Pravesh Bhardwaj read and and shared 304 short stories on the #longreads Twitter hashtag in 2020. Here are his favorites.
Search results
Cain and Abel and Oil
This might strike you as a wildly self-serving theory: that the epic rift tearing apart this preposterously wealthy family was the fault not of the lifelong ne’er-do-well, who’d spent four decades partying his way through a family fortune, but of his outwardly much more responsible and sober brother, who had run the family business for […]
Longreads Best of 2020: Investigative Reporting
Our top picks for investigative journalism this year.
Novelist Charles Portis Was a True Original
Every Portis fan has a different favorite passage from his novels, but they agree on one thing: no one wrote like Portis.
What It’s Like to Grow Up With More Money Than You’ll Ever Spend
An interview with filmmaker, activist and heiress Abigail Disney, in which she speaks very frankly about how inheriting a fortune can compromise one’s moral compass and corrupt the soul.
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
“When they got home, Josephine refused to move her beloved dog Fortuné off the bed to make room for Napoleon. When his mistress’ new husband tried to push him aside, the pug bit him. Sometimes dogs just know.”
The IRS Tried to Take on the Ultrawealthy. It Didn’t Go Well.
In 2009 the IRS created a special team to investigate when and how the extremely wealthy were avoiding taxes. Reporters Jesse Eisenger and Paul Kiel illustrate how that team was stymied using the case of the heir to a German automative parts fortune.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Defrauding Agency
What a 19th-century scammer can teach us about women, lying, and economic boom-and-bust cycles
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Ian Frisch, Niela Orr, Alison Fensterstock, Jill Lepore, and Austin Carr.
Fire/Flood: A Southern California Pastoral
In and around Los Angeles, natural and man-made disasters have been inextricable for almost two centuries.

