Jennifer Reingold | Fortune | March 2014 | 29 minutes (7,108 words) Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle) Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks) When you find a savior, you don’t quibble over details. So it was that J.C. Penney, the long-stagnating mid-tier department store chain, announced in June 2011 that it was hiring Ron […]
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. 1. Ghosts of the Tsunami Richard Lloyd Parry | London Review of Books | February 6, 2014 | 28 minutes (7,185 words) The writer […]
The Couple Who Started the Textbook Wars
“Mel and Norma Gabler founded Educational Research Analysts in 1961. Funded through donations, they hired serious-minded believers like Neal Frey, a professor at a small Christian liberal arts college in New York, to help them page through mountains of material. In a 12-by–15-foot bedroom next to the garage in the Gablers’ house, Frey and a […]
The story of a young chess prodigy’s unraveling and disappearance: NEW YORKERS DISAPPEAR all the time. A handful leap into the public eye and remain there, like 6-year-old Etan Patz. An even smaller number miraculously return after decades, like Carlina White, stolen as a baby from a Harlem hospital in 1987 and found more than […]
The Cranky Wisdom of Peter Kaplan
A New York media legend, exposed: “At 58, Kaplan is the editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Media, a Condé Nast family that includes Women’s Wear Daily and Footwear News. He has an aging movie star’s smooth, youthful face and, like a star, the capacity to fill a room with outsized gawky charm. When he’s feeling […]
Celebrating Four Years of Longreads
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 […]
Foster Kamer: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010
Foster Kamer (ex-BlackBook + Gawker + Village Voice) is online features and news editor at Esquire. *** 2010 was an incredible year for writing, bottom line. Despite the proliferation of things whose output is mostly antagonistic to great writing — like faceless “content farms” churning out hollow, Google-gaming information lacking anything of substance — great writing persisted. Twitter’s evolving […]
Detroitism: What Does 'Ruin Porn' Tell Us About the Motor City?
Detroitism: What Does ‘Ruin Porn’ Tell Us About the Motor City? The third major subgenre of the popular Detroit narrative is a backlash against the pornographic excesses of the Lament and is, at best, an attempt to find a new definition of urban vitality. The Utopians are well-meaning defenders of the city’s possibilities. Locally, they […]
If She Did It
If She Did It No one expected Judith Regan to go quietly. After dropping out of sight for much of this year, on Nov. 13 she filed a lawsuit against News Corp, HarperCollins, and Jane Friedman for defamation, breach of contract, and sex discrimination. Most spectacularly, the lawsuit alleges that Ms. Regan was the victim […]
Gerald Marzorati: Five Longreads for Opening Day
Gerald Marzorati, a former editor of the New York Times Magazine, is an Assistant Managing Editor of the Times “Early Innings,” by Roger Angell. (The New Yorker, Feb. 24, 1992) (sub. required) America’s baseball belletrist here writes of how he came to love the game. “The Silent Season of a Hero,” by Gay Talese. (Esquire, […]

