What makes a secret society? Is it the codes and the handshakes, the physical language?
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Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Good, the Bad, and the Highly Personal: A Reading List About Haircuts
Six stories about our relationships with our hair.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Story
American Sphinx
Civil War monuments in the North erased an emancipated Black population. But the Sphinx looked to a new world: an integrated Africa and America.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
My Father’s Adventure Was My Terror
With the decision to take his 13-year-old daughter on a dangerous drive to Peshawar, Diana Whitney’s charismatic father became a regular fallible human in her eyes.
Posted inBooks, Food, Story
Eating Alone
We’re eating alone more often than in any previous generation. But why should a meal on our own be uninspired? Why shouldn’t the French saying “life is too short to drink bad wine” still apply?
Posted inCommentary, Nonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
Longreads Best of 2016: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
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.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books, Nonfiction, Story
Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in British Music Writing
The history of England’s fertile music press reveals as much about the opinionated English youth who created it as it does the music they covered in the second half of the 20th century.
Posted inAuthor Notes, Blog Post, Commentary, Nonfiction
How Sarah Schweitzer Discovered the Story About a Boy Rescued from Near-Fatal Abuse
There are stories that creep up and remind us that there is no substitute in journalism for simply spending time with a subject. It’s a luxury many reporters don’t get, but what these stories reveal about the depth of humanity—the best and worst sides of it—make them so worth it. The Boston Globe’s Sarah Schweitzer […]
Posted inBooks, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
On Not Being Able to Read
In law school, they told me I wouldn’t be able to read anymore. That the pleasure of the text, like a lover in a non-law degree, would slowly grow opaque to me.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story, Unapologetic Women
A Short Distance from Southie, but a World Away
Tara Wanda Merrigan recalls navigating between the very different realms of Harvard and home.
