Search Results for: New York Times

A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder:

Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for The Wall Street Journal. Over the years, Muth flooded the in-boxes of his media contacts with messages containing his thoughts on the day’s events and knowing tidbits of insider gossip — speculations about covert operations gone awry or rumors about fights between top generals — a habit that didn’t end with his wife’s death. Four days after he supposedly found Drath’s body, Muth forwarded a note that he originally sent to officials in the Pentagon. He intimated that the police considered Drath to be the unfortunate victim of an assassin who was hunting for him. ’ have to take a slain wife out to Arlington,’ he wrote, ‘mourn her, then find her killer.’

“The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” Franklin Foer, New York Times Magazine

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Stanford Magazine, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, fiction from The Atlantic, plus a guest pick from Damien Joyce.

Now that LeBron James has his first championship ring, his narrative is complete. A brief history:

Finally, after several drama-clogged months, LeBron James announced his intentions. He called a public meeting in the Roman Forum, at the very spot from which Marc Antony had addressed his countrymen after the death of Julius Caesar. (Some found this choice of venue distasteful.) ‘I have decided,’ James declared, ‘to take my tridents to Sicily.’

“This came as a surprise to many: the gladiatorial scene in Sicily was rather provincial, its arena small and poorly attended. There were, however, other dominant fighters in Sicily with whom James was eager to team — a lion named Jade and a dancing bear named Squash. From then on, they fought exclusively as a trio, doing well sometimes and not so well at other times. Spectators around the empire found this all to be rather anticlimactic. Interest in gladiator fighting dwindled, and many scholars believe it is no coincidence that the sport was officially banned, without public outcry, just a few decades later.

“LeBron James Is a Sack of Melons.” — Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine

More from Anderson

In Atlanta, a drug dealer is asked to become a confidential informant for cops in a narcotics unit. He ends up turning them in when the officers try to cover up a botched drug bust that ends up killing an innocent woman:

You made a buy today for us,’ Smith explained. ‘Two $25 baggies of crack.’

‘I did?’ White asked. It took him a moment to register. ‘O.K. Who did I buy it from?’

‘Dude named Sam.’ Smith described the imaginary seller, told how Sam had taken his money then walked White to the back of the house and handed him the drugs as Smith and a fellow officer, Arthur Tesler, watched from a car across the street.

‘O.K.,’ White said. ‘Where?’

Smith said: ‘933 Neal Street. I’ll call you later.’

Now in the living room, the TV reporter was saying how a 92-year-old woman had died in the incident, and people were suggesting that the police had shot her. Two and two came together in White’s mind. They did it, he suddenly knew. They messed up. They killed that old lady. Now his heart pounded as the implications became clear. And they want me to cover for them.

“A Snitch’s Dilemma.” — Ted Conover, New York Times Magazine

More #longreads about drugs

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: D Magazine, Fortune Magazine, New England Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, #fiction, plus a guest pick from James daSilva.

A daughter recounts the difficult experience of getting her bipolar father the help he needed to get better:

I could feel everyone getting tired. The emergency-screening service kept sending the same patient to the psychiatric hospital, only to see him again the following week. The hospital had to baby-sit for a man who refused to comply with treatment. I made dozens of phone calls and was getting nowhere. The only people who hadn’t succumbed to fatigue were my mother, though her fingers were cramped from praying so many rosaries, and the local police, who had no choice in the matter. The same roster of officers responded to each call, shepherding my father from the street to the emergency room to PESS to jail, and periodically driving past my mother’s house to make sure things were calm. I worried that before long they, too, would give up and release my father, on his own recognizance, to the street.

And then what?

I imagined him circling a drain, the pull of love and obligation dragging my mother and siblings and me behind him.

“When My Crazy Father Actually Lost His Mind.” — Jeneen Interlandi, The New York Times Magazine

More from Interlandi

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: New York Magazine, Ploughshares, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, #fiction from The New York Review of Books, plus a guest pick from Eva Holland.

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Michael Hastings, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Paul Ford, VICE, fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Matt Cardin.

The secret history of sexual abuse inside New York’s Horace Mann School:

Speaking calmly and staring into the flames, he told us that when he was in eighth grade, Wright sexually assaulted him. ‘And not just me,’ he added. ‘There were others.’ First Wright befriended him, he said. Then he molested him. Then he pretended nothing happened.

“No one knew what to say, at least at first. But then slowly, the rest of us started telling stories, too. One of the guys talked about a teacher who took him on a field trip, and then invited him into his bed in the hotel room they were sharing. (My friend fled, walking in the rain for hours until the coast seemed clear.) Another told a story about a teacher who got him drunk and naked; that time, no one fled. We talked about the steakhouse dinner, which was a far cry from abuse, but an example of how easy it can be for boundaries to blur and how hard it can be, in the moment, for students to get their bearings. Finally, we all went to sleep.

“Prep-School Predators.” — Amos Kamil, New York Times

More longreads

Top 5 #Longreads of the Week: Matt Might, ThePostGame, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Atlantic, fiction from Roxane Gay, plus a guest pick from Mike Dang.