Inside the Wild, Wacky, Profitable World of Boing Boing “We know what happens next: This hobby morphs into a successful business. But Boing Boing’s version of that tale is a little different. Mark Frauenfelder and his partners — Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, and David Pescovitz — didn’t rake in investment capital, recruit a big staff […]
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Forever 21's Fast (and Loose) Fashion Empire
Forever 21’s Fast (and Loose) Fashion Empire How did the Changs, Korean immigrants who opened their first store in a gritty section of Los Angeles in 1984, become such important players in fast fashion? The family credits its accomplishments to hard work, faith, and frugality, though Forever 21 has not prospered without controversy. The company […]
How a Convicted Murderer Prepares for a Job Interview
“In prison Angel thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to find a job once he got out. He believed he had come a long way.”
First Chapters: ‘White Oleander,’ by Janet Fitch
Janet Fitch | White Oleander, Little, Brown and Company | 1999 | 19 minutes (4,640 words) Our latest first chapter comes from Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, who has chosen Janet Fitch’s 1999 novel White Oleander. If you want to recommend a First Chapter, let us know and we’ll feature you and your pick: hello@longreads.com.
‘Quebrado’: The Life and Death of a Young Activist
“If you survive me, tell them this: I never gave up.”
Hell—Nothing Less—And Without End: Six Days in Warsaw
“The uprising,” we told each other immediately, like everyone else in Warsaw. Strange. Because no one had ever used that word before in his life. Only in history, in books.
Loving Books in a Dark Age
In the “dark ages” of Europe, people began reading silently to themselves, and a love of books and learning took hold, pioneered by Bede.
All the Language in the World Won’t Make a Bookshelf Exist
After leaving a drag-and-click job at a newspaper to learn carpentry, Nina MacLaughlin takes on her first big solo project: building bookshelves for her father.
Fairyland: Memories of a Singular San Francisco Girlhood
Alysia Abbott recalls being raised by her poet father—a single, openly gay man—in the San Francisco of the nineteen-seventies and eighties.
