A Brief History of AOL

A short reading list on the many lives of AOL, which will be acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion. Fifteen years ago, AOL acquired Time Warner for $165 billion. Read more…
John Sherman straddles the line between cyberstalking and innocent curiosity in this humorous essay about his fascination with the downstairs neighbors.

A short reading list on the many lives of AOL, which will be acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion. Fifteen years ago, AOL acquired Time Warner for $165 billion. Read more…

Ms. Lewinsky was quickly cast by the media as a “little tart,” as The Wall Street Journal put it. The New York Post nicknamed her the “Portly Pepperpot.” She was described by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times as “ditsy” and “predatory.”
And other women — self-proclaimed feminists — piled on. “My dental hygienist pointed out she had third-stage gum disease,” said Erica Jong. Betty Friedan dismissed her as “some little twerp.”
“It’s a sexual shaming that is far more directed at women than at men,” Gloria Steinem wrote me in an email, noting that in Ms. Lewinsky’s case, she was also targeted by the “ultraright wing.” “I’m grateful to [her],” Ms. Steinem said, “for having the courage to return to the public eye.”
Had the Lewinsky story unfolded today, certainly the digital reality of it would have been worse (or at least more pungent). “They would have dug up her private photos,” said Danielle Citron, a law professor and the author of “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace.” But there would have also been avenues to push back: more outlets, more varied voices, probably even a #IStandWithMonica hashtag.
“If it happened today, I think the consensus that she deserved to be thrown under the bus would be considerably weaker,” said Clay Shirky, a journalism professor at N.Y.U. who studies Internet culture. “And the key thing that’s changed is not information — there were credible press reports about Cosby for years, just as Clinton’s denial was ridiculous on its face — but the ability to coordinate reaction.”
—Jessica Bennett, profiling Monica Lewinsky for the New York Times. Lewinsky has reemerged in the public sphere as of late, reclaiming her story and recasting it as a narrative about the price of shame.

John Steinbeck—who would have been 113 today—wrote more than thirty books, and The Grapes of Wrath, which you were most likely assigned to read in high school, is widely considered to be his best work. The novel was published in 1939 to great acclaim, both critically and commercially; it “was a phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and burned by citizens, it was debated on national talk radio; but above all, it was read.” It was also the New York Times’ bestselling book of 1939, and won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.
As for the title, where did the phrase “The Grapes of Wrath” come from? As David Greetham notes in his 1998 book Textual Transgressions: Essays Toward the Construction of a Bibliography:
A profile of Alex Holden, a Ukrainian immigrant who lives in Milwaukee and runs a cyber security firm. His work often takes him deep into the so-called Dark Web.

This year’s National Magazine Awards were handed out Monday night in New York, with General Excellence honors going to publications including The New Yorker, Glamour, Garden & Gun, Nautilus and The Hollywood Reporter. Vogue won the award for “Magazine of the Year.”
Here’s a brief rundown of some of the winning stories from the night:
* * *
Texas has become the deadliest state in the US for undocumented immigrants. In 2012, 271 migrants died while crossing through Texas, surpassing Arizona as the nation’s most dangerous entry point. The majority of those deaths didn’t occur at the Texas-Mexico border but in rural Brooks County, 70 miles north of the Rio Grande, where the US Border Patrol has a checkpoint. To circumvent the checkpoint, migrants must leave the highway and hike through the rugged ranchlands. Hundreds die each year on the trek, most from heat stroke. This four-part series looks at the lives impacted by the humanitarian crisis.

— Ian Urbina, in the New York Times Magazine, on how we instill meaning into the passwords we create.
Some of America’s poorest people are being targeted by cyber-scammers. Can an errant hacker find the culprits?
Mike’s encounter with these scammers began one rainy day in January of last year, he says when I call. His voice is flat and matter-of-fact; he could be an accountant discussing a company’s tax return. He tells me it started with a text message: “Do you need up to $1,600 today? It’s secure and takes only a minute at http://www.quickhelpfunds.com”. Mike, who is 34, was on a job for a major software manufacturer and was bored, so he signed up for a loan using a fake name, just to see what would happen.

Wired senior editor Bill Wasik on the public’s changing relationship with both Silicon Valley and the technology it creates and promotes:
***
We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members: Join us.

Hackers! Gen Y CEOs! Multibillion dollar success stories! International expansion! Top-secret projects! Cute clothes! Hamburgers! Capitalism is so exciting, and so are these longreads about popular U.S. companies.
31-year-old Lynsi Snyder presides over In-N-Out’s $1.1 billion industry, founded by her grandparents in the 1940s. What’s the company secret? Never change. Seem counterintuitive? Not if you’ve ever had an In-N-Out burger.
A group of six twenty-somethings fly to Sydney, Australia on a secret mission for eBay. Carlson brings the eBay executives and employees to life; I felt like I was watching “The Social Network.”
Merry Christmas, you’ve been hacked! In the midst of the 2013 holiday season, millions of Target customers received an ominous email; Cybercriminals targeted the store’s credit card machines, stole card numbers and PINs and endeavored to sell the information in the creepy corners of the internet.
J. Crew executives hope the brand’s casual-chic niche will find a foothold in London.
***
Photo: Kevin Dooley
We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.
You must be logged in to post a comment.