All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2016. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
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Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The best stories of the week, as chosen by the editors of Longreads.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Trouble in the Bloomberg Solar System
The Bloomberg was often seen inside the company it built as a sort of heavenly body. Dan Doctoroff likened it to the sun, a “life-giving force” that sustains its orbiting planets of business and media ventures. The CEO kept a model of the solar system near his desk, with a tiny replica of The Bloomberg […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Burger King Generates Buzz on a Budget
Burger King likes being edgy, Schwan says, and it has proved that it doesn’t mind doing things that might make other brands blush. In August, as the company pushed a new spicy version of its chicken fries—a cult favorite the chain returned to the menu after a flood of social media requests—it tweeted a picture […]
Posted inBlog Post, Nonfiction
A Simpler Cup of Coffee
From backlash to counter-backlash, coffee culture endures in all its glorious fussiness.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Very Brief History of Americans Playing Softball with Their Co-Workers
Americans have been playing softball with their co-workers since the game grew out of several variants of baseball in the late 19th century. In 1895, Louis Rober, a lieutenant in the Minneapolis fire department, organized games of “kittenball” to entertain firefighters between runs. Blue-collar company teams proliferated over the next half-century. Office workers joined in later, […]
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
Five Stories About Espionage
Today’s spying relies on social media, surveillance, coercion and ambition.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Developing Strawberry 2.0
California produces 29% of the world’s strawberries, but the ample water, cheap labor, chemicals and climate that support the state’s output are changing. In Bloomberg Business, Dune Lawrence writes about a breeder at Driscoll’s who’s trying create a strawberry that requires fewer chemicals, less water and less oversight. Having spent decades building a brand known […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Billionaires Do Burning Man
Like all people who hate Burning Man, I enjoy nothing more than reading articles about Burning Man. In February, Felix Gillette chronicled the semi-clad class warfare at last year’s Burning Man for Bloomberg Businessweek. Despite being a festival based on radical self-reliance, Black Rock City is seemingly overrun with tech billionaires setting up their own exclusive festivals-within-a-festival; ultra-luxe camps that […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Start Your Own Micronation
Liberland is one of Europe’s newest would-be countries. Czech politician Vit Jedlicka and two fellow libertarians founded it in mid-April, claiming about 2.7 square miles of no man’s land between Croatia and Serbia. The idea is to create a “European Singapore,” where taxes are voluntary, Jedlicka told Bloomberg Business recently. Writing for the BBC, Rose Eveleth took […]
