In 2013, for the first time in the 55-year-history of the Billboard Hot 100, not one black artist lodged a number-one single. (Of the eleven songs that held the spot for some portion of the year, four were hip-hop, and four featured black singers or rappers in guest roles.) There’s been round, sustained clamor over Macklemore’s […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Beatles' Early Failures in America
Transglobal licensed “She Loves You” to a tiny indie, Swan Records of Philadelphia, which released it stateside on Sept. 16. Swan had even less success with the Beatles than Vee-Jay: The song failed to chart at any station, and was roundly rejected by audiences when it was played at all. DJ Murray the K at […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. 1. Ghosts of the Tsunami Richard Lloyd Parry | London Review of Books | February 6, 2014 | 28 minutes (7,185 words) The writer […]
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
Without Chief or Tribe: An Expat’s Guide to Having a Baby in Saudi Arabia
Nathan Deuel | Friday Was the Bomb | May 2014 | 21 minutes (5,178 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share a full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008. Deuel has been featured on […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
How to Fail in Business While Really, Really Trying: The True Story of J.C. Penney
Jennifer Reingold | Fortune | March 2014 | 29 minutes (7,108 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) When you find a savior, you don’t quibble over details. So it was that J.C. Penney, the long-stagnating mid-tier department store chain, announced in June 2011 that it was hiring Ron […]
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The End of the Line: A Microbus Map of Damascus
Matthew McNaught | Syria Comment | June 2013 | 18 minutes (4,615 words) Matthew McNaught taught English in Syria between 2007 and 2009. He now works in mental health and sometimes writes essays and stories. This piece first appeared in Syria Comment, and our thanks to McNaught for allowing us to republish it here. 1. Here is a […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Children Who Went Up In Smoke
What happened to five children who disappeared following a 1945 fire in West Virginia? “For nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard bearing the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their names and ages—Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5—stenciled […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Lie Factory
The early days of the political consulting business—starting with Upton Sinclair’s failed run for California governor in the 1930s and the opposition work of Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter: “Whitaker and Baxter weren’t just inventing new techniques; they were writing a rule book. Never lobby; woo voters instead. ‘Our conception of practical politics is that […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
M&M World
[Fiction] Taking a trip to Times Square: “Ginny had promised to take the girls to M&M World, that ridiculous place in Times Square they had passed too often in a taxi, Maggie scooting to press her face to the glass to watch the giant smiling M&M scale the Empire State Building on the electronic billboard […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Billboard Artist of the Year: The Making of Whitney Houston’s Debut Album (1986)
How Clive Davis and Arista won the battle to sign Whitney Houston—then went searching for songs for her debut: “Two years later, Griffith got a call from a friend. Had he ever heard of Whitney Houston? She asked him. He remembered her name immediately from the show he’d seen and said so. ‘You better move […]
