→
“Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.” Mac McClelland, Mother Jones
A mini-documentary on one resident who took matters into his own hands after the city killed its light-rail plans. Plus: Detroit stories from the Longreads archive, from Mother Jones, GQ, Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica.
“Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.” Mac McClelland, Mother Jones

Longreads just celebrated its fourth birthday, and it’s been a thrill to watch this community grow since we introduced this service and Twitter hashtag in 2009. Thank you to everyone who participates, whether it’s as a reader, a publisher, a writer—or all three. And thanks to the Longreads Members who have made it possible for us to keep going.
To celebrate four years, here’s a rundown of some of our most frequent #longreads contributors, and some of their recent recommendations:
#1 – @matthiasrascher
The Master of Nasty – A homage to Raymond Chandler. j.mp/12wOiOZ #literature #longreads
— Matthias Rascher (@matthiasrascher)
#2 – @hriefs
“A House on the River.” @esquiremag #longreads on how Bill Petit put his life back together after losing his family bit.ly/ZhAM1U
— Howard Riefs (@hriefs)
#3 – @roamin
In John They Trust / Smithsonian Magazine ow.ly/khqNh #longreads #cargocults
— roamin (@roamin)
#4 – @jalees_rehman
Now, Without Any Further Ado, We Present … The Digital Public Library of America! #longreads @dpla fb.me/23mV5kHft
— Jalees Rehman (@jalees_rehman)
#5 – @LAReviewofBooks
“Jonathan Rosenbaum is one of our keenest observers of contemporary ‘film culture.’” | Goodbye, Cinema: owl.li/kap1b #longreads
— LA Review of Books (@LAReviewofBooks)
#6 – @TheAtlantic
‘Going to the woods is going home’: John Muir on his beloved Yosemite Valley theatln.tc/11eVFYo #EarthDay #longreads
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic)
#7 – @nxthompson
Dick Cheney and the bureaucracy vs a satellite and climate science. @popsci #longreads popsci.com/technology/art…
— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson)
#8 – @faraway67
On the Brink of Extinction: A Closer Look at Endangered Species bit.ly/10HzpHP #extinction #environment #longreads
— Barbara Mack (@faraway67)
#9 – @PocketHits
“The Tyranny of the Taxi Medallions.” @priceonomics bit.ly/120veIK #MostSaved #longreads
— PocketHits (@PocketHits)
#10 – @legalnomads
Your Sunday reading, all in one place: top 5 #longreads of the week: bit.ly/13IAxzt
— Jodi Ettenberg (@legalnomads)
#11 – @brainpicker
Wow. Mapping marine ecologist Bob Paine’s academic family tree j.mp/XeBMxt From @edyong209‘s ace #longreads j.mp/XeBNS9
— Maria Popova (@brainpicker)
#12 – @LineHolm1
Pulitzer winner 2013, feature writing is @nytimes‘ “Snow Fall” – recommended #longreads pulitzer.org/works/2013-Fea…
— Line Holm Nielsen (@LineHolm1)
#13 – @Guardian
.@guardiang2: Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people gu.com/p/3e298/tw #longreads
— The Guardian (@guardian)
#14 – @stonedchimera
When an American learnt by spending a summer at an Indian Call Center bit.ly/QDnA1m . Essential reading from Mother Jones. #Longreads
— Sairam Krishnan (@stonedchimera)
#15 – @MosesHawk
An anthropologist joins the ranks of the under appreciated sanitation workers of New York City. bit.ly/15Cupsp #longreads
— Moses Hawk (@MosesHawk)
#16 – @James_daSilva
Unearthing the Complete and Total Disaster That Was ‘The Chevy Chase Show’ | Splitsider splitsider.com/2013/04/uneart… #longreads
— James daSilva (@James_daSilva)
#17 – @chrbutler
Inspiring WIRED profile of Primer director Shane Carruth: bit.ly/ZbkgdJ #longreads
— Christopher Butler (@chrbutler)
#18 – @eugenephoto
Enjoying this: how to spend 47 hours on a train and not go crazy. nytimes.com/2013/03/03/mag… #travelreads #longreads
— Eugene (@eugenephoto)
#19 – @jaredbkeller
All is not well at the @todayshow nym.ag/ZNIUoh #longreads tip @mediagazer
— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller)
#20 – @morgank
True Crime: How a Mysterious Beaumont, Texas, Murder Was Solved | Vanity Fair vnty.fr/ZI48bb #longreads
— Potato Crypts (@morgank)
#21 – @dougcoulson
Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car | Past Imperfect blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/0… via @smithsonianmag #longreads
— Doug Coulson (@dougcoulson)
#22 – @LaForgeNYT
Grizzly Bear Members Are Indie-Rock Royalty, But What Does That Buy Them in 2012? | New York Magazi… lgrd.co/OzjhpQ #longreads
— Follow @Palafo (@LaForgeNYT)
#23 – @stephen_abbott
Let’s Get Physical: The Psychology of Effective Workout Music by @ferrisjabr scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id… via @aeonmag cc @biobeatslive #longreads
— Stephen Abbott (@stephen_abbott)
#24 – @venkatananth
<opInside Ajmal Amir Kasab’s mind. “What turned a village boy to a cold-blooded killer” #longreads by @barneyhenderson – telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews…
— Venkat Ananth (@venkatananth)
#25 – @weegee
#deepinterviews called “liberating the essay.” Really called “Written for Kevin” bit.ly/ZyQsbn #longreads (cc: @kimthedork)
— Kevin Smokler (@Weegee)
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week—featuring The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Los Angeles Magazine, Smithsonian, fiction from The American Scholar and a guest pick from Marissa Evans.

