How “Vaudeville’s worst act” fought for fame and respect on the stage.
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What Can and Can’t be Learned From a Book
How learning to swim at 24 led Syam Palakurthy to first-hand lessons in gentrification.
Xenu’s Paradox: The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard and the Making of Scientology
Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Astounding, a forthcoming book on the history of science fiction, digs into the writing career of L. Ron Hubbard, gaining new insights into the life of the controversial founder of dianetics and the origins and nature of Scientology itself.
Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin
Thirty years ago, the world lost a great literary mind—the Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. Today, Elizabeth Hyde Stevens revisits the financial conditions that produced this life of pure literature, finding unexpected hope in the darkest period of Borges’ forgotten past.
Home Is Where the Fraud Is
At the height of the housing crisis, one woman’s bureaucratic odyssey to discover who really owns her home leads her to startling revelations about the housing market.
Ruback
A newspaper journalist’s attempt to correct the record.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
The best stories of the week, as chosen by the editors of Longreads.
The Immigration-Obsessed, Polarized, Garbage-Fire Election of 1800
A madman versus a crook? Unexpected twists? Fake news? Welcome to the election of 1800.
The Shaming of the Cherry Sisters
How “Vaudeville’s worst act” fought for fame and respect on the stage.
Ruback
A newspaper journalist’s attempt to correct the record.

