For a young expat writer, strange days at a Thai newspaper: Some background is in order. I was 25 at the time, and several months before my arrival in Thailand, I wouldn’t have been able to identify its elephantine outline on a map. But I wanted to move to Thailand to soak up some of […]
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13 Miles To Marshall
Tough times lead very different Michigan high schools to merge: Seven months ago, De’Jhannique and 159 other teens from low-income, predominantly African-American Albion High School began making the 13-mile journey to middle-class, overwhelmingly white Marshall High School. Since then, they’d hand-jived in “Grease” and twerked at Homecoming. They’d made friends and lost sleep. They’d studied […]
The Financial Crisis: Why Have No High-Level Executives Been Prosecuted?
Jed S. Rakoff, a United States District Judge, looks into why there were no criminal charges against bank executives, despite clear findings of fraud: In striking contrast with these past prosecutions, not a single high-level executive has been successfully prosecuted in connection with the recent financial crisis, and given the fact that most of the […]
Interview: ‘Poor Teeth’ Writer Sarah Smarsh on Class and Journalism
“There often is a ‘tone’ in writing about the poor. There is a presumption that people of a certain class are mired in misery.”
Interview: Kiera Feldman on Oral Roberts, God and Journalism
In our latest Longreads Exclusive, Kiera Feldman and Tulsa-based magazine This Land Press went deep into the downfall of the Oral Roberts family dynasty—how Richard Roberts went from heir to the televangelist’s empire, to stripped from his role at Oral Roberts University. Feldman, a Brooklyn-based journalist, and This Land Press have worked together before—her story […]
A Family, a Fruit Stand, and Survival on $4.50 a Day
If it’s not for sale here, Nicaraguans say, then you can’t buy it anywhere.
'Friendship': The Full First Chapter from Emily Gould's New Novel
Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words) Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book from […]
The House of Mondavi: How an American Wine Empire Was Born
The story of a family’s winery that changed Napa Valley forever.
The Virtual Swindle of the New Breed of Video Games
When pay-to-play becomes pay-to-win, the classic model of video games—paying for time or access to the game—turns into something much more insidious. In The Baffler, game designer Ian Bogost asks us to consider which extracts a higher social cost: the explicit violence of Grant Theft Auto, or the addiction and sly financial drain of Candy Crush? […]
Interview: ‘Poor Teeth’ Writer Sarah Smarsh on Class and Journalism
“There often is a ‘tone’ in writing about the poor. There is a presumption that people of a certain class are mired in misery.”
