I’d always heard amputees talk about the stares and the acute awareness of being viewed as different. During my first shoot for the NewsHour with one arm, I was wearing a blazer when I met a researcher I was to interview. She left the lab, and I took my jacket off. When she returned, it […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Problem with Journalism and the Internet, in One Quote
Jonah Peretti: I think there’s an interesting tension between what’s good for the user and what’s good for the industry. That was really created by Google. Say The New Yorker writes a really long 12,000 word piece on Scientology. That takes lots of reporting and lots of investment. That’s important work that our industry should […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction
An Untamed State: The Opening Chapters from Roxane Gay's New Novel
Roxane Gay | An Untamed State | May 2014 | 11 minutes (2,742 words) * * * Roxane Gay’s new novel, An Untamed State, is out this week, and we’re excited to present the opening chapters with the Longreads community. Our thanks to Gay and Grove Atlantic for sharing it here. For more, read our Roxane […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
The Self-Driving Revolution
Let’s be honest: Humans never should have been allowed behind the wheel in the first place. There’s so much that can go wrong, so much room for negligence—it’s incredible to think that we managed human-controlled cars for as long as we did. Here’s a reading list covering the past, present and future of transportation.
Posted inFiction, Nonfiction, Reading List
The 2014 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List
The American Society of Magazine Editors handed out its 2014 National Magazine Awards Thursday night, with Fast Company, New York magazine, Inc., Poetry magazine and Modern Farmer all taking home trophies. Boston Magazine’s stirring cover image (above) following the Boston Marathon bombings was named ASME’s Cover of the Year. Below is a reading list featuring some of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Monica Lewinsky's Vanity Fair Essay, Now Online
Yes, we’re all connected now. We can tweet a revolution in the streets or chronicle achievements large and small. But we’re also caught in a feedback loop of defame and shame, one in which we have become both perps and victims. We may not have become a crueler society—although it sure feels as if we […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Maya Angelou: 1928-2014
Angelou, in 1990, on the moment she decided to write.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Searching for John McPhee’s Secret Writing Tool
A book where you can enter “sport” and end up with “a diversion of the field” — this is in fact the opposite of what I’d known a dictionary to be. This is a book that transmutes plain words into language that’s finer and more vivid and sometimes more rare. No wonder John McPhee wrote […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Keeps Paying, 20 Years Later
“Shawshank” only began to get moviegoers’ attention after the Oscars, where it received seven nominations (but won no awards) and promptly was rereleased in theaters. The second run grossed an additional $10 million and primed it for its debut on home video, which at the time was still a robust revenue source. If Andy Dufresne […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Ta-Nehisi Coates Calls for Reparations, and a 'Spiritual Renewal' for America
We must imagine a new country. Reparations—by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences—is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken […]