Isaac Fitzgerald is managing editor of The Rumpus, co-founder of Pen & Ink, and uses Twitter.
Disclaimer: I know many of the people on this list. One of the wonderful things / occupational hazards of working for a site like The Rumpus is that I’ve come to meet a lot of great writers. These stories stand on their own regardless.
I.O.U., and U., and U. (Chris Colin, The New York Times)
Chris Colin sells a $50 will call ticket to see Miranda July using Craigslist and never gets paid, spurring him to contemplate all the debts he himself owes (after some anger-fueled internet stalking, of course).
Maybe this is catching him at a hard time, I thought. But truth was, Joe seemed to be having a pretty normal time. With his ample tweeting and active Facebooking — well over 1,000 friends! — he allowed for robust stalking. There he was on a sailboat. On a golf course. With some bros. Dancing goofily. Doing his handsome face. Doing some artsy stuff. He looked like someone you’d gone to camp with. Apparently he works for some progressive-sounding start-up, the kind whose Web site speaks of community and so forth.
Eddie Is Gone (Nicole Pasulka, The Believer)
Nicole Pasulka, a former copywriter for a tourism company in Hawaii, examines the messy history of the Aloha State through the riveting life of surf legend Eddie Aikau.
That night Hōkūle‘a rode fifteen-foot swells. The boat began listing from water leakage, and eventually stopped dead in the water. The panicked crew huddled to one side of the craft in an effort to balance out the lilt of the boat with their weight. Around midnight, a rogue wave capsized the canoe, tossing the crew into the water and destroying their radio. The crew clung to the boat. Waiting to be spotted by a plane, they drifted farther from the flight patterns between the islands. Huge swells hammered the vessel. Less-seaworthy members of the crew were seasick and exhausted from exposure. Eddie eventually asked if he could paddle his surfboard nearly twenty miles to the island of Lāna‘i for help. Captain Lyman refused until, seeing no other option for rescue, he gave Eddie permission to go.
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave (Mac McClelland, Mother Jones)
Mac McClelland jumps into the product-stacked trenches of a major online retailer’s shipping house to expose the truth behind how those little brown boxes get to your doorstep.
[The shipping company] has estimated that we pickers speed-walk an average of 12 miles a day on cold concrete, and the twinge in my legs blurs into the heavy soreness in my feet that complements the pinch in my hips when I crouch to the floor—the pickers’ shelving runs from the floor to seven feet high or so—to retrieve an iPad protective case. iPad anti-glare protector. iPad one-hand grip-holder device. Thing that looks like a landline phone handset that plugs into your iPad so you can pretend that rather than talking via iPad you are talking on a phone. And dildos. Really, a staggering number of dildos.
How Men Fight For Their Lives (Saeed Jones, The Rumpus)
Saeed Jones recollects being gay bashed by a “straight” man in Phoenix, Arizona, and delves into what it means to put oneself at risk in the supposed name of art.
Daniel’s shift from sucking me to punching me happened so quickly, I could still feel my erection pressed against his stomach even as his arms came down from above me like lightning bolts. Trapped under a body I suddenly realized was all muscle, all I could do was watch the thunderstorm. It all felt so distant. He wasn’t beating me. He was beating the desire I had brought out in him. And this is one of the reasons why the phrase “gay bashing” feels misplaced. There, on the floor under him, when I looked up at Daniel, I didn’t see a gay basher; I saw a man who thought he was fighting for his life.
And, at the risk of turning this post into a longread itself, let me take one last moment to recommend pretty much any essay written by Roxane Gay and Emily Rapp this year.

