“I want a good story, but I want it to be told for a reason. Is affirmation that the storyteller exists a good enough reason for the story to be told? Sometimes. Some stories aren’t told as often as others. I’m not saying there is a hierarchy of suitable topics for essays. Not everything should […]
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My Life As a Young Thug
Mike Tyson reflects on a childhood spent on the streets of Brooklyn, being bullied, getting into fights and stealing—and then meeting a man who would change his life: “We sat down, and Cus told me he couldn’t believe I was only 13 years old. And then he told me what my future would be. ‘If […]
Longreads Guest Pick: BKLYNR’s Favorite Brooklyn Stories
Thomas Rhiel and Raphael Pope-Sussman are the founding editors of BKLYNR, a new online publication that features in-depth journalism—including more than a few #longreads—about Brooklyn.
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. Ghosting: Confessions of a WikiLeaks Ghostwriter Andrew O’Hagan | London Review of Books | February 23, 2014 | 105 minutes (26,390 words) […]
Longreads Guest Pick: BKLYNR's Favorite Brooklyn Stories
Thomas Rhiel and Raphael Pope-Sussman are the founding editors of BKLYNR, a new online publication that features in-depth journalism—including more than a few #longreads—about Brooklyn. Thomas’s pick: “Brooklyn: The Sane Alternative,” by Pete Hamill in New York magazine It’s 2013—three long years since New York magazine asked “What was the hipster?”—and yet there are still […]
Easy Money
The writer on his experience being on the game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”: “Did I mention on my questionnaire that I could perform a serviceable impression of Chewbacca? Did I offer that up to them as proof of my willingness to give them whatever they wanted in exchange for a chance at […]
The Summer of Love and Newsweek
The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg reflects on his early career working as a correspondent for Newsweek in San Francisco, covering Jefferson Airplane, Ronald Reagan and hippies: “If the S.F. music scene (I quickly learned that ‘Frisco’ was a no-no) was scarcely known outside the Bay Area, and neither was the larger cultural phenomenon it drew […]
Longreads Best of 2013: The 10 Stories We Couldn't Stop Thinking About
A list of stories that resonated with us.
Growing up Muslim in America
What it’s like to grow up as a Muslim in America today. Although Muslims embrace their faith while facing discrimination, they also suffer from anxiety as a result from racial profiling: “For me, this issue is personal. My son was born in America but has an Arabic surname and is growing up bilingual, although we […]
On the Banks of the River Lex
[Fiction, sci-fi] Death walks the streets of New York and ponders the Big Questions: “Death liked to walk across bridges. For this reason he had claimed a home for himself relatively far from the center of town. This was in a big ugly gray stone of a building that had once been a factory, and […]

