Search Results for: Jessica Pressler

Coming Sept. 24: A Special Longreads Live Storytelling Night in New York City

Save the date! On Sept. 24, Longreads is presenting a night of live storytelling with the theme of “Change: stories about change and the stories that have changed us.” Our storytellers include:

Nikole Hannah-Jones (New York Times Magazine)

Burt Helm (Inc.)

Jessica Gross (journalist and Longreads contributor)

Rembert Browne (Grantland)

Jessica Pressler (New York magazine)

John Herrman (The Awl)

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Thursday, Sept. 24, 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
The Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St
New York, NY 10012

This is a free event. See our Facebook event RSVP page.

Reservation Confirmed: A Reading List About Airbnb

It’s easy to get distracted while reading about Airbnb. First, the listings themselves range from luxurious to quaint, and if you have any sort of upcoming vacation planned … well, let’s say it’s a timesuck. Double if you have I-want-to-see-where-you-live voyeuristic tendencies. Second, Airbnb is giving away $1 million to customers who document their random acts of kindness, which is a hell of a headline and a bit of an oxymoron. Airbnb’s detractors are firm and its fans are rabid; Its prices, tempting. I’m planning a trip to Seattle in the summer—we’ll see where I end up sleeping. Here are five pieces about Airbnb hosts, the company’s founders, its guests and its implications for city politics.

1. “The Dumbest Person in Your Building is Passing Out the Keys to Your Front Door!” (Jessica Pressler, New York Magazine, September 2013)

Two idealistic art students founded Airbnb, and business boomed once the recession hit. But they didn’t foresee backlash from New York politicians or affordable housing advocates. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2014: Business Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in business writing.

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Max Chafkin
Writer focusing on business and technology.

Schooled (Dale Russakoff, New Yorker)

This piece explores the failed attempt by Mark Zuckerberg and Corey Booker, among others, to fix Newark’s schools—and in doing so makes clear just how hard education reform is. Most shockingly, it exposes the huge sums of money spent by the city and its supporters on education consultants who managed to extract huge fees without, apparently, doing a whole lot. It’s pretty hard to make a dense story about education reform read well, but Russakoff amazingly manages it, while managing to be fair and incisive. Read more…

[Not single-page] A trip to a Croatian vineyard to see Bob Benmosche, the former CEO of MetLife who came out of retirement to run AIG post-bailout: 

Next, Benmosche went to rally the troops at Financial Products in Wilton, Connecticut, who were still salty about Liddy’s appearance in front of Congress and the law subsequently passed by the House taxing 90 percent of AIG pay (it never made it any further). ‘I want you to understand that what happened will not happen again,’ he told them. Then he flew to Houston, where he spoke at a town-hall meeting with 3,000 employees. After that, he headed back to Croatia. ‘It was the first Zinfandel harvest,’ he explains.

He’d informed Treasury when he’d taken the job that he needed to be in Croatia for two weeks in August, for the celebration accompanying the inaugural reaping of his vines. But they were not prepared for the image of Benmosche that flashed on their screens two weeks after he’d been hired to run one of the most troubled companies in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, showing off his villa while a British-accented voice-over noted its ‘palatial’ proportions and queried, in serious-sounding tones, whether the CEO should be so overtly relaxed.

‘I mean, I had just hired this guy,’ Millstein says now, choking back the slightly hysterical laugh that tends to bubble out of him when he talks about Benmosche. ‘And there he is, in his shorts and his polo shirt. It was just …’ he trails off. ‘You couldn’t make it up.’

“The Randian and the Bailout.” — Jessica Pressler, New York magazine

More by Pressler

[Not single-page] Tory Burch’s ex-husband Christopher Burch has a new fashion line called C. Wonder. But some in her circle wonder if it draws a little too much inspiration from her own brand:

To Chris Burch, C. Wonder is the realization of a long-held dream to provide low-to-mid-price retail in a luxury setting. To Tory Burch, he might as well have erected a giant lacquered middle finger in the front window, directly facing the orange-lacquered doors of her eponymous store a few blocks away. “It’s a rip-off, Tory knows it, and everyone knows it,” says someone we will refer to as a Friend of Tory. “The interior is blatantly plagiarized. Then there’s the snap bracelets. The wallets. The buttons … ”