Reyhan Harmanci is deputy editor of Modern Farmer, a not-yet-launched publication devoted to issues of farming and food (and animals!).
Picking these stories activated an obsessive part of my brain and I’m already regretting throwing the “best” around without spending a few months reading all of the Longreads of 2012. But there’s always 2013!
Best Farmer/Vampire Story
“The Great New England Vampire Panic,” Abigail Tucker, Smithsonian
This story really needs to be read to be believed. First of all, hats off to the writer, Abigail Tucker, for introducing and then eliminating the possibility of a serial killer in the first ten lines. And then the chilling line: “Ever heard of the Jewett City vampires?” What follows is a window into East Coast agrarian life in the 1800s, a time when supernatural folklore took hold as demographic changes drained the land of people. (Also, you guys, VAMPIRES.)
Best Public Safety Story
“Silos Loom as Death Traps on American Farms,” John M. Broder, The New York Times
Silos. You don’t really think about them, right? Thanks to this fantastic bit of reporting from The New York Times, you won’t be able to forget them. When federal officials noticed that a strangely high percentage of “grain entrapment” deaths, basically corn avalanches, were those of teenage boys, regulators moved to ban child labor on the farm. This caused a great controversy because child farm labor is the only kind exempted from labor regulations—many protested that it was a denial of age-old tradition. The forces that collided over this issue are fascinating, and heartbreaking.
Best Tech Criminal Story
“Scamworld: ‘Get rich quick’ schemes mutate into an online monster,” Joseph L. Flatley, The Verge
From The Verge, this in-depth look at the subculture of a particular kind of online scam stayed with me all year. The reporter dug in, and got the perspectives of both those peddling a strange kind of snake oil (marketing, basically) and the poor souls who spend thousands of dollars on worthless products. I still can’t totally wrap my mind around what these Scamworld folks are selling—the ability to market yourself online?—but in a way, it doesn’t matter. They are selling what con artists always sell: themselves.
Best Immersion Journalism Story
“I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave,” Mac McClelland, Mother Jones
Immersion pieces can be tricky—oftentimes, the writer spends most of the copy patting himself on the back for the bravery to, say, pretend to be homeless for a week or read the Bible in sequential order. But Mac McClelland really nails the balance here, as she spends a month showing us something we never see: the elves who package our online shopping goods, for little wage and under bad conditions. After this story came out, when I saw the headlines that Amazon was trying to do same-day shipping, my heart sunk.
Best Call-to-Action Essay
“A Convenient Excuse,” Wen Stephenson, the Boston Phoenix
Okay, this story (or whatever it is—a combination of op-ed and essay) is far from perfect. But the issues raised by Wen Stephenson—a former editor for the Atlantic and longtime journalist—about how the media deals with (and doesn’t deal with) climate change are big. Very big. The bottom line is that unless journalists treat the environmental changes happening right now on our planet as a crisis, not a debate, the public is not getting adequately informed. We may not be all doomed yet but the odds are swiftly tilting against our favor.
From The Daily Beast’s David Sessions, a collection of stories on gun violence and policy in the U.S., featuring The Atlantic, Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek and Mother Jones.
“Big Sugar’s Sweet Little Lies.” — Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens
Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Mother Jones, SB Nation, Wired, Dissent Magazine, Playboy, fiction from The American Reader, and Mike Spry’s guest pick from GQ.
The writer, a former American prisoner in Iran, goes inside America’s prisons and examines the solitary confinement system. He discovers “a recipe for abuse and violation rights”:
The cell I am standing in is one of eight in a ‘pod,’ a large concrete room with cells along one side and only one exit, which leads to the guards’ control room. A guard watches over us, rifle in hand, through a set of bars in the wall. He can easily shoot into any one of six pods around him. He communicates with prisoners through speakers and opens their steel grated cell doors via remote. That is how they are let out to the dog run, where they exercise for an hour a day, alone. They don’t leave the cell to eat. If they ever leave the pod, they have to strip naked, pass their hands through a food slot to be handcuffed, then wait for the door to open and be bellycuffed.
I’ve been corresponding with at least 20 inmates in SHUs around California as part of an investigation into why and how people end up here. While at Pelican Bay, I’m not allowed to see or speak to any of them. Since 1996, California law has given prison authorities full control of which inmates journalists can interview. The only one I’m permitted to speak to is the same person the New York Times was allowed to interview months before. He is getting out of the SHU because he informed on other prisoners. In fact, this SHU pod—the only one I am allowed to see—is populated entirely by prison informants. I ask repeatedly why I’m not allowed to visit another pod or speak to other SHU inmates. Eventually, Acosta snaps: ‘You’re just not.’
You must be logged in to post a comment.