Ned Stuckey-French | The Normal School | Fall 2012 | 20 minutes (4,999 words) For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share “Don’t Be Cruel: A Brief History of Elvis-Hating in America,” from Ned Stuckey-French and The Normal School. Become a Longreads Member to receive the full story and support our service. You can also […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Bloomberg Stayed Involved with His Company While Still Being Mayor
“Officially the company was Doctoroff’s to run. Mike agreed with a city ethics board that he’d have no involvement in Bloomberg’s day-to-day operations, limiting his input to major decisions that ‘significantly’ affect his ownership stake. ‘I’ve recused myself from anything to do with the company,’ Mike said at a press conference in November. “In truth, […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: The Best Sentence I Read This Year
How Much Is a Life Worth? James Oliphant | National Journal | August 2013 | 18 minutes (4,405 words) Catherine Cloutier is an online producer at The Boston Globe’s Boston.com. “Life, Feinberg says, guarantees misfortune. The wolf is always at the door.” James Oliphant’s profile of Ken Feinberg in the National Journal transformed the way […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Tupac Shakur and the Origins of Thug Life
“My mother was a woman, a black woman, a single mother raising two kids on her own. She was dark-skinned, had short hair, got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. “I don’t consider myself to be straight militant. I’m a thug, and my definition of thug comes from half […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: My Favorite Stories About Taxes (and Twist-Ties)
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a writer and an editor. Taxes aren’t boring—they’re just supremely difficult to write about in a compelling way. These three stories stand out because they illustrate the far-reaching consequences of different countries’ tax policies through a few very influential people: 1. “Marty Sullivan figured out how the world’s biggest companies avoided […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction
College Longreads Pick: 'A Canine in a Cummerbund,' Peter Kaplan (1977)
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick: The New York media world grieves for editor Peter Kaplan, who died last week. Kaplan worked at several publications during his career, and he’s best known as the longtime editor of the New York Observer, but […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: Favorite New Writer Discovery
Above: Thomas “TJ” Webster Jr. 20 Minutes At Rucker Park Flinder Boyd | SB Nation | October 2013 | 31 minutes (7,805 words) Ross Andersen is a Senior Editor at Aeon Magazine. He has written extensively about science and philosophy for several publications, including The Atlantic and The Economist. “Flinder Boyd’s piece about an aspirational […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How To Get Your Own False Confession
“If you decide the suspect is lying, you leave the room and wait for five minutes. Then you return with an official-looking folder. ‘I have in this folder the results of our investigation,’ you say. You remain standing to establish your dominance. ‘After reviewing our results, we have no doubt that you committed the crime. […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: The Most Surprising Piece of Cultural Criticism of the Year
DuckTales Invented a New Animated Wonderland—That Quickly Disappeared Todd VanDerWerff | The AV Club | February 2013 | 9 minutes (2,159 words) Elizabeth Hyde Stevens is author of the book Make Art Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career. “I was shocked that Todd VanDerWerff was able to write such a […]
Posted inNonfiction, Podcasts, Quotes
The Missing Stories of Slavery
“There are many more narratives to tell about slavery. It’s such a rich subject. It’s like the Civil War, it’s like the Second World War. … I’m happy that they want to [remake Roots] but I think there’s much more—we’ve heard that story already, we don’t have to rehash it. There’s not been a film […]
