The inside story of Ranbaxy, a generic drug maker that committed criminal fraud by fabricating data to win FDA approvals: “Thakur knew the drugs weren’t good. They had high impurities, degraded easily, and would be useless at best in hot, humid conditions. They would be taken by the world’s poorest patients in sub-Saharan Africa, who […]
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Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
Interview with a Torturer
Documentary filmmaker and Khmer Rouge survivor Rithy Panh spent hundreds of hours interviewing Duch, the commandant of the Cambodia “killing fields” and one of the most notorious torturers of the 20th century. This is his haunting memoir of those interviews.
Posted inBooks, First Chapters, Nonfiction
The Magical Stranger: A Son’s Journey Into His Father’s Life
Stephen Rodrick | The Magical Stranger | 2014 | 11 minutes (2,779 words) Below is the first chapter from The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick’s memoir about his father, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick. Our thanks to Rodrick for sharing it with the Longreads community.
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction, Story
The Craft of Poetry: A Semester with Allen Ginsberg
An intimate recollection of a Beat legend.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
A Birth Story
Meaghan O’Connell had a perfect pregnancy and the perfect birth plan—and then she went into labor.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Kidnapping Case: Seizure and Recovery
Solomon [Northup], the subject of the following narrative, is a free colored citizen of the United States; was born in Essex County, New York, about the year 1808; became early a resident of Washington County, and married there in 1829. His father and mother resided in the county of Washington about fifty years, till their […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Good Health Care Depends on Nurses
Arnold Relman, a physician with more than six decades of experience, broke his neck and discovered what it’s like to be critically ill and cared for under today’s health care system.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Why Did the Schaibles Let Their Children Die?
Herbert and Catherine Schaible are devout members of the First Century Gospel Church, which strictly believes in divine healing—meaning no doctors or medicine are allowed. Two of their children died after they became ill, and the couple is now facing third-degree murder charges. The writer attempts to understand the couple’s actions by visiting their church, […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business
Lawmakers in states across the country have been fighting to make pseudoephedrine—an ingredient found in over-the-counter medicine like Sudafed used to make methamphetamine—a prescription drug to reduce the number of meth labs being built. Few states have succeeded to match the lobbying power of drug manufacturers, while those that have have seen results: “Pharma companies […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
The Honey Hunters
The most lucrative of all the forest’s products, and the most dangerous to gather.
