In this edition: gambling’s grip, a story of plumes and poachers, bemoaning American tourists in Rome, a magical history tour, and a fake poultry flinger.
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Lights
Have New York City’s LED streetlights taken something from the city, or added to it?
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Highlighting stories from a collection of pro-Palestine student protesters, Chloé Cooper Jones, Nick Bowlin, Bathsheba Demuth, and Joshua Rigsby.
‘Some Things Never Leave You’: Christian Livermore on Poverty’s Indelible Marks
“For me, passing means trying to be anything other than what I was, and what I fear so desperately I always will be: poor white trash.”
Aquanauts of Hudson Canyon
Short fiction set around one of the world’s deepest subterranean canyons, right off New York City’s coastline, and that explores the deep, unseen terrain of the heart.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Michelle Shephard, Adrienne Mason, Dylan Levi King, Sara Mitchell, and Saskia Solomon.
The Body Collectors of the Coronavirus Pandemic
“As the death toll from COVID-19 rises, the funeral homes and hospital morgues of New York City are struggling to keep up.”
Our Year in Reading and the Week’s Top 5
Every story changes our mind in some small way. They’re already in implicit conversation with one another, and our “Year in Reading” series acknowledges that.
What Neko Case taught me about curation and the week’s Top 5
“When the media covered women in the grunge and alternative scene, it treated them like a genre unto itself. This genre, though, received almost no in-depth profiles or features.” Books are one of the great joys in my life. The other is music. I’ve been following singer songwriter Neko Case since 1997, after picking up […]
The Strange True Tale of ‘Castro’s No. 1 Killer’
Herman Marks, a drifter from Milwaukee, took a boat to Cuba with nothing but a Colt .45 revolver and $400 in cash. His plan? To join the revolution.


