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.
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Longreads Best of 2016: Under-Recognized Stories
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in under-recognized stories.
Longreads Best of 2016: Investigative Reporting
We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in investigative reporting
On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves
Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.
Paul Beatty’s ‘The Sellout’ and the Racism of The Little Rascals
“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.” -Paul Beatty’s satirical novel The Sellout, winner of the […]
STAT: My Daughter’s MS Diagnosis and the Question My Doctors Couldn’t Answer
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis? And if so, why is the medical establishment ignoring published academic research that started in the 1950s proving it?
On Female Friendship and the Sisters We Choose for Ourselves
Essayist Chloe Caldwell on the “sisters” we choose for ourselves, and her close relationship with her surrogate younger sister, Cheryl Strayed’s daughter Bobbi.
STAT: My Daughter’s MS Diagnosis and the Question My Doctors Couldn’t Answer
Is there a dietary treatment for multiple sclerosis? And if so, why is the medical establishment ignoring published academic research that started in the 1950s proving it?
Making Promises I Can’t Keep: On Sexual “Purity”
In “A Girl’s Guide to Sexual Purity,” a striking essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Carmen Maria Machado explores an adolescence steeped in “purity culture”: sexual assault, conservative youth groups, purity rings, curbed fantasies and an unusually close relationship with her youth pastor.
Longreads Best of 2015: Essays & Criticism
Story picks by Leslie Jamison, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, Tom Scocca, Ann Friedman, Rachel Syme, Francesca Mari, Sari Botton, and Emily Perper.
