An in-depth look into the life of the Vice President—and the question of 2016: “‘He wants to be the best vice president ever,’ staffers told me, months ago, when I first started spending time with Joe Biden. That was all the talk last winter. Hillary would almost certainly be the nominee, not Biden, they said, […]
Search results
Channel B
A new mother gets a glimpse into the life of another new mom—via her baby monitor. (The essay will be featured in the forthcoming Best American Essays 2013, edited by Cheryl Strayed): “For the first few months after my son was born, I called him The Baby, or sometimes just Him with a capital H, […]
King of the Cosmos
One person’s mission to get Americans to embrace science again. A profile of Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History: “Although he is a card-carrying astrophysicist with a long list of scientific papers in publications like Astrophysical Journal, Tyson has turned […]
A Brief History of Class and Waste in India
“This is the man who transformed teenage rebellion into a toilet revolution.”
My Tears See More Than My Eyes: My Son’s Depression and the Power of Art
Alan Shapiro | Virginia Quarterly Review| Fall 2006 | 20 minutes (4,928 words) Alan Shapiro published two books in January 2012: Broadway Baby, a novel, from Algonquin Books, and Night of the Republic, poetry, from Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt. This essay first appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review (subscribe here). Our thanks to Shapiro for allowing us to reprint […]
‘I’m One of the Others Now’: What Life Was Like for a Family in East Germany
“What had driven us apart? What was so important that it had turned us into strangers, even today?”
What It's Like to Outrun Death: The Survival Story of a New Orleans Blues Legend
Barry Yeoman | The New New South, Creatavist | December 2013 | 52 minutes (13,100 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to feature “The Gutbucket King,” a new ebook by journalist Barry Yeoman and The New New South, about the tumultuous life of blues singer Little Freddie King, who survived stabbings, alcoholism and personal tragedy. […]
Appetite of Abundance: On the Benefits of Being Eaten
J.B. MacKinnon | Orion | July 2013 | 12 minutes (2,875 words) Our latest Longreads Member Pick comes from Orion magazine and J.B. MacKinnon, author of The Once and Future World. Thanks to Orion and MacKinnon for sharing it with the Longreads community. They’re also offering a free trial subscription here. * * *
Reading List: Religion Gone Extreme
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. Each of these stories this week is about a facet of religion gone extreme, and each is an example of why these pieces of longform journalism are important. There is detailed, professional storytelling, gripping […]
