What does the future hold for Afghanistan after the Americans leave? Some fear that the country’s army won’t be able to stop another civil war from erupting: Many Afghans fear that NATO has lost the will to control the militias, and that the warlords are reëmerging as formidable local forces. Nashir, the Khanabad governor, who […]
Search results
Posted inUncategorized
[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 made […]
Posted inUncategorized
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, […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
‘Like Being in Prison with a Salary’: The Secret World of the Shipping Industry
Rose George | Metropolitan Books | August 2013 | 17 minutes (4,213 words) The following is the opening chapter of Rose George’s new book, Ninety Percent of Everything. Our thanks to the author for sharing it with the Longreads community. * * * Friday. No sensible sailor goes to sea on the day of the Crucifixion or the […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Woman Who Counted Fish
Conservation, domestication and the future of the animal kingdom.
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
What Life Was Like for an Executioner’s Family in the 16th Century
Joel F. Harrington | The Faithful Executioner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | March 2013 | 15 minutes (3,723 words) Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join Longreads […]
