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(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) This week, we’re excited to share a Longreads Member Exclusive from Thomas E. Ricks, whose new book is The Generals, published by The Penguin Press. Chapter 21, “The End of a War, the End of an Army,” details how the U.S. military and its leadership faltered in […]

(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) A look at the giant sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest—one, named Herman, weighs nearly 500 pounds—and about our relationship with them. Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and writes frequently for Orion‘s print edition and blog. His piece won the John Burroughs Award and was […]

A writer joins her friend Ben Heemskerk, the owner of the Brooklyn bar The Castello Plan, as he organizes a group of community volunteers to help in the hardest hit areas post-Sandy: “On Monday the same thing started all over again. Our numbers were smaller, people were returning to work, and we’d lost our escorts, […]

A look back at how filmmakers handled the Vietnam War, and how they worked with the military—or ignored their recommendations—to get them made: “In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May, 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered ‘surrealistic.’ While […]

[Fiction] A philandering husband’s next phase in life: “Horace and Loneese Perkins—one child, one grandchild—lived most unhappily together for more than twelve years in Apartment 230 at Sunset House, a building for senior citizens at 1202 Thirteenth Street NW. They moved there in 1977, the year they celebrated forty years of marriage, the year they […]

How the upcoming Mexican presidential election could impact the drug war in cities like Guadalajara: “Weary of pantallas, I tried to get to the bottom of a single bust—the ‘historic’ meth-lab raid in Tlajomulco that confiscated some four billion dollars’ worth of drugs. Were the drugs seized really worth that much? Well, no. The more […]

In 2007, Eric Fair wrote an article in the Washington Post describing his experience as an interrogator in Iraq. He has had trouble finding a way to move on. “I tell my professor I am sick. I put away verb charts, participles, and lexicons, board a train for Washington, D.C., and meet with Department of […]

Can we discover the impact of war on a soldier before they’re sent out to fight? And what does that mean for ethics and liability when it comes to addressing PTSD? “Brian had spent part of his career at nearby Fort Hood, and in 2007 he and Telch approached Army leaders at the base about […]

How Moammar Gadhafi’s regime built a surveillance network called the Electric Army that captured all Internet traffic going in and out of Libya, and how dissidents fought back. “Gwaider’s favored method, like that of Kevin Mitnick, the famous American hacker he admired, was “social engineering,” which meant tricking the victims into giving up access themselves. […]

Four Western journalists and a former Army Ranger-turned-counterinsurgency expert arrange a paintball game with members of the Shiite militant group, with the hopes of learning more about what motivates them: “It took nearly a full year to pull together this game, and all along I’d been convinced that things would fall apart at the last […]