The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
* * *
Jill Lepore’s critical look at the language of innovation in tech:
Clay Christensen has compared the theory of disruptive innovation to a theory of nature: the theory of evolution. But among the many differences between disruption and evolution is that the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn’t disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be because it didn’t disrupt. When a startup fails, that’s a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation. (“Stop being afraid of failure and start embracing it,” the organizers of FailCon, an annual conference, implore, suggesting that, in the era of disruption, innovators face unprecedented challenges. For instance: maybe you made the wrong hires?) When an established company succeeds, that’s only because it hasn’t yet failed. And, when any of these things happen, all of them are only further evidence of disruption.

Clay Christensen has compared the theory of disruptive innovation to a theory of nature: the theory of evolution. But among the many differences between disruption and evolution is that the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn’t disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be because it didn’t disrupt. When a startup fails, that’s a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation. (“Stop being afraid of failure and start embracing it,” the organizers of FailCon, an annual conference, implore, suggesting that, in the era of disruption, innovators face unprecedented challenges. For instance: maybe you made the wrong hires?) When an established company succeeds, that’s only because it hasn’t yet failed. And, when any of these things happen, all of them are only further evidence of disruption.
-From Jill Lepore’s 2014 critical look at the language of disruption and innovation, in The New Yorker.

Julia Flynn Siler | The House of Mondavi | 2007 | 14 minutes (3,328 words)
For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to feature an excerpt from The House of Mondavi, Julia Flynn Siler’s book about a family that turned a Napa Valley winery into a billion-dollar fortune. Thanks to Siler and Gotham Books for sharing it with the Longreads community.

In the Toronto Star, Sandro Contenta travels to the Bahamas to attend “SharkSchool” where a man named Erich Ritter teaches a one-week course on how to swim safely with sharks. Over the course of his reporting, Contenta learns that 63 people have been killed by sharks in the past decade, while scientists have estimated that 97 million sharks have been killed by humans during fishing-related activities in 2010 alone:
As for what you should do if you ever found yourself being attacked by a shark? The answer is obvious: Fight for your life:
Photo: Jeff

–Ross Andersen, in Aeon magazine, on the mystical roots of biodynamic wine.
Photo: peterburge
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Change log:
The river is a lure for romantics, tourists, sunbathers, anglers, psychiatric patients—le tout Paris.
Most every morning at nine, the emergency responders assigned to the Seine pull on their wet suits and swim around the Île de la Cité. In the course of their circuit around this teardrop-shaped island in the middle of the river in the middle of Paris, the firemen-divers scour the bottom, retrieving bikes, cutlery (which they clean and use in the nearby houseboat where they live), cell phones, old coins, crucifixes, guns, and once, a museum-grade Roman clasp.
By the Pont des Arts, where lovers affix brass locks inscribed with their names (“Steve + Linda Pour la Vie”), they retrieve keys tossed in the water by couples hoping to affirm the eternal nature of their padlocked love. One bridge upriver, at the Pont Neuf, near the Palace of Justice law courts where divorces are decreed, they find wedding bands, discarded when eternal love turns out to be ephemeral.

The relationship between writer and teacher is no simple thing. For John Kaag, a former professor of expository writing at Harvard, the most vital component of this relationship is intimacy. Despite the persistent image of the writer as solitary figure, Kang sees companionship–specifically critical companionship–as essential. For many writers, the search for a truly compatible teacher–the Gordon Lish to their Raymond Carver–can be a lifelong journey. But for Kaag, the tutelage began at home, under the watchful eyes of his mother, a high school English teacher. From the Opinionator:
Photo: Smithsonian, Flickr

Roxane Gay | An Untamed State | May 2014 | 11 minutes (2,742 words)
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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 Gay picks from the Longreads Archive. Read more…
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