The following is an excerpt from Open Road Media’s Challenger: An American Tragedy, the new book by Hugh Harris, NASA’s “voice of launch control,” who recounts the shuttle tragedy that occurred nearly 30 years ago. Buy the book now. *** Chapter One: A Look Back Twenty-Eight Years Challenger was a spacecraft designed to transport, protect, and nurture […]
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The Letter
S.I. Newhouse’s contentious appointment of Robert Gottlieb as the editor of The New Yorker in 1987, and what Gottlieb did to bring the magazine into a new era: “Orlean was an early Gottlieb-era hire. ‘She came in off the street,’ said McGrath, her Talk of the Town editor (though, she noted, Gottlieb was often her […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: Sempre Susan (Excerpt)
For this week’s Longreads Member pick, we’re excited to share an excerpt from Sigrid Nunez’s memoir Sempre Susan, which comes recommended by Emily Gould, the proprietor of Emily Books, who writes: “This memorable passage from Sigrid Nunez’s gemlike memoir of the year she spent under the influence of Susan Sontag begins with a description of a trip to […]
The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll, Part 3: Bon Jovi
Rethinking the legacy of one of the most ridiculed hair bands of our time: “I have no insight into the goings-on of Jon Bon Jovi’s headspace, but I like to imagine him having a ‘Once in a Lifetime’ moment during the Springsteen duet: ‘This is not my classic-rock staple, this is not my classic-rock backing […]
1859’s ‘Great Auroral Storm’—The Week the Sun Touched the Earth
[Not single-page] Reliving the “Carrington Event,” a solar storm that disrupted the U.S. telegraph system and lit up the sky in late August 1859: “The night of Carrington’s discovery, the electrical hurricane that had swept the globe peaked. The Great Auroral Storm had actually begun several days earlier with a similar incident on August 28, […]
The Fierce Intimacy of Tennis Rivalries
It was a year earlier, indoors in New Orleans, in only their third match against each other as pros (Borg was 22; McEnroe 20), when their relationship as opponents coalesced. They were in the third and deciding set (which McEnroe would eventually win), and it was close. As McEnroe has recounted, “I was getting all […]
Signposts in a Strange Land: Writers Roundtable on New Orleans
“The Bywater, two neighborhoods down from the French Quarter, where I live and work, is the most active new art scene—it’s totally exploded recently. We’ve been calling it Williamsburg South because we keep meeting kids from Brooklyn and we can’t keep up with the new writers and artists who’ve been moving into the neighborhood. New […]
The Deadly Choices at Memorial
Within days, the grisly tableau became the focus of an investigation into what happened when the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina marooned Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans.
The HBO Auteur: David Simon
Coming off acclaim for “The Wire,” David Simon takes his approach to New Orleans with “Treme.”
Invasion of the Bayou Snatchers
Not all oil-soaked animals in Louisiana deserve saving. Nicole Pasulka attends fashion shows, braises venison, and heads into the bayou to understand the varmint of New Orleans: nutria.
