The end of divine rule in postwar Japan, and the absolute power of General MacArthur.
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Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2015: Our 10 Most Popular Exclusives of the Year
This year marked Longreads’ first full year producing original stories with many our favorite writers.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Dancing Naked in Public
A conversation on art with critic Jerry Saltz.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
In 1971, the People Didn’t Just March on Washington — They Shut It Down
The most influential large-scale political action of the ’60s was actually in 1971, and you’ve never heard of it. It was called the Mayday action, and it provides invaluable lessons for today.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Disarming Nordic Fish Bombs
In 2014, The Telegraph reported that Inge Hausen, a pensioner from the Nordic village of Tyrsil, contacted an explosions expert from the Norwegian army about a 25-year-old can of fermented herring, called surströmming. The swollen can had lifted Hausen’s roof by two centimeters, and he feared it would explode. Here’s an excerpt from the article: […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Common Language
A profile of Ron Capps, an Army combat veteran and former Foreign Service officer who served in Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Kosovo during his career. After returning home, Capps was suicidal and haunted by PTSD; writing brought him relief and helped him make sense of his experiences.
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
‘Perhaps Lucia Berlin Will Begin to Gain the Attention She Deserves’
Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s Work in Progress site has excerpted the first story from A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, the newly released collection of short fiction by the late Lucia Berlin–who died in 2004, and was largely overlooked while she was alive. In the book’s foreword, author Lydia Davis writes, “Perhaps, with the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Russian Information War
“The point is to spoil [the internet], to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it.” –Adrian Chen, in The New York Times Magazine, on Russia’s massive troll army—and their plot against him. Read the story
Posted inNonfiction, Story
Red, White, and Bruised
When Donald Trump and the GOP Convention arrive in Cleveland, they will find a city with a long history of violent outbursts, racial tension—and brushes with fascism. In short, the perfect stage for the 2016 presidential campaign. Kyle Swenson explores the history of his hometown.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The Top 5 Longreads of the week.
