“Sometimes a book that is wonderful and well-told and riveting is overlooked. I believe this is the case with Rachel Pastan’s Alena.”
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Posted inNonfiction
The Nine Lives of Cat Videos
Are cat videos mindless distraction or a radical form of pure entertainment? A visit to the Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Cost
“I want to tell you something: it is nearly impossible for a young black man to stay out of trouble in a country where skin color is the marker for suspicion and violence and grief.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Think of This as a Window: Remembering the Life and Work of Maggie Estep
“I moved to Lower Manhattan when I was seventeen. The only things I cared about were books and music.”
Posted inNonfiction
The Radical Pessimism of Dashiell Hammett
The stories of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler once wrote, “gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse.”
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Roy Choi and the Taco Truck That Spawned an Empire
Kogi didn’t take off overnight. After Choi’s friend and Kogi partner (eight people run the company) Mark Manguera came up with the idea of mashing up Korean BBQ and Mexican tacos, the Kogi truck began heaving through the streets of L.A. It was slow going at first, more a curiosity than anything else. But then […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
Slavery and Freedom in New York City
The story of slavery in New York, the messy path to abolition, and a shameful history with which America has yet to come to terms.
Posted inNonfiction, Unapologetic Women
The Rise of ‘Mama’
“Like most cultural shifts in language, the rise of white, upper-middle class women who call themselves ‘mama’ seemed to happen slowly, and then all at once.” Elissa Strauss explores how the use of “mama” helped rebrand motherhood for the modern mother.
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Nonfiction, Story
My Unsentimental Education
“I wanted him to understand my life—that I’d been caught in the local pattern and found the safest way forward, but if I’d lived somewhere else I’d be someone else and still could.”
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Longreads’ Best of WordPress, Vol. 3
Our latest collection is now live at WordPress.com, featuring stories from Aeon, Grantland, Brooklyn Quarterly, The Awl, Texas Observer and more. Get the full list here.
