“These stories are a marvel and will break your heart.”
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Posted inNonfiction, Story
By the Reflection of What Is
On the aesthetics, performance, and “majestic wrath” of Frederick Douglass, the most-photographed American of the nineteenth century.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Vanity Fair, The Rebirth
Condé Nast executives, editors, designers and writers look back on the 1983 relaunch of Vanity Fair, which originally stopped publishing in 1936 and had been folded into Vogue: As word leaked out that the company was pumping more than $10 million into the magazine, the sniping began. An enterprising Chicago Tribune reporter tracked down Clare […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Lawmakers Gone Wild
Lawmakers in Illinois are living large on campaign money. A joint examination by Chicago magazine and the Better Government Association: “Because it’s perfectly legal to use campaign funds to rent campaign offices, many Illinois politicians, like Welch, choose to locate the offices inside property that they (or a family member) already own. Consider Alderman Mell, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Happens When a Poetry Magazine Gets $200 Million?
Poetry magazine started in Chicago in 1912, and during the ensuing century, the magazine’s history and the history of American poetry often were joined at the hip. It published an unknown T.S. Eliot, gave early support to Langston Hughes, discovered Wallace Stevens, James Merrill, Gwendolyn Brooks. What Poetry rarely had was a history of picking […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
‘A Taste of Power’: The Woman Who Led the Black Panther Party
Elaine Brown was the first and only woman to lead the male-dominated Black Panther Party. She looks back on Jean Seberg, COINTELPRO, and internal divisions within the organization.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Budd & Leni
The story of Hollywood screenwriter Budd Schulberg’s unlikely collaboration with Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams, with Benjamin Hedin | Radio Silence | March 2014 | 11 minutes (2,690 words) Radio SilenceFor this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we are thrilled to share a first-time-ever memoir by the great Lucinda Williams from Radio Silence, a San Francisco-based magazine of literature and rock & roll. Subscribe, and download the free iOS […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
The Believer Interview: Ice Cube
Linda Saetre | The Believer | 2004 | 26 minutes (6,574 words) The below interview is excerpted from The Believer’s new book, Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence: The Best of the Believer Music Interviews. Thanks to The Believer for sharing this with the Longreads community. * * * ‘Music Is a Mirror of What […]
Posted inBooks, Member Pick, Nonfiction
The Story of H.M.: The Amnesiac Who Profoundly Changed the Way We Think About Memory
Sam Kean | The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons | 2014 | 12 minutes (3,008 words) For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, a new book from science reporter Sam Kean looking at stories about the brain and the history of neuroscience. Here’s Kean: […]
