Have you read Craig Brown’s Hello Goodbye Hello? It’s a blast: “a circle of 101 remarkable meetings,” as the jacket says, with each chapter a pithy, intimate encounter between two figures from history
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from Victor Luckerson, Tristin Hopper, John Drescher, Steve Shorney, and Pamela Petro.
The Very Public Library, Food as Fuel, and Our Top 5
“It’s our least popular and most enforced rule: we don’t allow people to sleep in the library. We know you’re tired, we know it’s warm, we know it feels safe. But someone who is dying also looks like someone who is sleeping, and we’ve all seen our share of overdoses. Also, if one person is […]
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan, Dan McQuade, Crystal Wilkinson, Simon Akam, and Nicholson Baker.
The Meaning of Tattoos and Our Top 5 of the Week
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
A banger of a Christmas story, best of 2023, and more
“I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 […]
The Search for Answers, and the Week’s Top 5
“Words only ever do so much. But, time and again, Saunders’s words—in his own stories, and in conversation—reveal their utility. They insist on our dignity, however and wherever they find us. And they help us extend the same dignity to others.” This week my wife and I watched the documentary Cover-Up, about journalist Seymour Hersh […]
Our Biggest Hits, Near Misses, and Top 5 Stories
For many of us, the weeks ahead offer a little more time and space for reading. Our year-end lists are filled with stories that will meet you wherever you are.
Parks and Re-Creation (and the Week’s Top 5)
“In spite of my confidence in cooking, I’ve never brought mulukhiyah into my urban kitchen. Eating it without my family’s elbows pressed against mine doesn’t make sense to me. I know I’d feel like an impostor, inserting myself into the sacred and altering it irreparably, as I can’t help but reinvent recipes with my own improvised […]
Wrapping Up 2024 and the Week’s Top 5
Well, folks, this is it. The last Top 5 newsletter of the year! Whether or not you’re observing any holidays, we hope you enjoy a restorative end to 2024. At the very least, you’ll have the full run of our Best of 2024 package at your disposal—between the stories we discussed in our year-end essays […]


