly email every Friday. Read more…

Platinum: A Singer Visits a Women’s Prison

Thao Nguyen | Radio Silence | October 2014 | 6 minutes (1500 words) Read more…

A Birth Story

Meaghan O’Connell | Longreads | Nov. 6, 2014 | 57 minutes (14,248 words)

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It was Monday, June 2nd, and I was wide awake at 6 a.m. Maybe to some of you this hour doesn’t sound remarkable, but for me it was. It was the first day in a lifetime of six in the mornings, and I made the three-hour leap all in one go.

By this point, it was 10 days past my due date, and I had a very specific and recurring fantasy of being moved around town in a hammock flown by a helicopter. I wanted to be airlifted between boroughs.

When I told my fiancé, Dustin, this wish, he was quiet for a second. He had learned to reply to me with caution, but I imagine in this case he just couldn’t help himself.

“Like a whale?” he asked.

I laughed, standing on the curb somewhere. Actually yes, come to think of it: Like a whale.

On the morning of June 2nd I had been waking up “still pregnant” for quite some time—41 weeks and two days to be exact; 289 days. My mom was in town already, at an Airbnb rental a block away. Dustin was done with work. I was chugging raspberry red leaf tea, bouncing on a purple exercise ball whenever I could, shoving evening primrose oil pills up my vagina, paying $40 a pop at community acupuncture sessions I didn’t believe in, and doing something called “The Labor Dance.” The Dance (preferred shorthand) involves rubbing your belly in a clockwise direction—vigorously—and then getting as close to twerking as one can at 41 weeks pregnant.

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Our Problem Might Not Be Gluten, After All

There is more to wheat than gluten. Wheat also contains a combination of complex carbohydrates, and the Australian team wondered if these could be responsible for the problems. Gibson and his colleagues devised a different study: they recruited a group of thirty-seven volunteers who seemed unable to digest gluten properly. This time, the researchers attempted to rule out the carbohydrates and confirm gluten as the culprit. Gibson put all the volunteers on a diet that was gluten-free and also free of a group of carbohydrates that he and his colleagues called FODMAPs, an acronym for a series of words that few people will ever remember: fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. Not all carbohydrates are considered FODMAPs, but many types of foods contain them, including foods that are high in fructose, like honey, apples, mangoes, and watermelon; dairy products, like milk and ice cream; and fructans, such as garlic and onions.

Most people have no trouble digesting FODMAPs, but these carbohydrates are osmotic, which means that they pull water into the intestinal tract. That can cause abdominal pain, bloating, and diarrhea. When the carbohydrates enter the small intestine undigested, they move on to the colon, where bacteria begin to break them down. That process causes fermentation, and one product of fermentation is gas. In Gibson’s new study, when the subjects were placed on a diet free of both gluten and FODMAPs, their gastrointestinal symptoms abated. After two weeks, all of the participants reported that they felt better. Some subjects were then secretly given food that contained gluten; the symptoms did not recur. The study provided evidence that the 2011 study was wrong—or, at least, incomplete. The cause of the symptoms seemed to be FODMAPs, not gluten; no biological markers were found in the blood, feces, or urine to suggest that gluten caused any unusual metabolic response.

Michael Specter, in The New Yorker, on the “gluten-free” craze and the science behind it.

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Photo: reid-bee, Flickr

#Nightshift: Minneapolis

Excerpts from an Instagram essay, by Jeff Sharlet. See part one.

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Processed with VSCOcam with b5 preset Read more…

Women Who Travel Alone: A Reading List

My friend Mish is hiking the Appalachian Trail by herself. She hiked the northern portion first, and now she’s almost in Georgia. She’ll be home soon. In celebration, here are six stories about women who travel alone.

1. “A Little Honesty … On Safety and Solo Female Travel.” (Shannon O’Donnell, A Little Adrift, June 2013)

“I believe I have the right to travel, that despite criticism and skepticism that I can and should be on the road as a solo woman, that there are ways to travel with safety in mind. And even in the face of tragedies, I will encourage other women to travel, be that solo, with friends, or in a couple.”

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Your Inner Drone: The Politics of the Automated Future

Nicholas Carr | The Glass Cage: Automation and Us | October 2014 | 15 minutes (3,831 words)

 

The following is an excerpt from Nicholas Carr‘s new book, The Glass Cage. Our thanks to Carr for sharing this piece with the Longreads community.  Read more…

Understanding Mick Fleetwood by the Story of His Car, ‘Lettuce Leaf’

There’s a way to understand Mick Fleetwood, and it’s through “Lettuce Leaf.” Fleetwood was a 20-something penniless musician playing blues with John Mayall when he saw a 1933 Austin Seven four-seater on a London street. He left the owner a note proclaiming, “I’m in love with your car, if it ever needs a good home, please call me.”

He bought the car two years later, just as Fleetwood Mac was forming, and he nicknamed it Lettuce Leaf for its green color. He drove Lettuce Leaf to his 1970 wedding to Jenny Boyd, the younger sister of Pattie Boyd, then married to George Harrison.

Time passed, and the money and cars started coming in. Fleetwood stashed Lettuce Leaf at his friend Eric Clapton’s British estate when he moved to L.A. in the 1970s and forgot about her for 14 years. His band sold millions of records; he got divorced, remarried, and got divorced again from Jenny. And then he got a call from Clapton’s manager, asking him if he remembered the Austin. Fleetwood found Lettuce Leaf in an apple orchard, with birds and squirrels making it their home. He had the car restored and shipped to Maui. Now he squires Mum to lunch in Lettuce Leaf every Sunday.

Fleetwood’s tendency is never to let go of anything, whether it’s Lettuce Leaf, his band, or the stubborn delusion there’s money to be made in celebrity restaurants. This has been a blessing with the band, less so in his personal and financial life. He bought a farm outside Sydney in 1980, and when his accountant flew out to tell him he couldn’t afford it anymore, Fleetwood simply departed for Singapore in the middle of the night, leaving his accountant behind and sending a note reading:

“Oh Brian, Brian, we’ve something to say./We stopped in Singapore the other day./To a hotel we went, the best in town./Amusements we sought, amusements we found.”

— In Men’s Journal, Stephen Rodrick profiles Mick Fleetwood, who at 67, is still having the time of his life.

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Photo: Joe Bielawa

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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