Thailand is a top destination for gender confirmation surgery. Its success is a symptom of Western failure.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we’re recommending stories by Moira Donegan, Danyel Smith, Dan Kois, Michael Aylwin, and Becky Ferreira.
Reading Joan Didion Taught Me How to Not Write About Hawaiʻi
“Didion depicts Hawaiʻi as a place that exists solely in the white American imagination, and, because of this, her journalism is a fiction.”
The Airport
Journalist Shannon Gormley weaves an astonishing narrative and beautifully written (and at times, very personal) meditation on one family’s escape out of Afghanistan as Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’d never written Asghar’s story as I’d said I would, and I’d buried the thought of contacting him, too, until foreign sections of newspapers began to […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: Bezos, paper, scissors; feast or famine; one reason to stay here; any way you slice it; the real Winter Olympics, and more.
Notes from Lviv
In a series of diary-like dispatches, Matt Gallagher shares a riveting on-the-ground account of training civilians for combat in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. All-day lane rotations between trainers on urban movement, dismounted recon ops, and advanced room defense. They’re getting better. Petro’s a leader. So is Symon, the law student. So is Ivan, a […]
The Death Spiral of an American Family
In this heartbreaking portrait of one American family, Eli Saslow offers a look at “backwards mobility” and the country’s collapsing middle class. It had been almost a month since Dave, 39, found his father lying unresponsive in bed next to his cellphone and a bill from a collections agency, having died of a heart attack […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: Lost soul, copy that, missing beats, muzzled watchdogs, and a ramblin’ man.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Showcasing stories from Jelani Cobb, Taylor Lorenz, Jack Shafer, and Max Tani; Nylah Iqbal Muhammad; Irina Dumitrescu; Leo Robson; and Caitlin Moran.