“His. Hers.” — Jessica Pressler, New York magazine

See also: “Forever 21’s Fast (and Loose) Fashion Empire.” — Susan Berfield, Businessweek, Jan. 21, 2011

Capital New York covers last night’s “Behind the Longreads” event with New York magazine, and tells writer Dan P. Lee’s story about how he reported his “Travis the Menace” story:

Lee, in a striped grey-and-black hoodie and a mop of dirty blonde hair that matched his five o’clock shadow, was participating in a panel discussion convened by the longform journalism aggregator Longreads. Sitting on a riser beside fellow New York writers Jessica Pressler and Wesley Yang, as well as the magazine’s editor in chief, Adam Moss (Lee’s story editor, David Haskell, was sipping a beer on the sidelines), the former newspaper reporter gave the hundred or so assembled Longreaders the story behind the story of “Travis the Menace.”

It began when Lee saw the Nov. 11, 2009 episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” during which Nash revealed her disfigured face for the first time. 

Even though the story had already been widely covered in the press, “I felt like there was still something else there,” he said. “It was the most compelling thing I had ever seen in my entire life.”

“The Story Behind the Story of ‘Travis the Menace’.” — Joe Pompeo, Capital New York

Reading List for 'Behind the Longreads' with New York Magazine

Reminder: This is next Wednesday! “Behind the Longreads” at Housing Works in NYC with New York magazine’s Dan P. Lee, Jessica Pressler, Wesley Yang and Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss. 

It’s a free event, and you can now RSVP on the Longreads Facebook page

Because this night is going to be about the stories themselves, we’ve prepared a reading list for the big event:

• “Travis the Menace,” by Dan P. Lee (also featured in our new Longreads: Best of 2011 ebook)

• “A Holly Golightly for the Stripper-Embezzlement Age,” by Jessica Pressler 

• “Paper Tigers,” by Wesley Yang


Coming Wednesday, Jan. 25!

New York magazine and Longreads present: “Behind the Longreads,” featuring Dan P. Lee, Jessica Pressler, Wesley Yang and New York Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss. 

Housing Works Bookstore Cafe

Manhattan, 7 pm, Free

The Top 5 Longreads of 2011: Your Picks

Longreads Pick

See the latest from our community’s Top 5 lists celebrating the year’s best nonfiction and fiction. Includes picks from Jessica Pressler, Jenna Wortham, Steve Silberman, Matthias Rascher, Lev Grossman, Doree Shafrir, Alexander Chee, Elliott Holt, and more.

Published: Dec 14, 2011

Ben Cohen's Top Longreads of 2011

Ben Cohen writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal. In 2011, he also published a Kindle Single and wrote for Grantland, The Classical, Tablet, The Awl and Yahoo! Sports. You can follow him on Twitter at @bzcohen.

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I don’t know that I can pinpoint exactly what it was about these stories that compelled me to re-read them, over and over, but I do know that you’ll find yourself doing the same. In any case, you don’t need me to explain how to enjoy these stories, or why you should adore them. They speak for themselves. So, in the spirit of the season: gifts that keep on giving!

“‘It’s Too Bad. And I Don’t Mean It’s Too Bad Like “Screw ‘Em”,’” Jessica Pressler, New York: Lloyd Blankfein goes to a diner.

“Welcome to the Far Eastern Conference,” Wells Tower, GQ: Starbury goes to China.

“The Hangover Part III,” Brett Martin, GQ: Aziz Ansari, David Chang and James Murphy go to Tokyo.

“The History and Mystery of the High-Five,” Jon Mooallem, ESPN The Magazine: Hand goes high.

“Why John Calipari Can’t Catch a Break,” S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated: Coach goes to Kentucky.

“It’s The Economy, Dummkopf!” Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair: Michael Lewis goes to Germany.

“Danny Meyer on a Roll,” Sean Wilsey, The New York Times Magazine: Restauranteur goes… everywhere?

“Jennifer Egan on Reaping Awards and Dodging Literary Feuds,” Boris Kachka, Vulture: Jennifer Egan goes to Brooklyn.

“The Confessions of a Former Adolescent Puck Tease,” Katie Baker, Deadspin: Teenager goes to the Internet.

“American Marvel,” Edith Zimmerman, GQ: I’m not sure who goes where, or when, or why, but what!

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See more lists from our Top 5 Longreads of 2011 >

Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December. Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.